One of the things I've ranted on before, in one place or another, is the prevailing sense entitlement that has reached epidemic proportions in our world. As a teacher and aspiring published novelist it permeates almost every aspect of my life on a semi-regular basis and it's a direct result of our generation forward...and it's only going to get worse.
When I started this blog, I vowed that I was going to keep anything beyond the scope of writing out of it, but as with a great many things, my writing life and my professional life intersect and I find a parallel that I want to discuss, this idea of entitlement that has become part of the fabric of our culture and what it's doing to publishing.
If you are new or just don't know, I am a high school English teacher at an inner city school in Syracuse, NY. Now I know we're not talking the Bronx or Chicago or LA or anything like that, but still. For the last two years I've taught Freshman, two sections of double block literacy program classes with students at least two grade levels behind in reading ability and one section of Advanced. I had a situation occur during my advanced class yesterday that inspired today's post.
About a week ago, I had assigned a creative writing assignment related to Romeo and Juliet to the students. (Common Core be damned!) They were quite good actually and I was very happy. Grades on the assignment (graded on a rubric) ranged from 75 to 100 with the average being 90. AS students read their comments and looked at their grades, I heard one girl say "HE hates me, he's so mean."
Now initially, I thought perhaps this girl was speaking of some boy. It turns out that boy was me and she was very upset at the 90 she received on the project. Now never mind the whole 90 is good argument, that point is moot.
The project was good. It was a creative angle, but about half way through her story, it got very confusing (Not in the good way that confusing can be in a story but in that, "What the f**k was the writer thinking?" kind of way) and I had to reread it several times to get back into the story. Her writing was good, not great. She earned 30 out of 40 points on the section about Ideas/Organization/Content and was perfect for the rest, earning her a 90. She came up to me, with red-rimmed, tear filled eyes and asked, "Why did you give me a 90?"
Let me pause for a moment (trust me, I'm going to get to the writing part in a minute) and tell you all something, there are few more infuriating things to say to a teacher than "Why did you give me ____?" I won't go into the particulars of why, but it does.
I looked up at the girl and very coolly responded, "You EARNED a 90."
To which she responded with, "Everyone else got a 100."
Entitlement at it's finest. "Everyone else did well, so should I."
I kept my cool and said, "No, they did not." She walked away in a huff, not happy with me at all.
While all this was going on, my phone was buzzing in my pocket. I'd received an email from my agent informing me of a rejection on WINTER'S DISCORD I'd received with some notes. It was a bummer and I was really disappointed. It was a publisher and editor I would have loved to work with. The critique of my work hurt. I descended down the slippery spiral of self-doubt and anger over my own perceived lack of writing ability. But as much as it bothered me, I took it in and reflected, making me wonder if his assessment of my work were true and the first questions that came to my mind were ways to fix what he suggested was broken. Just because I think I'm good, doesn't mean I'm good enough. I've got to earn this, it's not handed to me
My agent did tell me he disagreed with what was said and was incredibly supportive of me, saying, as agents do, just the right thing at the moment I needed him to say something to make me feel better about me and my writing.
I see my student's attitude everywhere in writing today. Read the comments section over on Agent Query. Read some people's blogs. People think they are good and they aren't or they need some editorial help to make them better. But that's not what they really want.
And it's this attitude that ruins self-publishing. A board that I frequent has a "Writing" thread and one of the people that frequents the thread sent out a few queries for his book to agents. It got rejected. He threw up his hands and began a rant on the evils of the publishing industry then announced he was going to self publish his 300k word fantasy novel because of that rejection. I can't tell you how many things were wrong with that post, so much so I think a vein in my head may have ruptured.
Regretfully, there lack of editorial control in too many self-published books, mostly because someone doesn't want to hear that maybe there's a chance they aren't as good as they think they are. And what that does is color someone like me as being against self-published authors, which for a long time I was until I got schooled on it a bit in the last few years. My view has eased so much that my present WIP is going to be a self-published e-novella. However, I'm using a professional editor to help me get it ready for public consumption(my agent, but hey, that's what he's there for!) and I'm using professional artists to do any artwork.
In the end, we're human beings and it hurts to hear someone say that maybe we're not as good as we think we are , but you know what, I want someone to be mean to me if it means that I want to be a better at something I love.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
A Movie Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
I've decided to add a new "feature" to my blog to get me to blog a little more about something I really love: movies. I'm going to do these reviews in three parts. First part I am calling "What I Liked," the second part is going to be "What I Didn't Like" and the third part is going to be a pseudo-analysis of what I can take away from the movie as a writer. So here goes....installment number one: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
So I stayed up entirely too late last night to watch this movie and I enjoyed it very much. Let's address the elephant in the room first. The novel The Hobbit is one of those books. It's importance to writers of fantasy is immeasurable. Without it, many of us are still looking for work, so to speak. I dare say, to me, that it might be more important than Lord of the Rings. As with adapting anything with that much love and importance, there is bound to be issues. With that understanding, here we go:
What I Liked
I'm not going to spend any time on this. Without the book The Hobbit, I'm probably not a writer. So there's that.
