When Writers Come Together

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Perhaps it was my nostalgia for Clarion, or maybe it was the weekend I had in Calgary that all the science fiction writers had their weekend of writing.  All I know is that for two and a half hours, our group wrote.  We set up in the library and worked on our laptops and I was happy.

It’s funny, the communal aspects of writing.  Why was I so excited to do this?  Why was it so much fun to be in a room writing with others?  Why is it so hard sometimes doing this alone?

Because I’m a social creature perhaps.  Being by myself is very very difficult—professions that make me have to be away from people are hard on me socially.  But I loved having them in the room, so I could do both at once.  I’m suggesting we do these on a regular basis–so once a month right now, but maybe more later….

Anyway, it was good to do.  I worked on a short story, though it took a turn I’ve decided to abandon–too dark for me.  I got the willies just writing about it and it overpowered my story….

Still, the exercise is good–and I plan on doing this when I offer my novel writing course in the fall.

Nostalgia, thy name is Clarion

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It was this time last year when I had the greatest experience of my science fiction writing life. I’m talking Clarion’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, held in San Diego (really La Jolla) at UCSD (2007).

I was in the middle of a move out of the country—a summer I had little money to spare–but I threw a quarter of what I had into this workshop, in hopes of learning new technique, honing my writing skills and re-invigorating my desire to write science fiction and fantasy. I had no idea what I was in for…

It was 6 weeks of writing–completely devoted to writing and learning from 18 other writers like myself, who had come to pick up skills too, and from 6 writing teachers, all published writers in their fields: Greg Frost, Jeff and Ann Vandermeer (the editor of Weird Tales), Karen Joy Fowler, Cory Doctorow, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman. We were visited by Stan Robinson, Vernor Vinge, and got to go to the ComiCon held in San Diego.

The core part of it –despite all the superheroes of writing around us–was the group of us, living and writing together in the dorms at UCSD. It was six weeks of hard work, but I look back and I think it was the best work I have ever had—creating. It was electric. Everyone was creating fantastic stories. I’m serious. People were on a level I have never been around–and they were pumping out stories, and what was great about it and allowed me to keep my head up above water, is that everyone else had rough stories too—we were at the same level, AND we were interested in each others ideas (not at all the competitive nature of grad school–colleagues actually cared about your success–I saw no jealousy.). And we learned from each other.

We also bonded as a family. We drank blueberry beer, and badly colored Vitamin water, we visited a haunted tree at night, we walked to the beach, we had squirt gun wars, drew mystic chalk circles on the sidewalk, we lived and breathed science fiction and fantasy writing, we lived a dream for six weeks, really….

I don’t know if I will ever have an experience like that in my life again. But it was beautiful, and taught me a great deal. Some of it I’m still sifting through. Some of it I absorbed and don’t know I gained it when I did…other stuff I can quote to you.

If you ever have a chance to go to Clarion (and I favor San Diego, though Clarion West is probably good, and other workshops have good things too, I’m sure) then scrimp, save, get your significant other’s permission to be encamped along these hills of light, where the joy of writing science fiction and fantasy is shared by 18 other people, and your teachers, where you are encouraged to write. Where others will look at your stuff with honesty and say, “This part here is miracle. This part here is crapola.” You will not regret it–though you have sold all you have, buy Clarion….

I can tell you truthfully, that I still talk to Clarion folks (not as much as I want) and still visit when I can, though once you get to the outer boonies of the Yukon it is hard. And call. And everyone is still writing and publishing.

Often I go back to that time and think now, i wish i had six weeks and 18 people breathing down my neck! Try it out for yourself.

Being Chosen: a motif that resonates deep

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Just thinking about Kung Fu Panda again. I remember as I was watching and we were coming to the part of the story where Ooglay, the Turtle, must choose the Dragon Warrior, that I smiled.

Something about that motif always pleases me. It’s a universal desire: being chosen. And not just being chosen, say, in Kickball. I’m talking about a Wise Person, someone well respected, choosing you and telling you that you have abilities far beyond what you thought you did.

