I Really Should Know Better

The other day, I had me a new Escapist article up — “The Pasty White Person Is King” — which admittedly was poised to raise a little controversy by dint of it being about race. (In particular, it’s about the white-washing of video games, wherein many races fail to be represented well or at all, especially in terms of character creation.) Now, one point in the article was my fault, in which the writing suggested that you couldn’t change the color of your skin in Dragon Age, and what I really should’ve said (and the article now says) is that you can change the color of your skin but it’s more like applying a new coat of paint — it does not cascade through the storyline, it seems to have no effect at all on the skin color of your family, friends, rest of the world, etc.

I’ll take my licks on that one. It’s a little bit of splitting hairs, but I was wrong, so bad on me.

The thing that gets me is the alarming amount of casual racism that pops up in the comments — okay, I’m not surprised at the existence of said racists, but I’m surprised at a) how racist they are and b) how ignorant they are of their own racism. Hey, if you’re going to be racist, at least own it. It’s not a good thing, but I appreciate self-awareness more than utter ignorance. Weirder still are the few commenters who somehow found my article to be racist. *scratches head* I don’t know if I wrote the most elegant article, but racist? Really? Anybody care to explain that? Like, in a way that doesn’t sound like moonbat logic?

All the more troubling is what happens when you pop over to another excellent article in that issue, “Muslims In My Monitor,” by fellow DMLA author Saladin Ahmed. Saladin basically says, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if we had some positive Muslim role models instead of lots of Muslim villains in video games?” And in reading the comments, you’d think he was building a mosque in the Oval Office. People are very bold, very open about their distrust and distaste of, well, every Muslim ever. A lot of the logic comes down to, “Well, if you so-called moderate Muslims would do more to speak out against the extremist Muslims, we wouldn’t have to call you all terrorists.” As if a Muslim should preface every opinion with, “I disown Al-Qaeda and all its extremism” before preceding.

“I disown Al-Qaeda and all its extremism, and I think we should be able to have religious freedom in this country like everybody else.”

“I disown Al-Qaeda and all its extremism, and I think it’d be super nifty if we had some great Muslim role models in video games.”

“I disown Al-Qaeda and all its extremism, and I really like Honey Nut Cheerios.”

It’s bold-faced, underlined, highlighted prejudice, and it’s growing more inflamed with this nonsense “Ground Zero Mosque” debate — you know, the non-debate that’s been turned into a gas fire by all the assholes pouring gas and fire on it? That one? The one that staggeringly betrays some of the core precepts of this country? The one that highlights the irony of a GOP who pretends to want small government but who really wants the biggest goddamn monolithic Christian government you ever did see? The one that fails to recognize that nobody’s trying to build a terrorist training camp with concrete formed from the ashes of 9/11 jumpers, the one that doesn’t care to see the truth that it was never a straight-up mosque, that the Muslims are already present, that the “hallowed ground” of Ground Zero isn’t that at all?

Astounding after all this time we can still associate “terrorist” with “Muslim” so completely. (Though, let me also go to the other side and say this kind of intolerance is so nasty, so messy, it gets on everything like a spreading stain: no, every Catholic is not a boy-toucher, every Mormon isn’t a polygamist, and so on.)

Anyway.

Check out the articles in question, then if you’re brave, poke your head into the comments.

Blu-Ray Is A Staggering Disappointment (So Far)

We have a Blu-Ray player.

It, like apparently many Blu-Ray players, has a startling downside: it will not resume play on a disc. If I’m in the middle of watching a movie and I stop it, when I go to resume play, the fucking thing starts over.

I thought, surely this is insanity. Something is wrong. The device is broken! Or I’m missing a setting somewhere. No. No, apparently not. Some Blu-Ray players just… have this problem. It’s an alarming throwback: in fact, I don’t know of any media format out there right now that forces me to restart every time I stop. Not books, not tapes, not CDs or DVDs. Okay, a handful of games, maybe, but that’s something built into the challenge, not a failure of design or technology.

Further, Blu-Ray just doesn’t look that special. I haven’t done a side-by-side comparison, but Blu-Ray actually looks kind of disappointing. In fact, it looks too dark. This is after I’ve already modified my television away from the god-awful factory settings, so that everything else looks great. Television. Games. Movies I play on Netflix (which is thankfully built right into the television for maximum awesomeness). Hell, even DVDs I play in my Blu-Ray look better than the Blu-Rays I play in my Blu-Ray player.

Which is insanity, really.

Plus, I can stop and start those whenever I like! Resume play, done.

Why can I do that on DVDs in that player, but not Blu-Rays?

Have I taken a crazy pill?

Meh. Fnuh. Pshh. You ask me, Blu-Ray is just a pit-stop, an already flagging format on the way toward straight-up digital downloadable. Doesn’t help that many of the discs remain at almost stupidly expensive levels (despite the fact the players are now fairly cheap). Anybody else out there have Blu-Ray? Like it? Love it? Hate it? Indifferent to it?

Total sidenote: anybody have any great Netflix Watch Instantly recommendations? Loving that on the TV, and loving that I can stream right to my iPhone now, too. Super-slick.

The Future Of Terribleminds

You’ll note I’ve gone ahead and stopped using Roman numerals. I figured it would be best if I stopped embarrassing myself by using inaccurate numerals.

Interesting that I’ve been doing PWS for a year or so, now.

Do you like the PWS still? Continued thumbs-up?

Do you like the daily blogging?

Do you like the writing advice? On that one, I’m smelling flagging interest — the views on writing posts have been down, while views on other posts are up. Comments, too. That’s okay: if I’m hitting a wall, I might slow down on the writing advice. Unless it’s just a summer blip? You tell me. Good? Maybe take a breather on it? Slow down? Stop it entirely? Any opinions you got, throw ‘em at me.

Anything else you’d prefer to see? Do you like that I occasionally stir up controversy, or is that just irritating? Anything I don’t do that you’d like to see? Anything with the website design and functionality?

Let’s just call this a sweeping terribleminds review: what grade do you give the site and the blog? You tell me what you like, dislike, what you want to see, what you damn sure don’t want to see.

My feelings won’t be hurt.

I mean, they will, but I’ll cry in private.

The Lynx Is Hungry For Links

You want links? Done.

Review of Joelle Charbonneau’s SKATING AROUND THE LAW at ITW — check it out!

I do not own an iPad, but I love this iPad case: the Dodocase.

Hey, good news, everybody! We’re building a nation of idiots! Woooo! *eats a gun*

Wait, you don’t fear hospitals? Oh, oh, here: let me fix that for you.

Charlie Brooker tells you: you want motivation to write, then get a proper deadline.

Ten Star Wars comic books you should read. Anybody read these?

A reporter gave a bunch of panhandlers free credit cards. Here’s what happened.

HOLY CRAP VICTORIAN TERMINATOR ARM — STEAMPUNK SKYNET IS ACTIVE.

“The Inner Journey” — great bit of writing advice from Donald Maass, the king of killer writing advice.

And, finally, a blog post that really speaks the truth: “Chuck Wendig Is The Devil.”

horse fart in mouth fanfic

Boy, that’s a bold opener, innit?