So I stayed up entirely too late last night to watch this movie and I enjoyed it very much. Let's address the elephant in the room first. The novel The Hobbit is one of those books. It's importance to writers of fantasy is immeasurable. Without it, many of us are still looking for work, so to speak. I dare say, to me, that it might be more important than Lord of the Rings. As with adapting anything with that much love and importance, there is bound to be issues. With that understanding, here we go:
What I Liked
- Martin Freeman: To those of us of a certain age, Bilbo Baggins will always and forever be Orson Bean. (There's another blog post in me about Batman and Kevin Conroy, but I digress) That being said, Martin Freeman is pitch perfect as Bilbo. He brings all the right notes about the character to the screen while adding just the right amount of self-deprecation and humor. I really enjoyed Freeman in the terribly mediocre adaptation of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and he's perfect in this role, hobbit mullet and all.
- Erebor: Was this not the image of every Dwarven city from any D&D game, module, guidebook or novel that we ever read growing up? It's literally as if Peter Jackson reached into our collective geek minds and made everything we dreamed a reality. It was just stunning, from the entrance to the mines to the corridors and walkways. Bloody brilliant.
- Rivendell: It's easy to forget how stunning a place Rivendell is supposed to be and Jackson pulls it off.
- The Dwarves: I always liked how Jackson approached the dwarves. Sure they were strong and stocky but like people, there are all kinds and we see that in this. And I always hated that dwarves are limited to using axes and hammers. It was nice to see some swords, bows, maces and even a slingshot thrown in there.
- The Riddle Scene: The most important scene in maybe the whole book and they nailed it. It was taut and well played. Andy Serkis owns Gollum and Freeman's Bilbo is threatening to Gollum as he is unsure to us. Unfortunately it's kind of overshadowed by some...wait, I'll get to that in a minute.
- The Dinner Party: Utterly brilliant and fun...from the raucousness of the dwarves to Bilbo's fretting over things and finally to Bilbo just throwing his hands up and saying he's not going on the quest.
- Bofur: I liked him. He accept Bilbo from moment one and was truly disappointed when it looked as if Bilbo were going to quit. It was a nice moment without dialogue that told you everything you needed to know about the character and his relationship to Bilbo.
- Richard Armitage: He was Thorin Oakenshield and brought the right amount of intensity to the scene. You have no doubt that he is singleminded in his quest to win back his home. He's channeling Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn with more ambition, which I like as a theme. Does he want to lead because he's a great leader or because he feels he deserves to rule? I want to see how that plays out.
- The Goblin Chase: Someone, somewhere, either on Twitter, Facebook or on a blog posted how annoying it was that this scene was like one extended video game sequence. (I'm not doing justice to what they said, it was far more eloquent than that.) I'm not against a good action sequence, this just seemed like too much, as if they were just showing off what they could do with CGI and playing to the video game crowd. Didn't the movie DOOM teach us that doesn't exactly work?
- The Dwarf Analogy: Maybe I've become oversensitive in my older, more politically left leaning, inner city school teacher ways, but it felt as if Jackson was kind of hitting us over the head with the Dwarves are an analogy for the Jewish people, or at least of Jewish stereotypes. I'm basing some of this on something I read somewhere, so that's where the kernel of the idea comes from, but it really felt that way watching the movie, from the "people with no home" angle to their obsessing over money. Like I said, maybe I'm reading too much into it.
- Azog: He's the bleeping Darth Maul of The Hobbit. Seriously. He's an action figure they wanted to sell. That's it. End of list.
- Radaghast and the hedgehog: Okay, I get that this trilogy is more of a prequel to Lord of the Rings and you want to include him, great, but the whole scene with hedgehog was about 5 minutes of my life I'm not going to get back. And quite frankly, I don't need to see all the bird poop in the man's hair.
- Kili: Okay, we get it, he's the "hot" dwarf, but there are a bunch of other dwarves there too. It gets distracting after a while that they focused on him so much.
- Awful Lot of Honkies In Here: Is Middle Earth the whitest place ever? I mean not one person of color in the whole movie. Come on. You're willing to make all these changes, why not do that with Papa Tolkien's vision? Well, except for the orcs of course...but that's another blog post.
- F**king Eagles: Are the military minds of Middle Earth that dim? Why aren't they including these guys in their big strategy meetings? They've got these giant, flying eagles that can cover huge distances and chuck wargs around like cats do mice, yet no one in Middle Earth is bothering to see if these guys want to help out.
- The Cheesy "I Was Wrong About You Speech." The whole speech at the end was cheesy and corny in every way, shape and form. It was awful.