Rare these days to find a well-respected Wise Person anymore–wisdom is suspect. Authority is suspect. Certainly supernatural hunches and Predestination is suspect. But we all want it, secretly. For someone to assure us that we will matter. That what we can do is far beyond what we thought we could do. And we really want someone to tell us we have that potential.

I’ve seen the motif in other films, and from really old fairy tales. But it works: Willie Wonka knows that Charlie has the potential to be great; some coach believes in some losing player; the wizard chooses the peasant boy or girl.

I don’t know why I want to talk about it. It just made me happy to see that motif in this film. It plucked that string again in me and resonated deep–that someone might see through my bullshit, through my mistakes, through my attempts, and know what I could do, know what I will do, and bet on me.

Kiss the frog, be kind to the bear, love the beast–it’s all the same. When stories use that motif it resonates with most readers–as long as we can see that the bumbling pre-hero is good and honest and trying, even if he makes a lot of mistakes along the way.

How Kung Fu Panda Gets Fantasy Writing Right

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Brilliantly concevied and executed, Kung Fu Panda soars as a Fantasy compared to The Forbidden Kingdom. And essentially, they have the same plot.

Take a fan of martial arts and make him the only one who can stop the big villain in a martial arts film.

The post-modernism of films is actually a delight to see–how “fans” are being incorporated into the films they love as plot and character. I’m sure it’s done well other places (most notably Galaxy Quest which takes actors from a show and puts them in reality, but also has a place for fans of the show as heroes too) but KFP does it with style, owing, I think, in no small part to the casting of Jack Black who has played a fan before: School of Rock and Tenacious D come to mind as well as Be Kind Rewind. So naturally, he’s cast as an adoring fan of Kung Fu–and of the Five heroes that protect the city. When he’s picked as the next Dragon Warrior, he has to learn how to become a warrior. Here’s how I think they did it, the writers, and Black, to make it more believable, more fun, and a better overall handling of the same plot from The Forbidden Kingdom.

1. Po’s training is designed for Po. First this is a comedy, so the training is a parody of Martial Arts films, and a parody of the newbie getting quick-trained by the Master. But Jason’s training in TFK is just standard training with looks of disapproval and lots of complaining and then an unbelievable transformation… Po has to be trained (SPOILER!!) using food–his desire. His training reflects his personality–so in a way, we learn more about Po through his training. For Jason in TFK, his training has no reflection of either his masters or him, and it is merely a trudge to get him to the plot. For KFP, Po’s training furthers the plot and the Po we see after training is still Po–vulnerable, quirky, just better with movees that have little style but are fun to watch…

2. Both have to believe in themselves, but Po offers the more believable moments of doubt and overcoming that doubt.

3. Jackie Chan is in both of these movies playing a Monkey like person–strange. But KFP knows that they keep the dialogue to a minimum on Jackie. And Dustin Hoffman as Shifu is a much more layered character than Jackie Chan’s mentor in TFK. There is a troubled past, some disappointment, a reason he’s gruff, and the promise that he has a character arc too….

4. Other characters have arcs as well–Tigress, Oogway the Turtle, Tai Lung the villain–they all have their pasts, and how they are connected, and how they affect each other. Yes, the crane, viper and monkey and mantis have little to no growth, but by far KFP handles more rounded characters than TFK even tried to.

5. Though we are told that Po will save the day, we don’t know how–and we really never do until he does it. We can’t see that Tai Lung can be stopped, until we watch how it happens. This is brilliant as there is only a little foreshadowing, and most of the time we are discovering Po’s potential as he does.

6. Jason in TFK is a big fan of Martial Arts Films, and Po is the fan of the Five. In KFP, they play up the fandom aspect, making it a part of Po’s character, and why he has an inferiority complex to go with his Hero Worship. Jason rarely exhibits his fanboyness–he’s too busy being a stock character, and never realizing what makes him unique–cause no writer has written it for him. he has two or three jokes in the middle of his training related to his knowledge of a certain move. But the film could have capitalized on Jason’s worship and film knowledge, but after the opening sequence, Jason could have been any kid. With Po, we know his worship is what drives the film…he believes in these heroes, wants to be one of them, is devastated when they don’t like him, and runs when he is burdened with doing what his heroes could not do.