Okay. Okaaaaay. Okay. Fanfic? That’s what’s throwing me off, here. Fanfic. Fanfic means, “I am a fan of this.” And it usually refers to a pop culture property. Like, Sherlock Holmes fanfic. Avatar the Last Airbender fanfic. What’s Happening Now? fanfic. Is “Horse Fart In Mouth” a movie? A series of YA books? Perhaps a classic 1950s television show that never made it to syndication? “Oh ho ho! Another hilarious episode of Horse Fart In Mouth! Doris Day, you so funny. And Fess Parker as the horse!”

how to trim your beard like a gentleman

To properly trim one’s beard like a gentleman, a true gentleman, you must use the sharp bitey teeth of a civet cat. Then, when the cat digests and, erm, evacuates your beard hairs from his gastrointestinal system, you must brew those acid-stripped beard hairs into a strong tea, and you must — must! — force someone of a lesser social echelon to drink that tea. Like say, a movie theater usher. Or someone who drives old people around. When they drink the strong beard-tea, you must watch. And golf clap. And fiddle with your privates, but in the way a gentleman might. (With soft gloves and fingers scented with zebra musk.)

where does the term spitballing come from

It comes from deep in the jungles of Pango Pango.

Now, maybe you meant, “Why do they call it spitballing?” but that’s not my department. Also, learn how to ask a question, you moob. Yes, that’s right. I just called you a man boob. What? Whaddya gonna do?

don’t drink the pirate juice

Fuck that. Drink the pirate juice.

goofy douche

Guilty! You found me. I am, indeed, the goofy douche of myth and legend.

I might just change the website’s address:

doubleyou doubleyou doubleyou dot goofy hyphen douche dot orrrrg.

You have to overpronounce the “orrrrrrg,” because that’s what goofy douches do.

quiet shotgun

Kind of ruins the fun of a shotgun, don’t you think? Me, I like a loud shotgun. Shotguns are as much about the sound and fury as they are the chest-exploding awesome. Then again, I will admit that it might be fun to have the shotgun whisper a quiet exhalation of birdshot — kind of a light insectile cough, kaff-kaff — and then blow a dude’s heart out the back of his body. It’s like, “Oh! Holy shit! Nobody expected that!” Which I think is the definition of irony? Something that nobody expects? In that case, I think the fact I just pooped my britches is a surefire case of irony. *leans in* What’s that? You totally expected that? Oh. Oh, okay. Nevermind, then. Irony canceled!

can sizer tale baby birds have oatmeal?

I… wh… uhh.

S… sizer?

Tale?

Baby birds?

Sizer tale baby birds.

Oatmeal?

What the fuck is a “sizer tale baby bird?” And why are you trying to feed it oatmeal? That shit is probably a velociraptor, yo. Watch out. They don’t eat oatmeal. They eat the human hands offering them oatmeal.

obi wan kenobi’s 4real name

Here I thought “Obi-Wan Kenobi” was his real name. Then I thought, “Well, maybe it’s something embarrassing, like OBI-GYN Kenobi? And he just changed it so people didn’t Force-throw rocks at his head?” Y’know, at the Jedi Academy, the other goofy douche padawans are like, “Hahaha, here comes Obi-Gyn Kenobi again! Stupid Jedi gynecologist! Let’s stuff his robe with Bantha poodoo and throw him into the Sarclacc pit again.”

But then I did some research, and it turns out: his real name is Steve Wyznocki.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

The other half is sodomizing the corpses of your enemies.

Also, I now hope to receive a plethora of “Jedi gynecologist” search term hits.

*crosses fingers, giggles, urinates*

will a barn owl attack you if you are looking at its owlets?

Oh yeah. Lawds yes. Owls are cranky as shit. If you lift one up and look at his little owl footsies? You’ll see he’s wearing bonafide cranky pants. Weird thing is, they can even sense when you’re looking at them on the Internet. No joke. When I started watching that Owl Box thing? With Molly the Owl and her owlets? The owl whore attacked me. First she was at the window, clawing at the glass. I gave her the finger and I was like, “Suck it, owl! My human domicile is protected by human ingenuity!” But then the owl came in through the chimney and was all like, “Hoo! Hoo! Scream! Screech!” which I translated to mean, “Where’s your human ingenuity now, you pink monkey bastard! I came in through your fireplace! A fireplace invented by humans! Owls win! Now get the hell away from my owl babies or I’ll tear your tongue out your mouth!”

meaning of a spirit bone

“To have sex with a spirit.” Works in instances of fornicating with ghosts as well as doing the spectral rumpy-pumpy with the ephemeral entities of Mother Nature. Like, were you to give it good and hard to a Forest Sprite? That’s a spirit bone. Same as if you got down and dirty with a howling poltergeist.

Actually, I have a collection of old porno VHSes you might want to look at: Spirit Bone, Volumes One Through Forty-Seven. It’s a little Blair Witchy, but they’re still kinda hot.

fuking while make pee

I just don’t have the words. And apparently, neither do you.

i forgot your hooks

Well, I forgot your hemmorhoid cream and your copy of Field and Stream. Guess we’re even.

rick carroll in plane crash

What’s weird is, as you’ll see with the next three search term items, popular commenters here at terribleminds have started to show up in my search terms. This one predicts that Friend of Terribleminds, Rick Carroll, will be in a plane crash. You heard ‘em, Rick: stay away from planes for the rest of your life. Go boat, go donkey, go hot air balloon, go ornithopter, just stay away from planes. For reals.

Though, maybe he was already in one. That would explain why he hasn’t been around here very often, and frankly, it’s a pretty good excuse. “Sorry haven’t commented much — been in a plane crash, kind of sucked, kthxbye.” You ask me, it’s a better excuse than, “I am addicted to Starcraft 2,” or, “Your beard smells like spoiled yogurt.” Which is true, but I’d rather not talk about that.

andrea phillips drinks utah

And another one. Andrea Phillips “drinks Utah.” Like, she drinks the whole state? She goes all kaiju on their Mormon asses and just guzzles the whole state like it was a glass of Vitamin Water? Or is it just shorthand for, “When Andrea Phillips drinks, she goes to Utah.” Which would then suggest that Andrea is a fan of needless bureaucracy, since drinking in Utah is (or at least used to be) a righteous pain in the ass.

All I do know is that we should all band together and maybe have an intervention with Andrea. “Andrea,” we’ll all say in our caring cult-like voices, “you should really stop turning into a giant kaiju monster, pulverizing parts of Utah into a liquidy mash, then drinking it.” Someone, maybe Rick if he’s done with this ‘plane crash’ bullshit, will add: “We think you have a problem. So, y’know, fix it or we’ll stop loving you.”

doyce sexi sexi

You heard it here first: Doyce Testerman is sexi sexi.

i crave vinegar is that ok

It is not okay. That is a symptom of butt parasites.

how do you know when your ready for a beard?

You know you’re ready for a beard when you stop confusing your with you’re, dumbass. Beards don’t fare well on fools. They buck and bolt like bee-stung camels.

would you help me to understand its not my day

I would not. That’s somebody else’s job. We’re not all here for you, you know. You solipsistic sonofabitch. It’s (not its) not your day? So what? Don’t care. Waaah. Boo-hoo. Go cry on somebody else’s shoulder. Like I don’t have problems of my own? It’s not my day either. Actually, my day is technically August 5th (“Chuck Wendig Day!”) but this year nobody celebrated it so I celebrated it myself with a bottle of rot-gut gin, a Spongebob marathon, and a .38 revolver with naught but one bullet in the cylinder.

how to paint maples and bamboos together

I’m an artist. I got this. Here’s what you do: first? Paint a maple. Then? Next to it? Paint some goddamn bamboo. Boom. Boom. Maples and bamboos together. And you did it. You painted that shit. Nice work. High-five. Let’s go grab a smoothie and some prostitutes.

have you seen a girl with hair like this

I have.

would you help me to understand its not

I will not. Ask the girl with the hair.

what does to pick your brain mean

It’s like “pick your nose,” but, y’know, with a brain instead. You can’t do it with a finger, though, so you have to use some kind of long wiry implement. Like, say, a long wire implement. Or a fishing rod. Or a car antenna. I use the car antenna because sometimes I pick up AM radio stations. I mean, sure, AM radio stations suck nuts, but at least it’s something. The novelty wears off, but whatever.

ghoul vagina

Band or album? Or the band’s biography title?

how to write talkings between character

Goddamn you’re an asshole. I hate you. Stop asking me questions. “Talkings between character?” Who are you, Jackoff Smirnov? “In Soviet Russia, talkings between characters talk you!” … okay, that doesn’t make any sense. Shut up. Leave me alone. And hand me that revolver with one bullet.

one word pick me ups

Here are several:

“Yay!”