I'm not going to spend any time on this. Without the book The Hobbit, I'm probably not a writer. So there's that.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Damaged Calm
On the cusp of my final evaluation at school for the year, this one an announced peer observation that will count on my "final score" because I was still recovering from my hip surgery when the opt out paperwork needed to be submitted. I'm not worried about it, but I am. But this isn't what I wanted to blog about. I wanted to blog about something even more important than that. Deals.
Okay, relax, take a breath, I didn't get a deal...yet, but as I am sometimes wont to do, I was reading PW this morning and made the mistake of clicking on the Deals link and opening a list of deals that were made in the last week. One of the deals sounded very similar to the book my agent is shopping to editors right now. This naturally damaged my calm slightly and as time passed (the students in my first "block" class are working on a project, so I'm not directly teaching at this point), my brain took the little bit of information and began snowballing. It started slow and small but now, about an hour and a half later, it's grown to the size of that boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark and it pounding the sides of my fragile psyche.
It's interesting how this happens. I'm a "stuck in your own head" kind of guy. Once a thought takes hold, it's very, very hard to let it go, though, when I let it go, it's gone and I don't dwell...it just takes a while to get it out. For now, it's pounding and distracting me when I should be on my game, getting ready for my eval and preparing for a big writing weekend as I hammer out this novella idea that I've been working on. Instead, my brain is obsessing over why this person's book is somehow better than mine. And this bothers me. It sometimes leads me into dark places...dark places that make me ask questions that make me very uncomfortable. Now, I don't begrudge that person success. Honestly, I don't, but it doesn't stop these question from popping up.
Writers are fragile creatures sometimes and usually we are most injured by the slightest of slights and can endure the most vicious evisceration. I am no different and right now my calm is damaged over this and it shouldn't be. I should celebrate this person's/people's success, not me injured, upset or harmed by it. It could be another step being built for me to get my deal for all I know.
Really, in the grand scheme of things, this isn't a big deal. I know, in my heart of hearts, that this is going to happen for me, it's just a matter of when and with whom. This industry is so subjective. All I need is the patience I preach and faith in my ability.
Then again, it might be time for some thrilling heroics.
Okay, relax, take a breath, I didn't get a deal...yet, but as I am sometimes wont to do, I was reading PW this morning and made the mistake of clicking on the Deals link and opening a list of deals that were made in the last week. One of the deals sounded very similar to the book my agent is shopping to editors right now. This naturally damaged my calm slightly and as time passed (the students in my first "block" class are working on a project, so I'm not directly teaching at this point), my brain took the little bit of information and began snowballing. It started slow and small but now, about an hour and a half later, it's grown to the size of that boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark and it pounding the sides of my fragile psyche.
It's interesting how this happens. I'm a "stuck in your own head" kind of guy. Once a thought takes hold, it's very, very hard to let it go, though, when I let it go, it's gone and I don't dwell...it just takes a while to get it out. For now, it's pounding and distracting me when I should be on my game, getting ready for my eval and preparing for a big writing weekend as I hammer out this novella idea that I've been working on. Instead, my brain is obsessing over why this person's book is somehow better than mine. And this bothers me. It sometimes leads me into dark places...dark places that make me ask questions that make me very uncomfortable. Now, I don't begrudge that person success. Honestly, I don't, but it doesn't stop these question from popping up.
Writers are fragile creatures sometimes and usually we are most injured by the slightest of slights and can endure the most vicious evisceration. I am no different and right now my calm is damaged over this and it shouldn't be. I should celebrate this person's/people's success, not me injured, upset or harmed by it. It could be another step being built for me to get my deal for all I know.
Really, in the grand scheme of things, this isn't a big deal. I know, in my heart of hearts, that this is going to happen for me, it's just a matter of when and with whom. This industry is so subjective. All I need is the patience I preach and faith in my ability.
Then again, it might be time for some thrilling heroics.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Awakening From Hibernation
Greetings and salutations.
I know it's been while. I am in the midst of an epic level funk that I cannot explain. It could be the level up in commitment I've taken in my classroom since returning from my hip surgery. It could be the fact that I had a slight dust up concerning what was going on in my writing career that has transformed into something very, very positive. It could be the thousands of personal things happening in my life beyond my writing and teaching that I'll never talk about here on this blog. It could be the 7 pound bundle of joy that arrived on February 18th, 2013 or it could be that I'm not coping well with having turned 40 on February 25th. I'm not quite sure, though I think a combination of things might be it. Anyway, I'm starting to feel like the funk is rising. Report card grades are uploaded and the school year is burning away quick than I'd like, but I want to get back to blogging regularly about my writing. Let me talk about that first.
I think one of the things that has been gumming up my works, so to speak, has been my indecision on what new project I'd like to work on. I had a few good ideas that the Inner Circle liked but they didn't exactly pan out based on discussion with my agent. In January I finished a very substantial rewrite of SISTERS OF KHODA (more on that in a minute) and I needed to get into a new project that wasn't like it. I sort of wanted to work in a more contemporary setting as opposed to the fantasy I love, but the project I had in mind sounded too much like other things that were coming out, so it might be crowded out. I really, really liked the idea and haven't completely abandoned it. Maybe when I establish myself, I can revisit it. The project that got the most interest started big and bloated, got pared down and then backburnered for the time being. I started plotting it then had a conversation with my agent about many, many things, including where we stand, what's next and another rewrite of SISTERS (which I will talk about in another blog entry).
