I think I’m getting older too. Maggie runs things by me, and every now and then she gets on a roll – something so imaginative that you have to be impressed. After she lets out this amazingly grand scheme, I invariable negate the whole thing by “well, why doesn’t he just call the cops?” or “but can’t they just walk there?” I know it pisses her off, and I don’t do it on purpose… I just believe in the path of least resistance. If you can do something simple, do it simple. Save the cool shit for when nothing else will work.

She keeps thanking me for stuff like that, but I think she’s actually just swallowing it all back until everyone down south will hear a startled cry, then this entire island will be engulfed in nuclear girl-rage.

So…. does that mean I should take the glitterati vampire katana-wielding schoolgirls and the Magic Talking Erection-Sword and the rum-swilling pirate unicorn with the pierced horn and the pegleg out of my novel? Can I keep any of them if I throw a beard on them?

I think this is why I’ve pretty much scrapped the first novel I wrote. The espionage-thriller-turned-supernatural-espionage-thriller-because-someone-needs-to-do-werewolves-and-vampires-right-dammit novel. Was everything in it cool? Absolutely yes. At least to me. That’s what killed it, I think, was that I realized all of the elements – the car chases and superhuman assassins and erudite tea-sipping mages and angels masquerading as normal schlubs in coffee shops – were cool to me, but might not be cool to everybody else, and there was way too much of it packed into one place.

Lesson learned. The Project sees me using the cool stuff sparingly.

“But!” the little kid inside of me cries. “Serpentine monsters that suck down magical marrow because it’s their heroin! Swords that cut magic! Magical mass acceleration rifles! Floating cities and Conveyances!”

I give it a metaphorical shiny object and let it play in the corner. Because while this stuff is cool, if I use it constantly it loses its coolness. This, to me, is why the other more important elements of the story need to come first.

This week’s episode of JUSTIFIED (kick ass show) has a good example. A hit man and his driver are sitting in a car killing time. You come in on the middle of their conversation, the not-too-bright driver asking something like “so why did the guy have the gun in the car in the first place?” and the hitter says, “because it’s a movie,” and says enough to tell you they’re discussing the scene in PULP FICTION where Travolta accidentally shoots the guy in the back seat and Harvey Keitel has to save their asses.

The Keitel scenes are among the coolest ever, but Tarantino went wa-a-a-y out of his way to get to that cool shit. Not organic at all.He got away with it because it’s a vignette; it’s not like the whole movie was built around that. Of course, part of the problem with PULP FICTION, though it’s admittedly brilliant, is the whole movie is made up an really cool shit, told in vignettes. So, as you mentioned, it’s really cool while you’re watching it, but when it’s over you have to be careful not trip over your pants.

,,,And now you’ll talk about emotional core in a post, right?

@Filamena:

I certainly can — what do you want to know about the emotional core?

– c.

What is it? How do I find it? What do I do with it? (Can I eat it? And if so, can I get it in mocha?)

I have a tendency to try hanging far too much cool shit onto my projects like fucked-up ornaments on a Christmas tree. “This papier-mache Bea Arthur would look brilliant hanging next to the ceramic wisemen finger-banging an elf.”

Luckily, I have a pair of partners that help keep me on the straight and narrow. Jason calls Shenanigans every time I try to introduce an element to a project that I’ve fallen in love with simply because of the coolness factor.

On the other end of things, my wife is not at all reluctant to point out when I swing the other way and begin to over-think things to the point of stripping all of the cool out of an idea for the sake of logical conclusions.

I’ve found that a proper balance for me is to have a cool shit concept like “geriatric super-heroes in a nursing home” (a project actually in development) and allow only a handful of smaller cool fragments to glom onto the project.

If you’re eating shark meat sushi, you don’t want to cover it in jalapeno jelly and garlic croutons. Sure, it’s all cool and funky, but it just turns your meal into an inedible pile of Japa-Greco-Mex mush.

It’s not just the cool shit, it’s the cool anything. I wasted literally a year on a draft of a novel because I refused to give up on a cool scene — and it was a great fucking scene. The dialog snapped and crackled, the blood flowed, probably make a great flash fiction deal at some point. But there was no door out of that room — it couldn’t lead anywhere. It had to go. It could be cool shit — the combination penne/ray gun you envision for your chef/assassin. It could be a character you fell in love with — the wise-cracking charismatic bastard who can’t help but take over every scene blotting out all your other folk like a emotional eclipse and leaving your plot beached like a dead whale. Whatever it is, if it ain’t helping, then you gotta take it out back of the barn and give it the ol’ double tap.

The other problem with the cool shit? It consumes all your attention — you’re in love with that particular Fonzerelli chunk of cool, and it keeps you from seeing all the other cool all around you. Sometimes you gotta step out on your cool steady and have you a little strange. Suddenly cool in all its infinite variance jumps out at you. I was stuck on my current WIP — needed a bridge between a couple storylines and couldn’t get there with the charcters I had, but I loved those mother fuckers. Then I did the Hilary’s Scar piece — made up Bahram Lafitpour for that and, in the words of Hans Landa, THAT’S A BINGO. He’s just what I need over in the WIP.

Cool is everywhere. But if you’re too focused on the cool you got, you may miss the cool you need.

Dan

That’s a good point you’ve got there. Good post, man! But what I want to know is when you mentioned how when you revised your script and eliminated some awesome things from it, would you say that the first draft should be crammed full of great things and then slowly trimmed over the next drafts? What if the script appears pretty tame and there’s not a lot of over the top stuff the first time?

@Dan: I couldn’t agree more. A single piece of crazy-cool shit can sometimes be a bit of an impaction to other cool things that can be a better fit for your WIP.

Last night my partners and I were having a bit of an impromptu development session for our next project, and after they spent more than 2 hours forcing me to let go of a particular Darling, we found that the whole concept opened wide for our creative members to spew forth.

It was hard to let go of that one cool piece of the puzzle, but I’ll be dipped if the project doesn’t have ten times the potential of success now than it did before last night.

@Filamena: I will do up an “emotional core” post… maybe next week? And you can get it in “mint emotiochino” flavor.

@Dan: You, sir, say brilliant things. It’s why Martha Stewart follows you. She knows your wisdom can penetrate even her hardest exterior. Also, her anus.

@Dana: Good call on Pulp Fiction. See, I feel like Reservoir Dogs had a reserved sense of cool. But since then, Tarantino (whose work I still love) cannot contain himself or his worst instincts. He oversaturates his work with “cool.” It’s why half of Inglourious Basterds works (for me), and why half of it is outright ludicrous.

@Josh: Yes. Reserve the cool. Make sure the cool serves the purpose. Make sure the purpose doesn’t serve the cool.

@Maggie/Rick — please do not explode in girl rage. Nobody wants that. I mean, unless you’re going to film it. Then, y’know, go for it!

– c.

Or, you can keep all the cool shit in and work as a writer for Family Guy (or Robot Chicken if you’re desperate).

I think we all agree that someday Chuck Wendig will have his own show like Robot Guy or Family Chicken and Seth McFarland will beg to write for him.

@John – I think that glimpsing a Chuck-written show would make the censors melt like the nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

“Hey guys! This new DVD came in. I wonder what’s on it.”

“Aaarraararararargggggg…g.g.g…..”