“Woot!”

“Pie!”

“Marmot!”

“Succeed!”

“Coffee!”

“Porn!”

“Triumph!”

“Fnughhhuhhmumblrgrble!”

weird ways to make oatmeal

Here are several:

Cook it in a dirty jockstrap!

Mix in rusty nuts and bolts!

Run it through the gastrointestinal tract of a civet cat!

In the toilet!

In a microwave powered by a donkey pedaling a bike!

In the gas tank of a Husqvarna lawn mower!

With moon rocks and fairy blood!

if you were married to a pirate what might you recieve for a gift

Probably a jug of pirate juice, which is basically just gasoline mixed with rubbing alcohol and parrot urine. But that’s okay because dayum will that shiznit get you high, son. Wait, “high” means “dead,” right? In pirate speak? Like, “Arr, Me Hearties, let us imbibe this grog and get high in our graves!” I dunno. What I do know is that if somebody asks if they should drink the pirate juice, the answer is Fuck Yes.

In fiction, escalation is everything.

Understanding escalation gives you a powerful tool in composing a strong plot and driving story: it’s the thing that brings people back to the book, it’s the thing that glues them to the screen, that stops them from changing channels, that keeps them playing the game well past the point of “reasonable time management.” In understanding escalation, it’s then critical to know its shape, to know how to implement it, to know its weave and weft, its finesse, its possibility.

Don’t expect this post to answer all that, mind you: I’m just over here in the corner, froth-mouthed and rambling. Try to follow the bouncing ball, but please, don’t hesitate to add your zwei pfennig to the cup.

The Male Ejaculatory Arc Is Wrong

In school, they teach you a very simple shape in terms of the narrative. Douglas Rushkoff refers to this as the “male ejaculatory arc,” and it shows the supposed rise in tension in fiction:

Loosely defined, you might say this represents: “Shit gets more and more fucked up until it gets better.”

Except, I call shenanigans on that. Maybe if you were to look at this shape from, say, the moon, where detail and granularity are lost, it’s a good one. And if you’re looking for something broad and sweeping, this works — it shows that in fiction tension rises, rises, rises, then it pops its cork — “the money shot” — and from there it’s downhill toward, I dunno, satisfaction or shame depending on the story.

What this fails to address though, is that while escalation of tension is a critical component, it isn’t so perfect that you can (usually) get away with a straight and uncomplicated rise to the money shot. The human mind doesn’t like that much tension — it can probably handle the stress, but I don’t think it likes it much. As such, you need to plot a lot of little parabolas — gentle rises and falls, like a tide, where each tide is higher (and maybe also lower) than the last, until eventually the gentle tide gives way to the crashing surf. But even a crashing surf has its lulls: note that before the tsunami wave strikes, the ocean is sucked out to sea (what a strange phrase) and those on the beach are said to witness a sense of peace and calm.

Aaaand then the big wave comes and crushes the puny humans. Sploosh. Scream. Gurgle.

Which means that what we’re looking at has a shape more like this:

At each parabolic peak, things are worse than the last. At each dip, the tension is softened — but things are still in worse shape than they were the last time the audience met with a narrative lull.

Hell, if you really wanted to, you could do this up with greater nuance –

Now, I don’t know how meaningful that is as a somewhat generic example, but it does reveal that your story can have a far more complicated rise-and-fall than the heave-ho inhale-exhale “hillocks of tension” shown above. But, were you to plot the escalation of tension in various stories — particularly your own — I bet you’d get something that has a goofier, herkier-jerkier shape. And that’s okay. It’s probably desirable.

Actually, I suppose the more uncertain the shape, the more uncertain the audience. That, too, is a good thing. Astute readers and students of narrative learn to expect that gentle rise-and-fall, and when you know the shape, you’re given the keys to the kingdom: the master equation. A narrative with unexpected rises and falls breaks the pattern somewhat: such inconsistency can be valuable in leaving the audience uncertain. And uncertain audiences, to a point, are a good thing. The audience should never trust the storyteller. Trust in fiction is dull. True suspense and tension are created out of uncertainty, out of distrust.

Various Threads On This Angry Loom

What these shapes so far decline to take into account are the multiple threads that go into the tangled knot of your narrative. Just as it’s oversimplification to point to the male ejaculatory arc of escalation and say, “That’s it!” it is a little too simple to say that the story comprises naught but a single line.

I’m becoming more and more interested in trying to suss out the composition of a story — the equations, the shapes, the variables. In much the same way that music, even jazz, sounds unpredictable and uncertain, it still tends to follow certain patterns, certain rules, even certain math. I don’t know how valuable it would be to have this math in mind during the crafting of a story (maybe very, maybe not at all), but I still think it’s valuable to know this stuff in your gut. Further, I think the true value of this knowledge comes in during later drafts — when you want to tweak, pull, ratchet, it’s important to know what you’re doing, and why.

Anyway, point being, a story is more than just one tenuous thread. You could easily plot tension along lines of different categories: physical, social, emotional. (I don’t know that mental is really that critical a component, and for these purposes I’ll wrap “mental” up into the “emotional.”) Physical conflict is clear: “The character’s life is in danger.” Social tension, too: “The character’s social existence is in danger.” Finally, emotional: “The character threatens to come apart at the seams.” These tensions do not — or, shouldn’t — rise in perfect harmony with one another, right?

Were you to map that, it might look like:

Of course, those three axes are arbitrary — both the number three and what they describe. Could be that you want one line per character. Or per setting — the tensions in New York might be different from the tensions on Moon Base Omega. You might have many shapes covering a variety of axes.

That image doesn’t describe any particular narrative, but were you to map out, say, the lines of tension in a film like Die Hard, you’d get one with a very bold physical line, one that keeps rising and falling higher and higher because, hey, John McClane is in constant physical danger. His emotional line would be mapped out in part due to perceived tensions with his wife, but also due to his fatigue and (in)ability to think and act under duress. The social line might seem the weakest, but McClane suffers under social tensions: the tensions of authority, of the FBI, of his interactions with Hans (both on the radio and in person). (Actually, I’d argue that those tensions with the wife are part of an unwitnessed, almost ghostly thread of social tension — his marriage is threatening to come apart and we know that.)

While at times they might rise and fall together, generally it seems those lines of tension are kept separate.

Victory Laps And Cool Downs

Constant escalation — described by the male ejaculatory arc — is no good for a story. In a masterful hand it could probably work, but for the most part you don’t want to burn the story out (which is really just another way of saying, “burn the audience out”).

Hence, victory laps and cool downs.

Victory laps are those points in the film when the tension climaxes and is resolved somewhat by a sense of victory, of triumph over adversity. They fall into two categories, I think: the True Victory Lap, and the False Victory Lap. If it’s True, it means it’s a genuine moment where the protagonist gains ground. If it’s False, it feels that way until it’s revealed to be the calm before the storm (or that lull before a tsunami).

