Gracepoint vs Broadchurch

A few days ago I finished watching Gracepoint. I was told that the ending had been changed, so I was exciting to see the differences. Warning: if you haven't already seen Broadchurch, DON'T read this post. MAJOR SPOILER ALERT. Now that you've been warned, let's dive in. Episode ten of Gracepoint confused me because it was leading up to exactly the same ending as Broadchurch-Ellie's husband killed Danny. The whole time, I wondered what the surprise was, then felt like that person lied to me because everything was exactly the same. The difference didn't come in until the VERY end! It was Tommy's fault because he followed his dad and was trying to protect Danny and he accidentally hit Danny in the head and killed him. That felt like such a cheat. I hated that ending because that meant Ellie was going to protect her son and keep the secret of who's really at fault and I have issues with people who escape the consequences if their actions. I've seen this same premise in several other mystery stories and I'm getting tired of it. It should be someone's fault so that someone can pay for the crime. 

Second of all, I hated that ending because it wasn't really anybody's fault that Danny died. It was a total accident. Why in the world did I spend 10 episodes  to discover a killer who was an accident? I liked that in Broadchurch, Joe physically strangled Danny. He was hugging him and then he strangled him in a fit of passion. It really was Joe's fault. He didn't mean for Danny to be killed, but it really happened and it was really his fault and he was fully responsible. He gets put in jail and he's properly punished for his actions. But in Gracepoint, they softened all of that. There wasn't a clear antagonist and they punished the wrong person. If I'm going to spend ten long episodes on a single mystery, then by george, I want to see a real murderer at the end, not people who accidentally got into trouble.

Why I Liked Agents of Shield but Hated Coulson

So, I saw the pilot and there were some things I didn't like, but a lot of things that I enjoyed. First, it was great to see Lucy Lawless, everyone's favorite warrior princess. I liked her character and was very sad to see that she probably died at the end. I was hoping to see a lot more of her in the series. Second, the interrogation scene between Skye and Ward was creepy and amazing with the promise of many more scenes like it. Skye will obviously be asked many more times to get information out of Ward and his insanity makes a lot of sense after he lost Garrett. (Garrett's death scene was HILARIOUS at the end of season 1! one of the best moments of the whole series!). I also loved how they set up Fitz's hallucination of Simmons always at his side, telling him the words he can't say. His reveal at the end was brilliantly tragic. I'm very excited to see what happens to him later on. I'm guessing he merges  with an alien artifact in an effort to get his intelligence back and either gets cured or becomes a monster that Simmons has to tame. Or maybe he becomes the blue beetle. That'd be cool. And absorption man was pretty awesome. The special effects did a great job with his transformations and wished he could have been in season one instead of Deathlok.

The biggest thing that bugged me was Coulson's hesitation when Skye and May ask for his orders during the crisis moment in the warehouse while a whole army is shooting at them. While leaders hesitate, people get shot and killed because you can't make a decision. I lost respect for Coulson in that moment. Either that's the director's fault or the editor's fault. I sure hope it's not the writer's fault. Either way, I'd like to punch the guy responsible. That moment weakened Coulson's character and made me doubt his ability as the new leader of SHIELD. Coulson was awesome in the Avengers movie, but his character isn't strong enough to carry a TV series. When I saw season five of Stargate:Atlantis, Richard Woolsey became my favorite commander. Sam Carter was good and I loved seeing her, but she was almost too nice. Woolsey was the first commander Atlantis had that could make quick, forceful decisions without hesitation. Yes, he made mistakes sometimes, but at least he was decisive about them. When the whole team was captured and put on trial, Woolsey came to represent them as their lawyer! That was so cool! He was very confident and showed no fear. Coulson isn't in a position where he can hesitate anymore. He's now the DIRECTOR of SHIELD. He's Fury's replacement! Unfortunately, when he takes the driver's seat, he's just as underwhelming as he was in season one. I was hoping to see a stronger Coulson in season two, but it hasn't happened yet.