I decided to step away from the big projects for a while. So no new project (that I was projecting between 100-120k), no rewrite of SISTERS. We (my agent and I) decided to concentrate on some smaller projects. I have two ideas for novellas based in the world of SEASONS OF DESTINY that I think we are going to self publish (I know, I know). I'm also going to try my hand of some short stories and novellas in the world of SISTERS for the purpose of world building...wait, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. That's for another blog entry.
Funny...I wanted to talk about maps in this blog entry. Next blog entry I guess.
I know it's been while. I am in the midst of an epic level funk that I cannot explain. It could be the level up in commitment I've taken in my classroom since returning from my hip surgery. It could be the fact that I had a slight dust up concerning what was going on in my writing career that has transformed into something very, very positive. It could be the thousands of personal things happening in my life beyond my writing and teaching that I'll never talk about here on this blog. It could be the 7 pound bundle of joy that arrived on February 18th, 2013 or it could be that I'm not coping well with having turned 40 on February 25th. I'm not quite sure, though I think a combination of things might be it. Anyway, I'm starting to feel like the funk is rising. Report card grades are uploaded and the school year is burning away quick than I'd like, but I want to get back to blogging regularly about my writing. Let me talk about that first.
I think one of the things that has been gumming up my works, so to speak, has been my indecision on what new project I'd like to work on. I had a few good ideas that the Inner Circle liked but they didn't exactly pan out based on discussion with my agent. In January I finished a very substantial rewrite of SISTERS OF KHODA (more on that in a minute) and I needed to get into a new project that wasn't like it. I sort of wanted to work in a more contemporary setting as opposed to the fantasy I love, but the project I had in mind sounded too much like other things that were coming out, so it might be crowded out. I really, really liked the idea and haven't completely abandoned it. Maybe when I establish myself, I can revisit it. The project that got the most interest started big and bloated, got pared down and then backburnered for the time being. I started plotting it then had a conversation with my agent about many, many things, including where we stand, what's next and another rewrite of SISTERS (which I will talk about in another blog entry).
I decided to step away from the big projects for a while. So no new project (that I was projecting between 100-120k), no rewrite of SISTERS. We (my agent and I) decided to concentrate on some smaller projects. I have two ideas for novellas based in the world of SEASONS OF DESTINY that I think we are going to self publish (I know, I know). I'm also going to try my hand of some short stories and novellas in the world of SISTERS for the purpose of world building...wait, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. That's for another blog entry.
Funny...I wanted to talk about maps in this blog entry. Next blog entry I guess.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
The Smoldering Hot Royal Guard
I'm taking a break from my epic attempt to read/catch up on THE WHEEL OF TIME to visit my comfy, cuddly world of YA fantasy by knocking out three books written by some remarkably talented ladies. One is a debut (THRONE OF GLASS), one is book one of a new series (FALLING KINGDOMS) and the other is the final installment of a popular series(THE CRIMSON CROWN). It's also a run on reading some epic fantasy in the vein of what I write. Now, I'm not going to do full blown reviews. I don't like doing book reviews for an assortment of reasons I won't list here, but as I'm about a quarter of the way through the second book of my read (FALLING KINGDOMS) and I've noticed something that all three have. It's sort of a trope, I guess, though I can't be completely sure. I'm calling it (and I'm sure that TV Tropes already has an entry, but I'm sticking with mine for now) the smoldering hot royal guard. And I kind of like it.
Now, the term smoldering comes from the movie TANGLED, a vastly underrated Disney Princess movie. Now I know there are plenty of folks out there that will get their claws sharpened over the Disney Princesses but I for one love them if for no other reason my daughter's love of them. (In particular, Belle from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, who was really the first of the "new generation" of Disney princesses...anyway I digress.) TANGLED is a fun, adventurous, epic level romp that joyfully plays with the tropes of both Disney Princesses and the fantasy adventure genre and I don't think it gets the credit it deserves for being a good film. Anyway, there's a hilarious scene where Flynn Rider is held captive by Rapunzel and he tries to "seduce" her with his good looks, especially with his signature move, the "Smolder."
Now it's played off hilariously and full of winks and nods. Now, Flynn Rider is decidedly NOT the Smoldering All American Boy that I'm talking about. He's really Han Solo Lite...I mean he's even got the vest...but that's a blog post for a different time. I just wanted to sort of put that picture in your head...okay, maybe not that picture but something like it.
Anyway, if you look the word smolder up in the dictionary, it means "to burn sluggishly without flame with much smoke." And metaphorically speaking it fits this trope to a t...especially three characters from the respective books that are it.