In Die Hard we get both types: whenever McClane offs one of the terrorists, it’s by and large a moment of actual victory. But he also suffers under the False Victory Lap, too: say, when he thinks he’s succeeded in bringing the police, all he manages is to bring one fat guy from that Urkel show (who subsequently almost drives away thinking nothing at all is wrong).

The “cool down” — or, since I’m such a fan of meaningless capitalization, the Cool Down — is really just a time to deflate the tires a little and suck the air out of the tension. It’s an exhalation of breath. Die Hard has plenty of these: in particular, those moments when McClane is on the radio with Powell (aka “donut cop”) constitute a breather for them and, by proxy, for us as the audience.

That’s not to say that any such lull is devoid of tension. Consider that, when Holly Gennero-slash-McClane is talking to Hans about getting the hostages to a pee break and getting a couch for the pregnant lady, we’re in a cooling down period away from the tense “Holy Shit John McClane Is In So Much Fucking Danger Right Now” moment. But that scene still has its tension: will Hans just shoot her? Will he see the picture of her family — meaning, of John — turned down on her desk? There’s tension even in the possibility where he denies her request. It’s not huge tension, but it’s there.

It reminds us that those various threads and axes of tension don’t all have to ebb and flow together. That scene represents a cool down from, say, Physical lines of tension, but we still have a Social-slash-Emotional rise. Hell, one line could peak as another could dip.

Numerical Expression

I’ve not yet done this, but it’s be interesting to plot the tension in a story — mine, yours, somebody else’s — with images similar to the ones above. Thing is, we used to do that in school and it was largely subjective, held to the whims of how tense a scene felt. That’s okay, because I don’t know that you could really give it a truly objective look, but I think you could make it a little more concrete by using numerical expressions to plot the points on the lines of tension.

Anybody ever do anything like this? I know Robin Laws has done lots of work with this, and the new Gameplaywright book Hamlet’s Hit Points very possibly works in this direction. Way I’d do it initially would just be to go scene by scene and give that scene an overall number between 1 – 10 across the axes of Physical, Emotional, Social, then plot those on a graph, see how it shakes out.

Love to see if anybody’s done work on this. Be advised, before anybody jumps in here with a snarky self-superior, “This is nothing new,” believe it or not I’m aware that I’m not breaking ground with this stuff. But it’s still fundamental shit that clearly some writers don’t get because, hey, I’ve read stories that are a dull beeping flatline — straight-up DOA. I think a lot of writers are afraid of this kind of nuance, this nitty-gritty — or, if it’s not fear, it stems from laziness, “I want to tell magical unicorn stories, not worry about all this stuff.” (Or, they’re writers who are so great where they know all this stuff intuitively, and don’t feel the need to bone up their game. I’m good, but not great, and hence I like to keep this stuff in mind.)

Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Complaints? Prayer requests? Death threats?

Last week, I said, “You writer types out there should really learn how to take and use good criticism.”

Thing is, what we haven’t yet answered is: “Just what the hell is good criticism, anyway?”

Answer? I don’t really know.

But it’s an important question. A writer doesn’t want you to waste her time, and further, she doesn’t want you to waste your own time, either: hence, any kind of critique has to be useful above all else, correct? But what does that mean? And how do you achieve it? And why am I not wearing underwear? And finally, is that bratwurst I smell? Under my armpits? Something’s gone terribly awry.

As it turns out, I’ve done some game development courtesy of White Wolf, and as a result have had to go through the drafts of many writers and try — not just for their own edification, but to score a quality end product — to help those writers get their work up to speed: the words spit-shined, the sentences made to tap-dance, pages offering a bucket of grins-a-gleaming.

Further, I’ve also been on the other end: receiving redlines and edits.

What I’ve learned through all that, I’ll try to sum up here. It won’t be a complete list, but it’ll be a little something-something to help you understand what makes good — meaning, “useful” — criticism.

Good Goes With Bad

Criticism is hard to accept as a writer: the first response is almost always a knee-jerk one, an internal tantrum where your brain pounds the floor and whizzes on the carpet and belts out a wailing howl. Criticism and critique, though, suffer under the connotation of negativity. Really, though, critique is just an analysis — and an analysis carries no bias, no baggage. And what does that mean?

It means the good is just as important to note as the bad. This isn’t just to soothe the damaged, tantrum ego noted above, though yes, it does that very thing. Rather, this is actually useful information for the writer — if a writer doesn’t know that something is good, he may go back and start cutting it or changing it. Sometimes to something worse. Identify the good. Highlight it. It’s an important place to start.

If the story is genuinely without merit, say so. But I don’t buy it. Everything has something good; whether right there on the surface or not, it’s your job as the reviewer to draw it out and shine a light upon it.

Carry A Depth Gauge Into Dark Waters

Not every edit is going to be truly in-depth. Discuss with the writer beforehand if you must to gain a common understanding: “How deep do you want me to go, here?” In other words, how committed is this edit? Line by line? An overarching, “This works, this didn’t?” Something in between? Does the writer just want help with plot? Characters? Grammar and spelling?

Figure this out in advance. Don’t overwork, underwork, or come at the story from a direction the writer simply doesn’t desire. Know the depth demanded of you. Offer more if you see it: “Hey, you mind if I talk a little about the themes, too?” But don’t get pushy. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t drown him in the trough and force a near-death experience upon him that gives him an equine epiphany.

I think that’s how the saying goes.

Everybody Likes A Yes-Man (And That’s A Bad Thing)

A writer will forever be at his happiest when he gets an edit that declares: “This is awesome! Best thing since Silly Putty and blowjobs! I loved it! You’re the best! Here’s a puppy! Let’s make out!”

But a writer’s happiness is only so useful.

That kind of “critique” is nice to hear, but “nice” don’t get a dude published. Writers want nice. But they need honest. So that’s your job: honesty. See a problem? Call it out. Don’t pull any punches. You’re not doing anybody any favors by giving the writer a stroke job with soft gloves.

A writer can always spin hay into gold. But she can’t do dick with “nice.”

Eschew Snarkiness, Embrace Tact

All that being said, you don’t have to be an asshole, either.

I say this having been the asshole. (Surprised? No, no, I didn’t think so.)

I have received — and, sadly, I have given — edits that have probably gone over the line into somewhat tactless, snarky territory. It’s easy to do when you know and are comfortable with the writer: you start to make jokes, and jokes are good, jokes loosen everybody up, jokes lubricate a sometimes unpleasant process. But jokes can also drift into darker waters, and next thing you know, the jokes are at the writer’s expense by mocking the writer’s work. Oh, ho-ho-ho, a funny typo! Sure, funny. Except, unless you’re really certain of that comfort level, all you’re doing is insulting the writer and making her feel like a hack, a douche, an incompetent.

It wasn’t your intent, of course.

But you know what they say about “intent.”

(No, I don’t know, either. I recall something about Hell? And a road? And for some reason, I’m pretty sure there’s a goat in there. The goat to Hell is paved with a road made of intent? That doesn’t sound right.)

So, eschew snarkiness. (Eschew? Bless you.)

Embrace tact.

Now, many will offer a cynical quote about tact being what a person wants to hear rather than what they need to hear, but most times, the person who tells you that is already tactless sonofabitch. Avoid such connotations: tact, here, just means, “Don’t be a dick.” You don’t have to sugar-coat your critique, but you also don’t have to lather in it toxic frog venom, either.

Do Not Fight Awk With Awk

One of my favorite notes in an edited document is “Awk.”