My Issues With Faith Based Entertainment

Last week I finally figured out why I don't like faith based entertainment. Please keep in mind I'm talking about low quality church films, not every single film that just happened to be made by Christians. In fact, there are some wonderful Christian films out there, like Amazing Grace and The Ultimate Gift (same producer). Seventeen Miracles was pretty good and I've heard amazing things about The Saratov Approach. But last week my mom was watching these low budget Christian horse movies we found at Walmart and I finally figured out why some Christian films really bug me. It's because the point of the film is to push a certain agenda, rather than tell a good story. For example, I watched a film on Netflix that basically told me, "home school kids are better than public school kids." That was the point of the whole film! I took offense at that because I was an honest, religious kid who happened to go to public school. In addition, you've got the bad acting and lousy cinematography.  Stories should always have a good theme, but not at the cost of the story's quality. Orson Scott Card says that theme is one of the last things he thinks about. He writes the story first and allows the theme to grow naturally out of the events and the characters. That's the way I want to write all of my scripts and novels.

How about the rest of you? What are some religious films you've loved or hated? What are the awesome religious films that I've missed?

Dialogue Sucks.

I'm getting frustrated now because you know, in a novel, authors can show things through the character's thoughts, but when you're writing a script you can't look into a character's thoughts unless there's voice over and voice over is one of those things you want to avoid, so everything has to be visual and it makes so much sense in the book, but I have to make it visual and show it through clever dialogue that reveals character and background info but it also has to be witty and entertaining all at the same time!!!

Dialogue sucks sometimes.

The Woes of Revision

I'm slowly revising my feature film, and as a writer, I have the annoying habit of writing scenes that are so tightly woven with one action motivating the next action and one line of dialogue linked to the next line of dialogue, that if I have to change one line, that means I've messed up a whole page and I have to change the whole page, sometimes, a whole five pages. I think it's cool that my writing is like that, but it makes revision extremely difficult. Maybe that's why screenwriters like James Cameron write a 40 page outline before they even start writing script pages. Blech.

Compulsive Closure for Writers

Never fear, when you're a writer, you'll always have more projects than you'll be able to finish. So make sure you aren't like Sheldon and have Compulsive Closure Syndrome. (Or, you could make darn sure to develop compulsive closure so that you'll go crazy finishing ALL your projects and even if you end up in a mental institution, at least your writing projects will be done! :)

This week has been full of family...stuff, which explains why I haven't written any posts for seven days. I get a vacation today, so now it's eight straight hours of writing while I try to catch up. But when you start to get sick of your own project, it's nice to take a break from the required project and refresh your mind with something else, like blogging! I also found my old Honors Thesis while cleaning out my mom's bookshelf-131 pages of my first novel! Surprisingly, I had a lot of fun reading it. I liked the characters and the tension in the scenes even though I wrote it ages ago. Imagine that! My sister said, "Amy, you really are a good writer. You have a smooth flow that I really like. The only problem is, you get so stuck in outlining that you never get around to the writing part." I guess she's right. I guess I need to forget about perfection more often and just let myself have fun. So...I think I want to finish that novel. Not that it will ever be published, but I like the characters and I want to see what happens to them. Maybe I'll do a Wattpad account--add that to the pile of other projects I've got in line and hope I won't turn out like Sheldon :)

I Love Les Miserables!

I checked out the movie Les Miserables from the library and the movie adaptation is BRILLIANT! I never understood Javier's character until I watched that movie. They didn't just add a scene here or there, they rearranged the order of the songs to emphasize emotion and add meaning, rearranged the locations of the characters at certain time periods (Eponine wasn't supposed to be at the barricade until after the first battle), they added interludes to connect scenes together, added scenes that were in the book but not in the play (Javier pursuing Valjean and Cosette through Paris), added bits and pieces of dialogue to explain character motivations...it's BRILLIANT! The barricade shown during the finale of "Do You Hear the People Sing" is even a reference to the barricade built sixteen years later in 1848 that successfully overturned the French monarchy. Wow! I'm attempting my own novel adaptation right now and it's harder than it looks. I thought it would be easy since the story is already laid out, but what works on paper doesn't necessarily work on the screen and I'm changing so many things so that I can portray the characters visually and make them more interesting. Sometimes I look at the book and think, "What am I doing? This book is awesome. Why should I even try to mess with it?"  I thought that book adaptations would be easier than writing an original story, but boy was I wrong.