In fantasy, royal guards are a dime a dozen. They are engrained into the psyche of fantasy writers. We usually just call them The Royal Guard, though sometimes we'll come up with something clever like the Kingsguard or in real life the Secret Service or something like that. Anyway, they are as much a part of the fantasy genre as the faceless mooks, the Dark Lord or the Action Princess. And I've noticed that in all of the above books/series, there is a royal guard that is smolderingly hot. I wish I could explain it better, but I think it makes sense if you think about it.
Now, let me say again I love this trope. This isn't a criticism, it's more of an analysis than anything else. All three characters have similar traits, attributes that connect them. Generally speaking, the royal guard just isn't any mook guard. He's usually a commander or captain or something like that. He can be a noble but he's not always a noble, it almost depends on what's convenient to the writer at the time. All three are inconvenienced in some way by the female protagonist of the story. Usually this involves their being assigned to the princess's detail. There is an immediate attraction between them and an equal amount of revulsion that eventually turns to respect and a deeper attraction. There is always a wall between the two and that just adds to the smoldering. See the royal guard can never be ravingly angry ever because guards are always under control (part of the trope!) so there's always a smoldering anger underneath as the guard does his job. It's all part of the tension. To make matters worse, the guard either is close friends with the king/duke/prince/love interest of the female protagonist OR despises the love interest/betrothed of the female protagonist. (I'm resisting calling her a princess because that is not always the case.)We can kind of understand why they always seem angry. But it's not just the tension from the romance, it's the very tension that have in their relationship with the nobility around them. It's tenuous. They aren't the same as the people around them and, on some level, that annoys them too, even if they are in enough control to not allow it to be on the surface.
Storywise, the same things happen to all of these characters. The long gazes at one another when they wonder "What if...", the almost cliched "Ditching the Bodyguard" and the "bodyguard shows up in the nick of time" all play out. But like with all tropes, it's not that you use them, it's how you use them. And all of these writers use them and use them well.It adds depth to a story and raises the tension. We all love the TEAM: ROYAL GUARD/TEAM HANDSOME PRINCE arguments in our work.
There is something appealing about the idea of a charge falling for/ being attracted to their body guard. The trope extends beyond the fantasy world. The movie THE BODYGUARD comes to mind almost instantly. It goes further back, Lancelot (in some ways) and Guenevere had a similar situation.
In THRONE OF GLASS, Choal is the Crown Prince's best friend and really could be the archetype of this trope. He seems angry all the time and it works. (Look, I have a thing for angry characters, okay.) FALLING KINGDOMS has Theon. (Which I have a hard time with only because Theon Greyjoy is a sniveling little s**t and this Theon isn't.) And CRIMSON CROWN has Amon. These guys are great characters that define this trope. I'm sure there are others that I haven't experienced and it makes me want to experiment with the character type in my own work. I like the conflict they feel: between their own feelings, their sense of duty and their loyalty to their friend, though that may not always be the case.
Now, the term smoldering comes from the movie TANGLED, a vastly underrated Disney Princess movie. Now I know there are plenty of folks out there that will get their claws sharpened over the Disney Princesses but I for one love them if for no other reason my daughter's love of them. (In particular, Belle from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, who was really the first of the "new generation" of Disney princesses...anyway I digress.) TANGLED is a fun, adventurous, epic level romp that joyfully plays with the tropes of both Disney Princesses and the fantasy adventure genre and I don't think it gets the credit it deserves for being a good film. Anyway, there's a hilarious scene where Flynn Rider is held captive by Rapunzel and he tries to "seduce" her with his good looks, especially with his signature move, the "Smolder."
Anyway, if you look the word smolder up in the dictionary, it means "to burn sluggishly without flame with much smoke." And metaphorically speaking it fits this trope to a t...especially three characters from the respective books that are it.
In fantasy, royal guards are a dime a dozen. They are engrained into the psyche of fantasy writers. We usually just call them The Royal Guard, though sometimes we'll come up with something clever like the Kingsguard or in real life the Secret Service or something like that. Anyway, they are as much a part of the fantasy genre as the faceless mooks, the Dark Lord or the Action Princess. And I've noticed that in all of the above books/series, there is a royal guard that is smolderingly hot. I wish I could explain it better, but I think it makes sense if you think about it.