It means, “Awkward.”

Which means, “This isn’t clear, read it aloud, then rewrite to clarify.”

The writer’s uttermost job is clarity: if the writing is so turbid that the story and its characters are not clearly seen, the writer has made his writing into a speedbump (or brick wall). The job of the reviewer is ultimately to help the writer bring clarity to all aspects of the story: writing, plot, character, theme, mood, whatever. But that also means that the reviewer has to himself be clear about things.

Clarity is a virtue. You will not help the writer achieve clarity if you cannot find clarity in your critique. Be forthright. Be honest. Don’t be a dick. And for God’s sakes, be clear.

Markup Is Your Best Buddy

One of the best ways to be clear? Notes.

If I do any kind of in-document edit, I will instantly leap into Word, turn “Track Changes” on, and quickly jump right into the comment bubbles. It’s a great feature: the writer can turn the markup on and off, the writer can accept any changes you may have suggested, the writer can follow the bouncing ball from comment bubble to comment bubble — all places for you to explain with clarity and tact what’s going on in terms of your critique.

Now, I may be a dinosaur in this regard, but here’s a comment to both writers and reviewers: please use word processing software that allows you to view the markup and comments supported by, say, Word. Balk against that advice, rail and pummel and thrash about, but if you can’t read the comments and markup, then you just lost yourself a valuable tool in terms of extracting the best possible draft. Mmkay? Mmkay.

Offer Solutions Only If Asked

As I said in my last post, normally in situations if you call out a problem, it’s polite to also have a solution at hand. That way you don’t look like a Negative Nancy. (For the record, Negative Nancy is a deadly supervillainess, a diabolical schoolgirl who can undo anything good in this world and make it bad. She also makes everything taste like urine.)

In terms of critiquing, though, offering solutions is only valuable if the writer wants those solutions. Saying, “This character doesn’t work for me” and then listing the reasons why? That’s good. But then saying, “And here’s how I’d fix it” is not necessarily as helpful — reason being, every writer is different with her own solutions to bring to the table. Now, if you’re an editor who is actually trying to get a product to market, well, you can probably throw this advice right out the goddamn window. A good editor has to offer solutions: even if the writer doesn’t listen, at least the options are on the table.

What Else?

To you, what comprises good criticism? What do you value in a reviewer’s work? Any pitfalls to avoid? Any steps to take? Throw your hat into the ring. Let’s hear some advice different than mine over here.

I already knew I was going to make a cashew-cream chicken curry. I already knew that I was going to make mango lassis (which turned into mango-guava lassis, but whatever). I already suspected that basmati rice was on the agenda. I mean, duh.

But then I had this little kernel, this crazy seedling of an idea that grew into a tree of awesomeness.

And I thought, you know what I enjoy at restaurants? Lettuce wraps. Give me a leaf from a head of green leaf lettuce, put some delicious crap in there, and I will eat it like some kind of madman taco — the crunch, the crispness, that slightly bitter tang of the lettuce. Yeah. Yes. I wanted that.

So I went to the Fresh Market, then stopped off at a local dry goods store.

And this is what I came up with:

The Part Where You Mise En Place This Bitch

In case you’re mule-kicked and forgot already, you’re going to need some leaves from a head of green leaf lettuce. Let’s call it four to six such leaves.

Put those little bitches on a serving tray. One after the other. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Line them up like they’re being punished for something.

Then, you’re going to need one cup of cooked chicken. Since chicken does not cook itself — well, nuclear chickens probably cook themselves, since they’re like microwaves with feathers and beaks, and one day we shall be forced to battle an army of said nuclear chickens out in the bomb-blasted wasteland of post-war America — you will need to either a) cook the fucking chicken your owngoddamnself or b) buy a chicken that some motherfucker has already cooked. Like, say, a roaster.

Here’s the kicker, though: you then want to add one cup of cooked chicken skin. I know, some people are grossed out by the skin for some mysterious reason, but some people are also Communists and kid-touchers, so I can’t be held accountable for people’s disturbed tastes. All I know is that chicken skin is fatty deliciousness. Except, nobody wants to eat a strip of chicken skin like it’s a swatch of greasy wallpaper ripped right off the wall. Pshhh. So, you take the cooked skin and put it with the cooked chicken.

Then you dice the unholy shit out of it.

Seriously. Get a big knife. Pretend you’re chopping cilantro or something. Choppity-chop. Punish it. Remind the chicken that you are its dread master and that it is dead and you are alive, que sera sera.

Set that aside.

Now: get yourself four or five shallots. Shallots are awesome. They’re like little onions. But they’re also like big garlic. They’re the best of both worlds, like hermaphrodites and sporks. You want to cut the shallots into little goddamn rings: a handful of little sphinctery o-rings that as you chop will bring sweet clarifying tears to your horrible human eyes. When you’re done, those can go in a separate bowl.

It’s time for the Brazil nuts. Wuzza? Yeah. You heard me. Brazil nuts. Monkey toes. Or, if they’re still in their shell, velociraptor claws. I didn’t really measure how many I used, but I used an approximate half-cup of these crazy nuts, which if you’ve never eaten have a kind of… fatty umami bitter bite? They’re not full-on bitter like walnuts, but the taste is rich and oily. Anyway — stick these nutty fuckers in a mortar and pestle, then make with the crush crush crush until they’re all pulverized. They don’t need to be a snortable dust or anything: just broken apart into push-pin sized bits.

We’ll pause here for a second and answer the question: “Why Brazil Nuts?” The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind. *checks documents* No, no, wait, that’s not right. The answer, my friends, is in all the sweet fucking selenium — Brazil nuts have an almost incomprehensible amount of selenium, a helluva lot more than any other food. Six Brazil nuts have 780% of your daily suggested selenium intake. Selenium is good for all kinds of stuff: in particular, it’s a free radical that runs through your body, karate-kicking cancer in its carcinogenic face. But, some also suggest that selenium has powerful mood stabilizing abilities.

Hence, Brazil nuts. Hence, these are called “Mood Stabilizers.”

Moving on.

Now, back to the goddamn chicken.

Into the two cups of chicken I want you to add the following:

A teaspoon of sugar.

A pinch or two of salt.

A pinch of cinnamon (I used Saigon cinnamon, which is not true cinnamon, but rather, Cassia.)

A teaspoon of minced garlic.

A pinch of ground cardamom.

Mixity-mix mix mix-a-mix.

Time for:

The Part Where You Cook This Shit

First, we want to attend to these shallots.

In particular, we want to crisp them up. Very simple: oil in a pan, shallot sphincters in there when it gets hot, let them get carmelized on each side, maybe toss in a pinch of salt to help draw out the moisture. What are we talking? Probably 5, 10 minutes. Something like that.

Set those crispy bastards aside.

Time to cook the chicken. The chicken is already cooked, mind you, but what you want here is to get it a little oily, and further to make some of the spices aromatic. Oh! And you also want that chicken skin to crisp up a touch. For a textural thing. Put it in a hot skillet for a couple minutes — keep it moving, don’t let it stick to the pan if you can.

Then, when you’re ready –

Are you ready?

I said, are you ready?

It’s time for the Hot Mango Chutney.

You can make this at home, but I won’t lie: this time, I did not. I used Patak’s, but making your own isn’t all that difficult — I just plain didn’t have the time yesterday.

How much do you need? I used two tablespoons of the aforementioned chutney. (“Chutney” always sounds like the proper name of a fat English schoolboy. “Little Lord Chutney,” they’d call him. Nickname, “Piggy.” Whenever he tries to talk, you mock him even though he has the conch, and then you drop a boulder on his big dumb head. And then you collect the brains and call it “Hot Mango Chutney.”)