7. Po is likeable. Unlike Jason in TFK, there are no insurmountable character flaws in Po–he just has self-doubt, a low self-image, a bit overweight. But he wants to be better. He tries, he never gives up, and he is thwarted more than once from getting what he wants. He has a dad that loves him, but a future in fast food that many of us would identify with. Jason has that awful moment when he takes the thugs directly to the old man and lets them beat him up…. viewers never recover from that. At least, I didn’t. It was unnecessary.

So, further comparisons might be done on the two movies, but I was thrilled with Panda. And yeah, it was cartoon—but cartoons should never be able to do more with plot or character than live action. In fact, if they do, it really shows the shallowness and deficit of the live action. Cartoons can do more with style and camera shots–and making animals out of everyone–but plot and character aren’t necessarily strengthened with cartoon. So, KFP didn’t win over TFK because of animation—but because the writing was SO much better.

Leaving America: the Radio Series

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Hey, looks like it’s a go!  CBC Yukon is airing my radio series starting Monday, June 2, between 7:15 and 7:30am.  The episodes are about 6 min apiece and there’s seven of them.  Five from Mon-Fri and then two left over on Mon, the 9th and Tues, the 10th.

The seven episodes cover my road trip from Midway TX to Whitehorse, YT–4000 miles of stopovers, national parks and interesting things that I did and thought about and interesting people I met along the way–not all of them, of course.  I only had a total of 49 minutes, tops!

Mostly it’s about Immigration and what you think about when you change your national identity.  But there’s a lot of science fiction in there too because they are so intertwined.  (see earlier post on Immigration and Aliens).

Hope you enjoy it.  I had a lot of fun doing the audio edits and choosing music and sound effects.  I’ve hidden a lot of science fiction music cues in the piece–and hearing what I did with Klingon battle music is worth getting up that early!  LOL.

How not to write Fantasy: The Forbidden Kingdom

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The movie is based on one of the oldest known novels, Journey to the West, a Chinese Epic. Written down finally in the 1590s from oral stories dating much farther back, it’s 100 chapters long and is one of the four classic novels of Chinese literature, so any screenwriter would have challenges in writing up even a portion of it for screen. Whether The Forbidden Kingdom works on a literature-to-movie basis or not is not my point below. It doesn’t matter to me if the movie represents any part of the classic novel itself, or whether the Monkey King is true to character as depictd by Wu Cheng’en, the purported author of the novel.

To me the problem is always how the film stands up as a story. And here for me the movie serves as a good example on how not to write a Fantasy.

1. There is very little character set-up for the main character and the character that does develop is unlikeable. His name is so forgettable that I have forgotten it. Josh or Seth watches a LOT of kung-fu movies–we know this because of his room decor, posters and posters of old films. He rents movies. He has a thin relationship to the old shopkeeper–who seems to run a kung-fu Movie Warehouse and Knick Knack store. The movie seems in a hurry to get us to the “object”–the staff–and so makes Josh/Seth see it through a door that’s been left open, pick it up off the floor, and we get to feel the “weird” importance of the object. In the next scene, unknown girl gets Josh/Seth to tell us what he does and why he lives there–she’s so much a schill that she doesn’t even scream when Josh is then beat up by a gang of thugs. He doesn’t react much either. When they discover he has rented movies from Shopkeeper’s Kung-fu Emporium, they assume he can get them in to see the old guy and rob him. He walks them straight to the shop, tricks the shopkeeper, and watches as they beat him up.

Okay, I don’t like this character already. He’s shuffled through his plot points like an understudy during a rehearsal (and then you’ll stumble here and then you’ll look pathetic here and then ….) and allowed to have no reaction to what the director wants us to think as weakness. But this isn’t just weakness of strength and skill–as the movie makes it out to be–but HUGE weakness of character. He doesn’t have to lead Thugs to the Shop. He has taken thugs to an old man to beat him up. Without more plot to tell me he was forced or coerced, he’s an accomplice. I could have actually liked him if they had beat him up because he hadn’t led them to the old man. But now I think he’s worthless. The Thugs are merely there so we can (spoiler!) see them beat up at the end.