Now, let me say again I love this trope. This isn't a criticism, it's more of an analysis than anything else. All three characters have similar traits, attributes that connect them. Generally speaking, the royal guard just isn't any mook guard. He's usually a commander or captain or something like that. He can be a noble but he's not always a noble, it almost depends on what's convenient to the writer at the time. All three are inconvenienced in some way by the female protagonist of the story. Usually this involves their being assigned to the princess's detail. There is an immediate attraction between them and an equal amount of revulsion that eventually turns to respect and a deeper attraction. There is always a wall between the two and that just adds to the smoldering. See the royal guard can never be ravingly angry ever because guards are always under control (part of the trope!) so there's always a smoldering anger underneath as the guard does his job. It's all part of the tension. To make matters worse, the guard either is close friends with the king/duke/prince/love interest of the female protagonist OR despises the love interest/betrothed of the female protagonist. (I'm resisting calling her a princess because that is not always the case.)We can kind of understand why they always seem angry. But it's not just the tension from the romance, it's the very tension that have in their relationship with the nobility around them. It's tenuous. They aren't the same as the people around them and, on some level, that annoys them too, even if they are in enough control to not allow it to be on the surface.
Storywise, the same things happen to all of these characters. The long gazes at one another when they wonder "What if...", the almost cliched "Ditching the Bodyguard" and the "bodyguard shows up in the nick of time" all play out. But like with all tropes, it's not that you use them, it's how you use them. And all of these writers use them and use them well.It adds depth to a story and raises the tension. We all love the TEAM: ROYAL GUARD/TEAM HANDSOME PRINCE arguments in our work.
There is something appealing about the idea of a charge falling for/ being attracted to their body guard. The trope extends beyond the fantasy world. The movie THE BODYGUARD comes to mind almost instantly. It goes further back, Lancelot (in some ways) and Guenevere had a similar situation.
In THRONE OF GLASS, Choal is the Crown Prince's best friend and really could be the archetype of this trope. He seems angry all the time and it works. (Look, I have a thing for angry characters, okay.) FALLING KINGDOMS has Theon. (Which I have a hard time with only because Theon Greyjoy is a sniveling little s**t and this Theon isn't.) And CRIMSON CROWN has Amon. These guys are great characters that define this trope. I'm sure there are others that I haven't experienced and it makes me want to experiment with the character type in my own work. I like the conflict they feel: between their own feelings, their sense of duty and their loyalty to their friend, though that may not always be the case.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
A Reflection on Douchebaggery
I am completely and utterly fascinated by the resurgence of the insult "douchebag" and the general concept of "being a douche." The literal implications of the two ideas aside, has there ever been a clearer verbal descriptor with such an elusive and flexible definition? Almost all of us could easily, with very little thought, name someone we have relative intimate knowledge who's behavior, attitude and demeanor fit the ambiguous term "douchebag." Right? You've got a name or a face in your head right now. Need help? Sigh, this was the quintessential douchebag for my generation:
In addition to being fascinated with the resurgence of the word, the writer in me is completely drawn and in love with writing about characters that are douchebags. Now this comes from a brief Twitter conversation I had with some folks about the idea of an "unlikable protagonist."
In my series SEASONS OF DESTINY, in book one: WINTER'S DISCORD, I (and other people) noticed in the query that Ben, the protagonist, comes across as being very "douchey." He's not really, but he kind of is and, to me, that makes him a much more interesting a character to write about and even read about. Now, this isn't the only reason I'm thinking about it. I watched a movie a few nights ago, AMERICAN REUNION.
Now, if you are of a certain age, the AMERICAN movies are part of our pop culture canon. Now, while the first movie came out when I was 26 and it was about teens, I think I was the real target audience because it essential left me with a feeling of nostalgia for those days of my life and the attitudes that I had in those days. I think the same thing can be said for the remaining sequels (I'm ignoring the straight to video/ Comedy Central AMERICAN PIE movies for the sake of this essay.) I found AMERICAN REUNION to be "meh" as a movie...it had it's moments, but it was pretty much a tired retread of some of the same ideas they'd done in previous movies. Anyway, I was drawn to a character that I didn't think I would be and it is strictly because of my sudden interest in "douchebaggery:" Stifler.
Now, they sort of retcon some of Stifler's character for the purposes of the story that instead of being the cocky gym teacher/football coach, he's now a temp in an office where he's completely stifled and basically not allowed to be the cocky/douchey Stifler that we know and love. As the movie goes on, he begins to realize that the old days are gone and will never return, no matter how much he tries. In many ways, he gets his comenuppance throughout the story. I was much more fascinated with Stifler's attempts at his own version of redemption throughout the story, his inability to let go of the past and his revelation that he is indeed the problem (a theme that has been explored in the previous WEDDING movie far less effectively). In that movie, his redemption is an actual redemption where he makes up for his mistakes with actions. But in REUNION, they take a different tact. He is the group's douche (or DICK, using a more appropriate 90s vernacular to describe his role) and the realization of that helps define him as a character. His redemption comes in his own realization as to who he is, beneath the douchiness is a person that is deeply loyal to his friends. He is "their" douche and it is up to him to fill a number of roles: keep people in check, protect them when they cannot protect themselves, do the unsavory things that need to be done that the other members of the group won't do and even act as one end of the moral compass for the group at times. This is the very definition of an "unlikable" protagonist. And he's my kind of protagonist. He's all of our kind of protagonists.