Anyway. Plop Piggy’s Brains the mango chutney into the chicken, mix it, heat it, then toss in the crusha-crusha-crushed Brazil nuts, heat through again. When you’re done –

Spread it out amongst those lovely lettuce leaves you set out earlier.

Rough guess, two or three tablespoons per leaf. I dunno. Shut up and eyeball it.

Top them with some of your part-greasy part-crispy shallots.

Then, eat them like tacos.

They’ll stabilize your mood not merely because they offer a Herculean buttload of selenium (hey, by the way, don’t overdose on selenium, please?), but also because these things are just fun to eat. They’re sweet, sour, salty. They’re soft in the middle, but have lots of crisp and crunch, too. You eat them with your hands, and foods you eat with your hands are — *checks math* — 145% more fun to eat than non-handy foods.

So, there you go.

Recipe.

For your brain and mouth and mood.

Eat, motherfuckers. Eat.

So, seems a good time to ask:

What apps you using and loving these days?

What apps are in regular rotation?

What can you just plain not live without?

I use a lot of apps for writing productivity — Evernote, SimpleMind mind maps, Google, dictation, stuff like that. Anything to help me take notes, plot a course, keep all my penmonkeys in a row.

Though, I’ll tell you what I’m really looking for, something I can’t find (and it’s downright ludicrous I can’t find it): a calendar / reminder app that actually lets me snooze my reminders. On every other phone I’ve had, I’ve always had a calendar that, when I got pinged by a reminder, I could snooze it — an hour, a day, a week, whatever. It’s nice because sometimes you get a reminder when you’re at the grocery store, or in the car, or fighting Sky Pirates above the cityscape of Johannesburg in their Velocicopters. And if you can’t snooze it, it makes the reminder a little less useful.

I need a reminder app that is equal parts “I’m going to bother you until you do this” and “It’s cool, man, you can’t do this now? I’ll be back in a couple hours, dude, see how it’s hanging.”

I look online, and a lot of users have lamented the completely bizarre lack of unsnoozeable reminder-slash-calendar apps, so if anybody has any secrets on this front, I’m listening.

Otherwise: any apps you got, I’ll take the recommendations. Time-wasters. Games. Productivity. Music apps. Social apps. Whatever you got, pitch it at my eyeballs, punt it at my chattering mouthparts.

As always, much love, big ups, and a fat sack of squirming thanks.

The actual truth of why YA is so popular ends up a little muddy, and will remain so until the culture is distant enough to give a good long look back over the trends and see what kind of pattern emerges.

Is YA merging into something PG-13 flavored, indicating works that are not necessarily for adolescents but are instead acceptable to anybody in that age range and above?

Is YA emergent because adults don’t want to grow up? Because they’re bound to some sense of adolescent whimsy, embracing a regressive look backward rather than the hard and unflinching look forward?

Is YA a cultural byproduct of the world around us? The world feels troubled, what with terrorism and crumbling financial sectors and Evil Muslim Presidents Trying To Build An Evil Muslim Terrorist Training Camp Upon The Ashes Of Ground Zero Victims (ahem, hot damn, people are mighty stupid these days)? In times of turmoil, audiences often turn to fantasy, and is this just another expression of that? The popularity of Star Wars way back when could be attributed to the need to look forward, to find comfort in fantasy (yes yes, space fantasy) after a particularly turbulent and troubling decade, right?

Or is YA something of the opposite: the need to reconcile the way that adolescents are growing up faster — perhaps in biology, but definitely culturally, mentally, emotionally — and thus provide them with a market of fiction that is sometimes fantastical but also challenging and complex? Maybe as teens evolve, adults regress, and YA is the middle ground upon which they all meet?

Could be that YA is just marketing: a way to exploit a trend and set aside a shelf with books that would normally be found elsewhere. This feels cynical, to some degree — though some truth lies here, as any kind of genre or classification is the product of marketing rather than literary need these days.

Maybe adults just like the ease of it.

Or the “Remember when?” quality of being an adult.

Or they just like relating to what their kids are reading. (Of course, the daughter is on the bed reading Ayn Rand, and the Mom is gabbing on the phone reading Twilight. Or so I imagine the irony of that choice.)

We can discuss it more, but that’s not actually what I come to ask.

What I want to ask now is:

Tell me what to read.

(Dang, that wasn’t a question, it was a statement. A command, as a matter of fact. Erm, let’s try this again. “Tell me what to read?” “Will you tell me what to read?” “Will you go to lunch?” “Go to lunch, George.”)

See, in people talking about YA, I heard about a lot of books that sound strikingly awesome. And, I also heard people call out a number of books I’ve read as “YA,” even though I’d found them on other shelves many years ago — Redwall, Ender’s Game, etc.

Cool. Hey, whatever. Good is good. As Amy Boggs wisely noted in the comments: “After that day I decided that I would read whatever the hell I liked. Sure people give me weird looks if I mention that I read kids books or sci-fi/fantasy. But awesome books are awesome books, regardless of classification.” Yes. That. A hundred times, a thousand times, that. Read what you like. Good is good. Awesome is awesome. Ta-da.

So: what’s good?

What books would you put on an essentials Young Adult fiction reading list? Y’know. For me. And to be clear, by “essentials” I don’t mean “What The Masses Would List,” I mean, what do you personally think is stellar enough to end up on that list? What did you love? What’s your personal list of faves?

Your Contributions To Der Wendighaus v2.0 Are Appreciated

By contributions, I mean, recommendations.

We need a new mower, for one. Push mower. Preferably rear wheel drive, as we’re on an incline. Looking at either the Husqvarna or the Toro, but am willing to listen to other recommendations?

Also: leaf blower. Yeah, we now live in the woods. Woods are made of trees, and trees — as it turns out — are made of leaves. And leaves fall. They’re already falling. Summer is on its last legs, apparently, even though it’s only August, and leaves are starting to come down. This is just an appetizer, an amuse-bouche, and already we’re inundated. So! I need a leaf blower. Probably a serious one. Help?

In other home news, things continue to be pretty dang awesome. Turns out, we have to watch out for deer even when driving in our own driveway: the other night, two fawns crossed right in front of us. Saw the Doe-Mom over in the woods waiting for them. This must be the same family we saw crossing the yard when we looked at the house a while back before we had purchased.

Found a treestand out in the woods yesterday, too. And, then, not far from the stand I found a dead deer. By which I mean, bleached, picked bones. It was funny, actually: the deer skull (a buck, a five-pointer) sat right next to a golf ball. As if it was the golf ball that killed him. “Fore!” Whack. Brain contusion. Deer hunting for yuppies. “Honey, that’s an eight-pointer out there. Give me the nine iron.”

(For the record, I don’t hunt deer. Won’t. Can’t. We raised them as pets, with two of them raised in the house before going to pasture, and for me hunting deer is like hunting dogs. Now, birds…)

Inside, things are good. The previous owner clearly had a lady-boner for light-switches. Because a) They’re everywhere and b) The switch plates are different in every room. Angels. Birds. Lighthouses. Seems every individual recessed light gets its own switch, too. I go down to the kitchen in the morning, you’d think I was powering up a nuclear reactor with all the switches I’m fucking flipping.