We know nothing about Josh/Seth but that he has an addiction to Kung-Fu. No background, no relationships–he’s a cypher. His choices are to not choose. I don’t believe he doesn’t try to run or fight back against the thugs. I don’t believe he would lead them to this shopkeeper. I don’t believe he’d stand back and let the shopkeeper get beat up. And if I DID, that would make Josh/Seth into a worthless person, not a sympathetic one, and not one who gets to go to 13th Century China, or is that 12th? Anyway.

On another note, the only movies that the writers have seen are the Karate Kid movies—Josh/Seth is a dead ringer for Ralph Macchio, and the beat-up gang scene and the old man are plot point for plot point Karate Kid; even Josh/Seth’s past–a kid from New Jersey–is straight from KK’s bio.

2. Pick up Companions at the Corner of First and Main. Well, Joseph Campbell would have been happy. Naive character, after going unwillingly into adventure, is taken to an otherworldly bar. I was waiting for the Star Wars Cantina theme here as Josh/Seth tried to get Jackie Chan to help him. All the main companions will say no first and then there they are marching with him. We merely pick them up as the plot goes on, and we pick them up for no reason. There are no extra characters–those we might pick up, those who might become important–just the Main Characters and the Villains.

3. Josh/Seth’s unprecedented rise to Kung-fu competency: never before has one mastered Kung Fu so quickly except in the Matrix. There are some funny moments here, more than anywhere else in the movie, genuinely good dialogue that plays on J/S’s knowledge of kung-fu moves, or rather the names for moves. This should have been a constant shtick–J/S quoting movie references, etc and pitting them against “reality”. Unfortunately, he seems to know as much about those movies as Wikipedia could tell him. He can list off moves. But what do his movies tell him about plots, expectations, characters?

4. None of the places are really used. I loved the movie, Hero, because each setting became a living character, part of the plot, and part of the action. Here a cherry blossom orchard is a backdrop. A pit that leads to magma is merely a piece of furniture–not a real obstacle for any of the fighting….there’s no threat that anyone will fall into that magma. A field of very long reeds/wheat/something is merely there to cut into for some training. Our characters go from sudden desert to sudden lush green hills–quite the ecosystem juxtapositioning.

5. The characters are plastic with plastic motives. Sparrow is out for revenge. Jackie Chan is along for the ride, perhaps to be the kid’s mentor, though we don’t know why. Jet Li is a monk seeking the staff. The Witch wants immortality–because everyone wants it (apparently there’s only enough juice to make one person eternal). The Jade Warlord wants the staff. The kid has to return the staff to “its rightful owner.” No one in the story thinks about the motivation they were handed on a card. No one thinks of turning back, of making a different decision, of negotiating a deal. There are NO complications. Fantasies can’t be built on a single plot system–with no twists. We know that the characters have to reach their destination–it’s in the script. I’m never in doubt because these aren’t real characters–they are an assembled entourage for the audience. They escort us through the plot–and, dang, they aren’t even that entertaining.

I almost walked out of the movie–it had nothing to hold my interest. Even the fight scenes. Nothing new was given to Kung-fu repetoire–not like the movies it purported to love in the opening credits. I got tired of watching the kung-fu kicks–and I can watch Matrix 1-3, which can’t be comparable to classic Kung Fu, several times!

There was one surprise in the movie, and I won’t give it away, but it wasn’t possible even by the movie’s logic. I think I will show this movie whenever I get half way through teaching a Fantasy writing course. Yes, it still manages to string together a bad plot, but getting to the end of your plot is not the end of your quest, Grasshopper.