Don't believe me? Who are the enduring, most likable people in our favorite pieces of literature or pop culture? Let's think. Let me list a few that I can think of.
In addition to being fascinated with the resurgence of the word, the writer in me is completely drawn and in love with writing about characters that are douchebags. Now this comes from a brief Twitter conversation I had with some folks about the idea of an "unlikable protagonist."
In my series SEASONS OF DESTINY, in book one: WINTER'S DISCORD, I (and other people) noticed in the query that Ben, the protagonist, comes across as being very "douchey." He's not really, but he kind of is and, to me, that makes him a much more interesting a character to write about and even read about. Now, this isn't the only reason I'm thinking about it. I watched a movie a few nights ago, AMERICAN REUNION.
Now, if you are of a certain age, the AMERICAN movies are part of our pop culture canon. Now, while the first movie came out when I was 26 and it was about teens, I think I was the real target audience because it essential left me with a feeling of nostalgia for those days of my life and the attitudes that I had in those days. I think the same thing can be said for the remaining sequels (I'm ignoring the straight to video/ Comedy Central AMERICAN PIE movies for the sake of this essay.) I found AMERICAN REUNION to be "meh" as a movie...it had it's moments, but it was pretty much a tired retread of some of the same ideas they'd done in previous movies. Anyway, I was drawn to a character that I didn't think I would be and it is strictly because of my sudden interest in "douchebaggery:" Stifler.
Now, they sort of retcon some of Stifler's character for the purposes of the story that instead of being the cocky gym teacher/football coach, he's now a temp in an office where he's completely stifled and basically not allowed to be the cocky/douchey Stifler that we know and love. As the movie goes on, he begins to realize that the old days are gone and will never return, no matter how much he tries. In many ways, he gets his comenuppance throughout the story. I was much more fascinated with Stifler's attempts at his own version of redemption throughout the story, his inability to let go of the past and his revelation that he is indeed the problem (a theme that has been explored in the previous WEDDING movie far less effectively). In that movie, his redemption is an actual redemption where he makes up for his mistakes with actions. But in REUNION, they take a different tact. He is the group's douche (or DICK, using a more appropriate 90s vernacular to describe his role) and the realization of that helps define him as a character. His redemption comes in his own realization as to who he is, beneath the douchiness is a person that is deeply loyal to his friends. He is "their" douche and it is up to him to fill a number of roles: keep people in check, protect them when they cannot protect themselves, do the unsavory things that need to be done that the other members of the group won't do and even act as one end of the moral compass for the group at times. This is the very definition of an "unlikable" protagonist. And he's my kind of protagonist. He's all of our kind of protagonists.
Don't believe me? Who are the enduring, most likable people in our favorite pieces of literature or pop culture? Let's think. Let me list a few that I can think of.
- Han Solo: Dude was a slick, hot rodding smuggler and a complete douchebag. Look at the way he treats Leia in the first two SW movies. Look at the way he treats everyone. That smirk. The way he stood. Christ, he shot Greedo, drove the SW Universe equivalent of a Trans Am and wore a Corellian bloodstripe down his trousers.
- Jaime Lannister: Do I have enough room to list all the reasons the Kingslayer is a douche?
- Countless Shakespeare characters: Henry V, Falstaff, Hamlet, MacBeth...I think you get the point.
- Mat Cauthon: Supreme douchiness...he would have been on the Randland equivalent of the Jersey Shore. (Actually, almost all of the male characters have spent time on Douchebag Island at one point or another.)
- Mouth from Goonies: The archetypical loud mouth douche from one of the best pure adventure stories of the last 30 years.
- Holden Caufield: Now to be fair, I read Catcher In The Rye when I was in my 20s, so maybe my perspective is skewed a bit, but Holden is the prototypical literary douche.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Tarmon Gai'don Is Upon Us
Today is a day that there a lot of people have waited 22 years for: the conclusion of perhaps the most epic of epic tales: The Wheel of Time. With the release of A Memory of Light, the Third Age comes to an end and thus begins the Fourth Age. I wonder how many thousands, and I have no doubt there are thousands, of people that have skipped work/school to read. I'm not one of them because, well, I'm out of work because of my surgery not because I want to read but I just finished book five. I'm a long way from Tarmon Gai'don. But that doesn't mean I don't have something to say about it.
One of my favorite things about being an English teacher/avid reader/writer is to hear about how people discovered a book they love/that influenced them. The excitement and love in a person's voice when discussing a book they love enthralls me. I hear it in my own voice when I talk about A Game of Thrones or Henry V or Fences or Dragonlance (I'll talk about Dragonlance in another blog post.) And WOT is one of those books/series.