I also got the television (uhhh, the free one that she just left here) off the wall — and damn if those people weren’t very, very concerned about the aesthetics of the television mount and not so much the television itself. The television was mounted high on the wall above the fireplace — a terrible viewing angle, for one. But her concern wasn’t the viewing angle, it was the cords. She buried everything in the wall. And then some. All the speaker cable was wrapped white, just like the co-axial cable. Then I found a number of HDMI cables just hanging out in the wall. The television itself had its own surge protector glued to the back, along with an under-cabinet light glued to the top and surrounded with tinfoil (!) so as to cast a backlight from behind the television up onto the ceiling.

All of this was professionally done, and my assumption is it cost her an arm and a leg. Because every damn cable was Monster Cable, which is of course a) Very Expensive and b) A Complete Scam. The power strips were all Monster, too.  So, I spent a whole day gutting everything out of that wall, trying to make sense of the tangle of cables and assorted craziness.

I get now why she didn’t want to take the television.

I’m not complaining, mind. Small price to pay for a nice TV, but… wow. I wish I lived in a world where I could just walk away from expensive appliances.

Oh, and I’m thinking on painting the office. A lot of this house is that “neutral brown tan beige yellow” gig. Thinking the office could be a relaxing tea green. Yes? No? Alternate opinions?

Twitterversations

Yesterday, Gareth on Twitter asked why there appears a stigma against having long conversations or discussions on Twitter. Technically, he’s right — you could definitely chop a discussion into a mash of tweets. Lord knows I’ve done it, and done it poorly, and so for the most part I endeavor to avoid such lengthy chatter on the Twittertubes as a manner of Tweetiquette. Couple-few reasons for this:

a) Robust, reasonable discussions often require nuance. Twitter’s 140-character limit forces brevity, which is good, but in brevity one often loses nuance. Which means that discussions can more easily be misunderstood and/or turn into arguments.

b) Twitter for me is very much a balancing of signal-to-noise. When a tweeter becomes noise, it’s possible I’ll stop following. Which, by the way, is nothing personal. I know others have stopped following me because I became noise, and that’s okay. That’s the name of the game. I can still continue to follow them if I choose, as Twitter doesn’t require reciprocal relationships. Big throbbing discussions can become noise very quickly. Because a number of Twitter clients only capture so much previous activity, it can end up where a big discussion suddenly fills up one’s stream. So, it becomes harder to see what other people are going on about when the page is dominated by three people arguing about whether or not Han Shot First or whether the Laws of Thermodynamics apply to e-book publishing and housecat husbandry. I know I’ve had this happen, and I damn sure know I’ve done it to others. Signal becomes noise pretty fast on the Twitters.

c) Such discussions can also be hard to track. They’re not happening exactly in real-time; when you get more than two participants, you start suffering these out-of-sync conversational axes which often mutate and multiply the lines of conversation. It’s like a goddamn Hydra. Especially since sometimes Tweet replies are missed or delayed, and suddenly it feels like you’re having a conversation with a handful of time travelers who keep popping in and out of the discussion. And coming in on the middle of such a discussion can be frustrating, because if you want to follow it back, it’s like following the trail of breadcrumbs through a dark and hinky forest.

Your mileage may of course vary. You do what you like. I find it more frustrating than enlightening and have had one too many discussions go south. That may be my fault, but that’s all the more reason for me to stay out of such chatter, so I don’t whizz in the face of good conversation.

To me, having a complex conversation on Twitter feels like trying to write or read a novel made out of pamphlets. Or composing a doctoral thesis out of haiku. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean it’s wise.

Seems to be there are better arenas: blogs, forums, emails, comment threads.

As I’ve said in the past: having long conversations on Twitter is like playing baseball in an elevator.

A Momentary Mention

I put down The Passage this week in the middle (sorry, Passage lovers, the book just wasn’t for me — we can talk about why, but I suspect it largely comes down to my glaring impatience and my gurgling disgruntlement with certain stylistic choices made by the author), and instead fumbled around for the book nearest to my hand, and I found Victor Gischler’s The Deputy, kindly sent to me by Tyrus Books.

(Oh, and Tyrus just picked up Busted Flush Press. Great news for writers of the dark arts.)

I read half of it in a single sitting.

It’s delicious.

Like I said on Twitter: it’s terse, tense, potent prose. Noir to the nines. But it’s still loose enough where it leaves room for that country poetry, that Joe Lansdale playfulness and metaphor, though still uniquely Gischler’s own. Can’t wait to finish it. Hope to do so today.

A Writerly Update

Finishing up an edit on a short film script this week. Excited about this one.

Finishing up the 8th draft of the feature script, too.

Turned in a novel pitch last week, and I’ve got my fingers crossed. If it works out, it’ll be a good story, and proof of just how useful throwing a pebble can be. Here’s hoping, right?

Also, if you missed it: this week I had another article up at The Escapist. This one, about the Greatest Sidekick in video game history: A Paean To Floyd.

Linkity Link Linky Links

Did you miss the Inquisition of Johannes Cabal? It’s not too late.

John “The Hornor, The Hornor!” Jacobs on “The Structural Integrity Of Cookies.”

Check out this interview with Matthew McBride, y’all.

Charles Ardai defines noir in a way I’d never considered, and you ask me, it’s spot-fucking-on: “The Dark Heart Of Noir.”

Also over at Mulholland Books, Tom Piccirilli talks about “Dead Mower Dreams And The Weeds Of Boo Radley.” Bad-ass post about the resurgence of dark fiction.

And that’s all she wrote, nerdlingers and word-slingers.

Sometimes, I just fail to see the awesome in things — doesn’t mean those things aren’t awesome, it just means somebody hasn’t yet duct taped an explanation to a sledgehammer and bashed it through my skull and into my treacly brain. I can be just that thick, so thick you need to punch a hole in my head to deliver a hammed-fed dose of enlightenment.

But, so far, these three things mystify me.

Help a Netbrother out?

Foursquare And Its Ilk

Caveat: I’ve never used it. I’ve never even tried. My greatest exposure to Foursquare and its ilk is the occasional auto-tweet or Facebook update from someone: “I Was Just Made Mayor Of Rodney’s Dildo Barn on 34th And Wombat Ave.” Okay. Good for you, weird context-free tweet. I guess if I ever go to Rodney’s Dildo Barn (again), I’ll be sure to pay you a toll? A tithing? Perhaps I’ll meet with you to determine Dildo Barn policy? Do you have a council? A reelection campaign?

I’m not knocking Foursquare or its users –

– well, okay, I’m maybe knocking that auto-tweet thing a leetle bit, but I’m a big jerk who likes to pee on other people’s fun; I don’t understand the value of any kind of auto-tweet, even the ones that say, “So-and-so is playing Left For Dead Rising 7… or is he?” I’d just rather have some kind of context, y’know? Do you like it? What does it mean? Did you experience something interesting? Isn’t that the same thing as auto-tweeting anything? “So-and-so is cleaning the countertops! So-and-so just had a bowel movement! So-and-so is mumbling racist epithets at the housecat!” Anyway.

I’m just asking:

How’s Foursquare work?

Why? Why is it fun? It seems to make a game out of real life, which I kind of get — but what’s the actual reward? What’s the challenge? The challenge seems largely non-present, as if it’s asking you to perform somewhat menial tasks — you’re not geocaching treasure in the desert, you’re just trekking down to the bagel place to become its callous Rex Imperator. But, then again, I’m a sucker for badges and stuff. I never thought I’d care about my Xbox gamerscore, and now I stroke it lovingly anytime I see it.

So, clearly, I can be convinced.

Help me out. What’s awesome about Foursquare? Have you used it? Do you continue to use it? Why does it compel you to continue becoming mayor of living rooms, coffee houses, and dildo barns?