Immigrants and Aliens

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I’ve wondered if the history of science fiction aliens is actually a reflection of the history of immigration. And the Fantasy journey, is that not just a long migration looking for a “home” made by wandering, often restless characters, sojourning here and there. There is a long history of the association of immigrants and aliens and science fiction/fantasy. Being an immigrant, I can feel the resonance now more than ever before: the quest to get to some other place, the endless traveling, the passing through towns–that fantasy quest part, and also the outsider/alien that science fiction loves to cast in the starring role–the uncomfortable character facing crowds of others who are “alike” or who have something in common , or the invading horde of “aliens” taking away our lives, changing our culture, threatening our identities–and surprisingly bonding those who used to think they were so different into a “same” so there can be a common villain in the “Alien.”

Not that everyone takes a negative view of “aliens”—E.T. is simply a lost anthropologist/researcher, and Close Encounters is a giant Cultural Exchange Program (we take some of yours, you take some of ours…).

A few nights ago, me and some Clarionites (go CLARION SAN DIEGO, 2007) were talking about the lone-status of “aliens” in Star Trek, a time and series which touted such huge cultural exchanges between species, but we often saw only one of any particular race in Starfleet. One Ferengi (Nog), one Klingon (Worf), two trills (Judzia and Ezri–and them only one at a time, sharing the same symbiant), one Betazed (Troi), one from Tasha Yar’s planet (Tasha), one Vulcan at a time (Spock and then Tuvok), one changeling (not in starfleet, but still alone), one hologram, one android. These are planets full of people all mixing together and in the 24th Century we are still having problems understanding other cultures, still having problems seeing whole mixes of populations in Starfleet, on ships, etc.

Yes, the storylines reflect where we are in relation to aliens. We are seeking to understand them one person at a time–we concentrate on the loneliness of the immigrant adapting to all the human (white) people on the Enterprise or Voyager. But they don’t reflect the movement towards globalization that even today we are experiencing–where populations have a wider diversity, where there is no singular pure population in many places that reflect ONE culture. Star Trek may have cured poverty, cured all illness, solved political rifts, but they cannot conquer “alienation.” They only underline and reflect how essential alienation is to science fiction…it probes the human spirit as outcast, alone, different.

As authors are we trying to make all the Others familiar? Or do we just identify with those outcast “aliens”, those that were not born somewhere, but who live there anyway? What is the relationship between chronicling the journey of an immigrant and the journeys of our science fictional/fantastical outcasts?

I don’t know. I just know that it’s interesting that in a future of an endless universe with endless cultures and repeated exploration, there remains the story of movement through strange lands with strangers all around us who see us, too, as strange. It’s as if, as authors, we must tell an immigrant story.

Pooh for Easter

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For Easter, I ate at the Dueck’s house with Ruth and Stan Dueck and Judy and Richard Klassen. I wanted to bring something to the dinner myself, but am a reasonably ungifted cook, so I opted to buy a dessert. I look around Walmart and there is such a bright selection of chocolate things for kids, and I guess I just wanted to bring back that kid feeling to Easter a bit. I also wanted to add an Easter ritual. At first I was going to get a regular chocolate Easter bunny, but then I found Winnie the Pooh instead and decided that we would divide the Pooh for Easter. Unintentional hilarity ensues when you divide up pooh at a dinner table….

For everyone, pass the pooh–this pooh is for you.

Yukon Writers’ Festival and Young Author’s Conference

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Well, coming up May 1 and 2, I am one of six writers featured at the Yukon Writers’ Festival.  Writers are:

I am hopelessly outclassed!  But it will be great fun meeting them, and participating in the High School writing portion of the festival, the Young Author’s Conference.  Students from area high schools come to the library of FH Collins for two intensive days of writing instruction and workshop with the six writers.

Click here for information.

Hold Your Horses

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Okay, now that there’s a link to my blog via the Yukon Writer’s Conference, I need to get this blog in shape. I’ve bought the book “WordPress for Dummies” so I should be getting better at this before the conference begins on May 1st, but no guarantee that I’ll be interesting, just more streamlined and more savvy with the whole HTML coding. We’ll save “interesting” for some time later in the summer.