I'm late to The Wheel of Time party. I read The Eye of the World sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s. The way I remember it was that the paperback was on the shelf at the grocery store where I worked. I knew it was an important part of the "fantasy canon" (more on that later, probably another blog post), so I decided to buy it. It was okay. Not earth shattering. A Tolkien clone combined with some of the politics of Dune on some level. Toughed through it and The Great Hunt, remembering it fondly. I remember reading it while floating in my then girlfriend now wife's aunt's pool during the summer. To this day, I think of that time of my life every time we drive over there. Again, it was good, but not earthshattering for me. I quit The Dragon Reborn and didn't pick it up until many, many years later. And the only reason I did was because someone left four or five of the books on the desk in my classroom. Book three started to draw me in and by the end of The Shadow Rising I was officially hooked.
Now, I'm still early on and from what I've read the "problems" come in later volumes, but through The Fires of Heaven it's pretty amazing. J.K. Rowling is the media darling when it comes to integrating her knowledge of mythology, folklore and legend into her work but why Jordan never gets mentioned in the same breath is a travesty. It really shows the sort of bias (I'm not sure if that's the word I'm looking for there) there is against good old fashioned epic fantasy in the media. Jordan has weaved so much into these stories, I almost always read them with my computer or phone or Kindle nearby to look up things that I might miss or overlook as I'm reading. I've commented that I admire the freaking stones Jordan had in writing these books.
Now let's talk about the books. Big books. Big, epic books. Books with literally THOUSANDS of characters and hundreds of story lines. Books that made it okay for us, as fantasy writers, to tell even bigger stories. It pushed us to recognize the importance of myth, legend and folklore...not just our own but that of our characters. Can it get confusing and overwhelming? Sure, but that's part of the fun, isn't it? I'm really looking forward to finishing the series. No matter how you feel about it, it is a remarkably important part of the epic fantasy canon. Without it, many of us that write epic fantasy don't exist. Without it, there's no Westeros, there's no Malazan, there's no...well, I think you get my point.
Now, if you read this blog or know me at all, you know I am an unapologetic George RR Martin/Song of Ice and Fire fanatic. I was on board with ASOIAF relatively early. I regret having not been on board with the Wheel of Time books. I'll be plodding towards Tarmon Gai'don in the coming months and blogging about it as I go. For now, I'm burning through some YA fantasy to get back in the mindset (Throne of Glass, Falling Kingdoms and The Crimson Crown) for writing then diving into WOT.
One of my favorite things about being an English teacher/avid reader/writer is to hear about how people discovered a book they love/that influenced them. The excitement and love in a person's voice when discussing a book they love enthralls me. I hear it in my own voice when I talk about A Game of Thrones or Henry V or Fences or Dragonlance (I'll talk about Dragonlance in another blog post.) And WOT is one of those books/series.
I'm late to The Wheel of Time party. I read The Eye of the World sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s. The way I remember it was that the paperback was on the shelf at the grocery store where I worked. I knew it was an important part of the "fantasy canon" (more on that later, probably another blog post), so I decided to buy it. It was okay. Not earth shattering. A Tolkien clone combined with some of the politics of Dune on some level. Toughed through it and The Great Hunt, remembering it fondly. I remember reading it while floating in my then girlfriend now wife's aunt's pool during the summer. To this day, I think of that time of my life every time we drive over there. Again, it was good, but not earthshattering for me. I quit The Dragon Reborn and didn't pick it up until many, many years later. And the only reason I did was because someone left four or five of the books on the desk in my classroom. Book three started to draw me in and by the end of The Shadow Rising I was officially hooked.
Now, I'm still early on and from what I've read the "problems" come in later volumes, but through The Fires of Heaven it's pretty amazing. J.K. Rowling is the media darling when it comes to integrating her knowledge of mythology, folklore and legend into her work but why Jordan never gets mentioned in the same breath is a travesty. It really shows the sort of bias (I'm not sure if that's the word I'm looking for there) there is against good old fashioned epic fantasy in the media. Jordan has weaved so much into these stories, I almost always read them with my computer or phone or Kindle nearby to look up things that I might miss or overlook as I'm reading. I've commented that I admire the freaking stones Jordan had in writing these books.
Now let's talk about the books. Big books. Big, epic books. Books with literally THOUSANDS of characters and hundreds of story lines. Books that made it okay for us, as fantasy writers, to tell even bigger stories. It pushed us to recognize the importance of myth, legend and folklore...not just our own but that of our characters. Can it get confusing and overwhelming? Sure, but that's part of the fun, isn't it? I'm really looking forward to finishing the series. No matter how you feel about it, it is a remarkably important part of the epic fantasy canon. Without it, many of us that write epic fantasy don't exist. Without it, there's no Westeros, there's no Malazan, there's no...well, I think you get my point.
Now, if you read this blog or know me at all, you know I am an unapologetic George RR Martin/Song of Ice and Fire fanatic. I was on board with ASOIAF relatively early. I regret having not been on board with the Wheel of Time books. I'll be plodding towards Tarmon Gai'don in the coming months and blogging about it as I go. For now, I'm burning through some YA fantasy to get back in the mindset (Throne of Glass, Falling Kingdoms and The Crimson Crown) for writing then diving into WOT.
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