I highly recommend listening to the director's commentary of Les Miserables AND the interview with the screenwriter, William Nicholson (the director calls him 'Bill' in his commentary). I'm pretty sure I posted a link to William Nicholson's interview before, but it's so good, I can't resist posting it again:

http://www.theqandapodcast.com/2012/12/les-miserables-q.html

And if you haven't seen Les Miserables, WATCH THE MOVIE! And the play, and read the book, and, you know, do everything you can to immerse yourself in the emotional brilliance that is Les Miserables :)

Runaway Bride...uh, Writer

I figured out the source of my writer's block. I'm running away from my feature because in all honesty, I don't think I can do it. Isn't that just wonderful? (Please tell me you noticed the sarcasm. Apparently, when I try to be sarcastic, no one notices.) Screenwriter William Nicholson (Les Miserable) said that in order to be a professional writer, you have to have such a big ego that you think you are god's gift to literature. But you also have to be humble enough to accept criticism and not be a jerk. Enormous ego vs. humble acknowledgement of your faults. Great combination, right? (Did that sound sarcastic? No? Drat.) But it's true. Deep down inside, I know that I've never gone through the full revision process with a 100 page feature film, so naturally, I assume that I can't do it. Self esteem issues abound in writers. But when I start thinking that way, I also realize that's so ridiculous! By that same logic, anything that I haven't tried before is automatically impossible. Like teaching seventh graders for three yeasr, or presenting at a writer's symposium to a full house, or being a finalist in a screenwriting contest. I did all of those things, by the way. ALL of them, and I could go on for hours. So I better start telling myself that I'm a genius at features so I can get the script done. But the other thing that freaks me out is the time crunch. No way I can pound out draft 2 in 12 days, right? But if Handel can write The Messiah in 24 days, maybe a 100 page script isn't too bad in comparison.

I Hate Writer's Block

So I've finally started revisions on my feature film and realized that this is the first time I've sat down and REVISED an entire feature. Simon Kinberg is right. The internet is one of the writer's worst enemies. In particular, episodes of Batman Beyond (really good show, by the way. Fist bump for Batman!). But it's gotten to the point where even episodes of Batman Beyond will no longer fill the emptiness in my soul. I HAVE to write something (But they just put up seasons 2 and 3 of Generator Rex on Netflix! Stop that. Shut up, brain.)  One of the reasons that I'm stuck on this revision is that I know my second draft can't be as bad as the first one. It has to be PERFECT!!! Right? But I can't get it perfect until I experiment with different scenarios, so I'm trying to give myself permission to write badly, even if I know it doesn't work. But boy, does it make me annoyed when I have a story that doesn't work. It's like an itch you can't scratch, a pimple you can't pop, a mystery you can't solve, and it hovers over you like a dark cloud that drives you MAD!

The answer? Just start writing something. Staring at a blank page is the surest way to clog your creative juices. But when you start typing a few words, even if it's just a few, the creative floodgate loosen bit by bit until the flood arrives. There's something about typing out words that helps grease the gears. Outlining only gets me so far. When I'm stuck on the outline, that's the time to start writing script pages. Even if the first few pages are crap, writing out the story seems to unlock a new creative door in my brain and I think about the story in a new way. There are ideas I get while writing script pages that would never come to me in the outline stage. When you have writer's block, write like an idiot and eventually the writer's block will melt away.

Happiness is Evil

Here's one of the things that sucks about being a writer: When I see a main character having a moment when he/she/it is completely happy, I fold my arms and narrow my eyes because I know that happy moment is going to crash and burn in the next five minutes. As a result, I can never enjoy happy moments in movies because I know that a super-duper happy moment is just a clever plot device to set up the inevitable horror and tragedy about to follow. I love seeing characters work through the tough times, but to preface the tough times with a moment of super-duper happiness makes tragedy SO predictable. [SPOILER ALERT] I watched How to Train Your Dragon 2 again today, and the moment when Stoick is dancing with his wife and she says, yes, I'll go back with you to Berk and they're all hugging because they know they'll be a family again--I knew all that happiness was about to be ripped away. And true to form, the battle with Bloodfist immediately follows and Stoick dies. [END OF SPOILER] I was screaming in my head, NO! Don't hug and say you'll be a happy family again! That's as bad as saying 'things can't get any worse.' The Universe will have it's revenge for your moment of happiness!' Here's your advice for the day-downplay all your moments of happiness. That way, the universe won't feel compelled to rip it away from you five minutes later and then you can be moderately happy all the time!