Young Adult (YA) Books As Read By Adults

I get the popularity of young adult fiction.

I’m not so clear why they’re so popular with adults. I ask because suddenly I’m seeing lots of interest in something called a “Mockingjay,” which is, as it turns out, the third in a series of books I’d seen but never studied: Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. I investigated a little further, and I’m not going to lie to you: the books sound kind of fucking awesome. Like, the Harry Potter thing was interesting, but never in such a way that I felt overwhelmed by the desire to read them. And Twilight, pshhh. Not for me, thanks-so-much-bye-bye. This Hunger Games thing sounds kind of cool, though.

But it does force me to ask: what’s with grown-ups and YA fiction? Hell, it seems like YA is marketed to adults these days. One wonders if the membranous wall separating “adult fiction” from “young adult fiction” is particularly thin? Is there even a meaningful distinction outside so-called genre conventions?

It appears as if YA is becoming the PG-13 of books. Once, YA signaled books that were for that age range. But now it’s becoming books that are okay for that age range and beyond. Smarter marketing, to be sure. But am I reading that shift incorrectly?

When I worked for the library, a number of the adult librarians were clearly the audience for prominent YA books — Twilight in particular. They got really excited for those books. Wide-eyed. Quiver-lipped.

It’s weird, because when I was a teen, I read adult fiction. Er, not “adult” as in, pornography — but I read books generally marketed for adults. Largely genre stuff (aka shit-tons of horror fiction), but I guess that’s also when I read the first Bourne novel? And Donald Westlake? Thus it remains somewhat curious to me that, as a teen I read adult books, and now adults read teen books.

It’s gone nutty! The world is upside-down! Madness in the streets! It’s raining crazy!

So. What’s up with YA? Do you read it? Do you like it? Love it? Do you want to marry it, have its babies? Why are adults so into YA fiction right now? Is it just a weird trend, a buzz thing? Or is there some cultural thing I’m not yet seeing, some ingrained reason why YA fiction has become an almost adult-fed market?

What The Fuck Is A Hipster, And Why Would You Become One?

I have only the loosest understanding of the term “hipster” — it seems to suffer wildly different use depending on who is using it (and often enough, it’s an insult). Hipster to me was kind of a cultural-atavism-for-irony thing, like, this post-modern (or maybe post-post-modern) rise of needlessly retro slash needlessly low-brow outward emblems. “Oh, look at me — I’m drinking PBR with my Converse sneakers and my too-tight t-shirt and I listen to Katy Perry because it’s ironic not because I like it but maybe I also listen to bands you’ve never heard of and as soon as you hear of them, I’ll stop liking them.”

But I don’t know if that’s actually it.

What the hell is a hipster? What does one look like? What do they do in their native habitats, and how do they react when plucked from safety and dropped into unfamiliar territories?

Is hipster really just a synonym for “douche?” Meaning, those who use it are using it as an insult (not meaning that all hipsters are douches, mind)?

Does anyone here self-identify as a hipster?

Wuzza? Whooza? Muh?

As demanded, I’m going to take some time over the coming weeks to devote a post or three toward screenwriting. I write so often about novel-writing, or about the overall construction of a narrative that for the most part I haven’t really addressed this part of my writing life. And it’s a substantial part: this week is a revisit of the film script to go through a new draft (this would be draft number eight, for the record).

It seemed then that the proper place to begin was a very simple, Why I Love The Unholy Shit Out Of Writing Scripts. I do! I adore it. I don’t suffer the same sense of anxiety when writing a script, anxiety that nibbles at my edges when I’m lost in the belly of a novel.

So.

Why do I love screenwriting?

Let me count the ways.

One: Super-Fast Payoff

I’ll cut to the chase and get to the lazy man’s reason: writing a script is fast. At least, compared to writing a novel. It feels fast, too — like, boom boom boom boom, suddenly you’ve progressed by several scenes, things have changed, shit has happened, the characters are active. Blink and you’re halfway done. You can feel the wind in your hair. You have momentum. A novel can feel sloggy, boggy, a long marathon rather than a fast sprint. Screenplays speak to my inner crack-monkey, patience be damned.

Two: Sniper Bullet Instead Of Machine Gun Spray

Very few novels feel highly-tuned. Many feel sloppy — big, bloated paragraphs; rampant cliches; unnecessary language; dialogue that goes on too long without saying enough. That’s just my feeling, but a lot of novels get out of control with the word count. This can be a feature, sure, but a lot of the time it’s a bug: stories that sprawl out, airing their junk, growing fatter with each reading.

I’ve said it before: the novel feels like a spray of machine gun bullets. Fire a hail of lead, you know that some are going to hit, and some are not. Just chew apart the landscape until you kill the target. (It’s been a while since I’ve read a novel where I felt, “Wow, each word, each sentence, is critical. You cannot remove any language from this and have it stand.” Maybe, maybe Finch, by Jeff VanderMeer. Reading that, I felt like each word was perfectly placed, a critical component to the overall work.)

A script is like a sniper bullet, though, in much the same way that a short story is: you only have one bullet. You must make it count. It teaches you about the importance of language, and specifically, how crucial brevity is to the art of elegant communication. Speaking of elegance…

Three: The Elegance Of Action Plus Dialogue

The simplicity of the screenplay is deeply compelling. It’s like you’ve distilled the nature of a story down to its two most visible and critical elements: action plus dialogue. It is the embodiment of the show, don’t tell admonishment: it is all the more difficult to use the visual form of a screenplay (and despite the words on page it remains a visual form) to rely on telling rather than showing. Novels, though, even some of the best novels are guilty of the “tell.” They explain away so much: the history of this, the look of that, the thoughts of this character, the telegraphed arc, and so on.

A script doesn’t have that luxury. It is distilled down to the two thing that matter most in a story:

Characters do stuff.

Characters talk about stuff.

Action.

Dialogue.

(And it’s for this reason that I declare: if you want to know how to write a novel, first learn how to write a screenplay. A bold statement, and one without any evidence at all! Enjoy! I’m here all week.)

Four: The Art Of Bonsai

Editing is also a lot easier when it comes time to pick apart a script: because it’s already down to its spare elements, because it’s already an exercise in brevity, it’s so much easier (mentally and practically) to take it apart at the seams and add new components or restitch it together in a brand new order. It’s like Bonsai: pruning down, creating art from a minimal form, the freedom of simplicity.

Screenwriting is some crazy Zen shit. The editing even moreso.

Five: A Reduction In Pressure

A novel is all you. That’s a great thing, but it’s also a heavy burden: yes, the novel is also built with the critical help of editors and agents, but at the end of the day what’s on the page is all you. I don’t mean to suggest this as a negative, but only that it puts a lot of pressure on you: that brick of pages in people’s hands reflects on one individual and one individual alone.

You.

A screenplay though, it’s so much more. You’re only a part of it. The director’s going to make it his own. The actors will, too. The way it’s cut will alter it, too. You’ve written a blueprint, a plan, a recipe with action and dialogue, and it’s up to others to cook it up.

The part about this that’s awesome is the lack of pressure: it is oddly freeing to be a part — admittedly, an absolutely necessary part — of the process rather than The Only Known Quantity.

It feels lighter, somehow.

Less straining.

Once more: it feels kinda Zen.

Any Questions?

Man, I kinda feel like that was a boring post. Let’s liven it up with some questions or thoughts from you, the ever-critical peanut gallery. Whazzup? Whatchoo got? Anything you want to know? Any thoughts you want to share about scripting? About that versus novels? C’mon. Jump in the water. It’s warm. Probably because I peed in it. Shut up.