I'm Behind! My World Has Ended!

July 3rd and I'm already 6,000 words behind on the Nanowrimo challenge!! AHHHHHHH!!!! What am I going to do?! Although I know I could've been writing instead of watching Avengers cartoons on netflix, the other reason I haven't been keeping up is because on July 23, I've promised to hand over a revised draft of a feature script to a production company I met at the Great American Pitchfest. I told them, "Give me thirty days and I'll send you a second draft." AHHHHHHHH!!!!! Why did I say that?! Revise a whole 110 pages and have it make sense in thirty days? Especially when the outline needs major changes for the characters and the exposition? AHH!!! (short AH that time) I love Nanowrimo, but revising is a whole different ball of wax than pounding out 50,000 words of a vomit draft that you know will never see the light of day. But I'm also a big fan of modifying Nanowrimo to fit your writing needs. Instead of having a goal to write 2,000 words a day, my goal will be to revise five pages a day-after I have an outline that I'm happy with. So that's the secret, folks. Grab time by the throat and make it work FOR you, not against you. Remember, a Nanowrimo winners badge is AMAZING, but not as amazing as getting paid for your work.

P.S. I was a big fan of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes on Disney (even though they messed up the theme song in season 2. I'd much rather hear the awesome song than listen to Fury tell me what I already knew about all the characters). The animation style was beautiful, I loved the voices, and I loved Jan, Black Panther, and Ant Man. Now, they've got Avengers Assemble on Disney with new voices, new characters and a new animation style to preface the next Avengers movie. The animation style is fine, but different. I think that Hawkeye's costume in Avengers Assemble is a huge improvement (except for the glasses. Hawkeye has ultra-sharp vision. what does he need glasses for?). I'm not a fan of the new voices. Thor sounds pretty much the same, but Black Widow's sultry, 'girls are better than boys' attitude is completely out of character for her. I half expected her to seduce Cap and Tony in the first episode. Tony Stark just sounds...I don't know, ridiculous? I need a couple more episodes to get used to him. I'll watch a few more episodes and give you an update. I'm still studying the dialogue to figure out why it bugs me so much.

Nanowrimo! What's That?

Gesundheit. But it's not a sneeze, it's Nanowrimo!!! National Novel Writing Month! Every time I mention this word to a screenwriter, they have no clue what I'm talking about. For those of you who don't know, Nanowrimo is the challenge to write 50,000 words in one month. Starting today. Because it doesn't just happen in November, they have a Nanowrimo summer camp, too! I don't write on Sundays, so that means 2,000 words a day for me. Yikes. It's a cool challenge, but boy is it hard! Join me in registering on the Nanowrimo website and watch your word count grow!  (until you miss a day, then you get depressed, so you don't write, and then you get even more behind, and more depressed, and then you panic and write 10,000 words in a single day and sprain your wrist so that you really can't write again for a few more days, and you have to catch up all over again)

Here's the link:

https://campnanowrimo.org/sign_in

Professionals Hate Writing Too!

I always dance with glee when I hear professional say that they hate writing, too. On the Q&A Podcast Simon Kinberg (writer for X-Men Days of Future Past and The Last Stand) explained his feelings about outlining and he says, "I hate writing. Any excuse to not write a script is golden to me. So outlining is another way to avoid writing a screenplay. It also is very useful because it gives me a roadmap, but it helps take some of the anxiety away from actually writing the script." High five, Simon Kinberg, I'm EXACTLY the same way. In fact, my sister often gives me grief for spending too much time on outlines, but he's right that having a detailed outline is a huge help in taking away the anxiety of writing script pages because all I can think when I look at a blank page is "I don't know what to write, I don't know what happens next," but if I have an outline, I never have to ask that question.

Here's a link to the podcast with Simon Kinberg:

http://www.theqandapodcast.com/2014/06/x-men-days-of-future-past-q.html

By the way, I encourage everyone to listen to Jeff Goldsmith's Q&A podcast about screenwriting. He talks to the writers of all the major films coming out. My favorites are the podcast on Frozen, Iron Man 3, and Les Miserables. You can find these podcasts on his website or download them for free on Itunes.  Have fun!

Good Writing Makes You Want to Scream

I just finished a watching a brilliant 8 hours of the British series Broadchurch. The writing was, of course, excellent but I was stunned by the gorgeous lighting effects and cinematography. Wow! Such beautiful night shots, especially the scene in episode 8 where Hardy and Miller are talking after the big reveal, at night, on the beach, with all of the cliffs lit behind them to frame their shot. How many 10K lights did that take? It was GORGEOUS! I could die of happiness. Of course, I see something like that, and desperately wish that I could write something so brilliant and beautiful and then I get stuck between the pessimistic side of my brain that says, "No, you can't, you aren't that good yet," and the optimistic side of my brain that says, "Yes, of course you could, if you took enough time to do it." My sister LOVES tap dancing, so much that when she watches a brilliant dancer, she too jealous to enjoy the performance. Sometimes when I see something brilliant I think, "You suck," and I curl up in a writerly ball of misery knowing that my writing will never come close. But my optimistic side is gaining a lot of experience points and will soon be strong enough to defeat my pessimistic brain parts once and for all! (But if that happens, I'll have to change the name of my blog...bugger.)

Oh, (hee hee) have you seen the trailer for the American show that's copycatting Broachurch? It's called Gracepoint and David Tennant sounds so funny with a Canadian accent! The whole rhythm and pitch of his voice is weird and it sounds ridiculous! Here's links to both trailers so you can compare:

Broadchurch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOnus6OvViM

Gracepoint:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9IWvbbZPZc

Networking and Ebooks Make My Head Hurt

Whew! I just finished a long weekend volunteering for the Great American Pitchfest and I finally get to sleep in until 7am instead of waking up at 5:30 to beat LA traffic, be on time, and impress everyone at the pitchfest so that they will someday hire me to be their personal assistant so I can start my path to being a famous writer. For 13 hours a day I was the happy, friendly, help-you-as-much-as-I-can, no-task-is-too-small, goody-two-shoes volunteer. Although I enjoy playing that role because I make a lot of friends and I get an avalanche of warm fuzzies for serving others, (high five for warm fuzzies!) it's exhausting. It's fun meeting new people and socializing, it just takes a lot out of me since I'm an introvert. It's funny how most writers tend to be introverts, but their success depends on their ability to be social butterflies and social-media experts. I admit, that part of being a writer is a challenge for me. When the weekend was over and I was ready to put my feet up, my brain immediately started chiding me, "Amy, start emailing all those people you met. Amy, you need to post your pictures on facebook. Amy, for heaven's sake post a blog about your fantastic experience, then send thank you notes to all the other volunteers, and then send emails to all the film executives you met, and then check out the youtube series of the cool actor you met so you can share his videos, and then send, send, send, post post post...AAAHHHHHHH!!!!!! Can I at least sleep in first? and of course my brains say, "NO! You must post! Post until you die!!"

Well, this post is coming two days after the weekend, so obviously I figured out a way to ignore it. (Ha! Take that, you pessimistic old slave driver!) After two days of sleep, looking at my writing projects doesn't make me want to gag anymore and I've been able to get some work done! Yay!!! So now I'm finally going to format the ebook that's been hanging over my head for two months. Reading the Smashwords guide made me want to curl up in a ball and die, various blog posts on e-publishing were a little better, but not by much. And on top of that, my version of MS Word for some reason looks completely different than everyone else's. I don't have a home button or cute little tabs and easy-to-find icons. I have menus, a toolbox, and obscure arrows that love to hide secret menus. It takes me twice as long to reformat because I'm finding MS Word functions embedded deep in my menus. If anyone can tell me how to wave a wand and switch the look of my Word program, please tell me.

Venting-Good for the Soul

Venting. I can do that on a blog, right? I mean, that's what they're for! Millions of people across the globe can rant and rave to their heart's content to a worldwide audience. Although, my kind of complaining is never in the "The world is unfair!" category. I complain because my stories don't work. It's ANNOYING. One of the horrible things about being a professional writer is that you know exactly how badly your stories are written. And you can think of a hundred things that are written better than yours. When you think like that, plunking out page one of a new story is pure torture. But then, you get past the first page, and then you sort of remember that writing can be fun, and it's not so bad anymore. But getting past the hump of the first few pages is why so many people do NOT become writers. You have to decide not to care how bad it is, and that takes GUTS. That proverbial hump is the enemy of all writing. Get past that, and when you take your stuff to writing group you find out, 'Hey! My stuff isn't as bad as I thought!" because you hear stories that have just as many problems as yours and you feel a whole lot better about yourself.

When in Doubt...Add Aliens!

I'm trying to come up with a Television pilot. But I can't tell you what it's about. Writers are awful that way. Unfortunately, sharing all your story ideas on the internet is a great way to go out of business. This makes us writers seem unsocialable and paranoid, like, "No! You can't have my ideas! Stay away!" Kinda lame. But I'm definitely on a trend with aliens. My feature film is about aliens, my TV pilot was like, "hey, let's do this idea...with aliens!" This was inspired by a guest speaker producer from Cartoon Network talk about the series Ben 10 and how the toy companies complained that no kid wants to be an alien, and boys don't like watches. And how many seasons of Ben 10 have aired? At least ten? Fifteen? So yeah, now I'm putting aliens into everything now.

Sequels. Crap.

Ha! You thought I was going to tell you about metaphors, but I didn't!  Ha ha ha! See? that's what evil writers do. They raise your expectations by hinting at things to come, but then they blindside you with something totally different! Unfair huh? Just like cliffhangers. All that anticipation is SO rude. Anyway, down to business-I just saw How to Train Your Dragon 2 and one of the parts that sucks about being a writer is that as soon as you publish something, that means everyone in the world can diss on your material. In other words, you get to feel like dirt when people say that the precious baby that took four years of blood, sweat, and tears to grow look ugly and doesn't deserve to live. But luckily, I don't have to say anything like that about How to  Train Your Dragon 2. It was an awesome movie! In fact, I spent most of the time drooling over how handsome Hiccup had become. As soon as we left the theater I wanted to see parts of it over again. But it wasn't the same speechless awe I felt after seeing the first film. The second movie had a lot more emotional scenes, which was fine, but it stretched out the pace and the part (SPOILER!) when Hiccup is trying to free Toothless from the control of the Alpha dragon just through virtue of their friendship. That part felt a little cliche to me since every time someone in a movie suffers from mind control, if someone loves them enough, you can always snap them out of it. (END SPOILER). In the first movie, the emotional ups and downs were woven tightly into scenes with a lot of natural, organic conflict. I didn't like the villain for the second movie. He was definitely scary, but in the first movie, Hiccup's defeat of the monstrous dragon healed his relationship with his father while showing the entire village that he was amazingly cool. Of course, you can never do an origin story twice, but the climax to the second movie wasn't as triumphant. Also, the tragedy in the middle was a little too much and so I wasn't able to cheer as much as the end. The second movie has a lot more sadness, and not enough joy to balance it out. The first movie had the perfect balance between the tragedy and the joy so that everyone could cheer for the happy ending. Hopefully the original audience has grow up enough to deal with it properly. We hope. Stay tuned next time for what writers mean when they say 'organic.' And don't worry, I'm not trying to trick you this time...no really! I'm not...

I Hate Writing

Writing. Stupidiest job on the planet. You notice that "stupidiest" isn't in the dictionary. I try to be expressive and all I see is the red, red, red of spell check. I'm trying to be creative here, people!! You sit there, staring at a blank screen, and everyone expects Shakespeare to flow out of your fingertips. You know the hardest part? There's an audience in your head. Yeah, you don't have to wait, it's already inside you, just waiting to laugh at all your grammar mistakes, to ridicule your idiotic attempts at figurative language and boo every single word you put on that page. Who would ever want a job as a writer? Yeah. Me. That's who. But I know a lot of people who don't want to be writers, so this blog is for you. All those things like 'sentence fluency' and 'word choice' that goes right over your head gets explained right here, right now so that you'll never have problems with your writing teacher again. Stay tuned for our next post on...Metaphors!!!! What are they? Why are they good writing? Find out next time on ihatebeingawriter.blogspot.com