So, I saw Star Wars... [Spoiler free, but opinionated]

[blamebrampton]

I did not expect to see Star Wars. But when I got home from work just before 8pm because I NEED A NEW JOB, poor old Mr B who has been sick as a dog since Boxing Day, leapt up and said MOVIE NIGHT! And given his state of illness (throaty, chesty, achey horror), I felt I had to go along with this plan.

I thought the writing was really lazy, though competent, but I liked the direction, acting, design, editing and music. And I am prepared to give a bit over two hours of my life for the sight of two stormtroopers backing away Slowly and Quietly. I laughed vey loudly.

However. If you're a writer, give your readers a reason for things. A real reason, not 'he's the best pilot in the Resistance' – that's a description. Something like "Poe grew up in the Resistance. He's been flying these planes since he was eight. Stealing them since he was nine, but he never broke one, so we didn't complain …' or 'I met a pilot from the Rebellion when I was 16, and while he told me stories of laying down covering fire on the Death Star attack, I realised, that's what I really wanted to be. So every minute since then, that's what I've trained for. I found out years later that he just ferried the X-Wings around, but by then, I was flight leader, so I didn't hold it against him.'

I just want films that acknowledge that, most of the time, you get good at things by doing things. And that work has worth and value to it and can be a part of the story that makes your character a person.

Which, obviously, means I should say 'Oh, let's watch something small' the next time Mr B has a hankering for big budget. But it was fun, and I didn't need to worry my poor overtaxed brain, and those stormtroopers will bring me joy for years to come.

Comments

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

There are three, alas.

The crime one is the one closes to being finished has the first 56,000 words all but done and a plot for the rest, with some scenes sorted, and all it needs in the first part is a tweak to the opening scene and then a little bit more in the way of timeline for one event, but it's very far along and I was in a rush of writing when it hit me that … I was meant to be co-writing this with Shiv … and now I am in a bit of a dither as to do I just finish it and hand it to her and say 'so, put in some more romancey bits and change the bits you hate and then we're sorted …' or do I hand it over with the plan and say 'OK, second half is yours' or ... fuckit, I don't know. Will sort something and soon.

The next one is a thriller in which the 2008 crash and the age of terror are looked at through a classic vampire war novel. Have only about 40K of this sorted and keep trying to lock down the motivation of the bad guys, the problem being that when you translate the real world 'because we're selfish cunts' into narrative, it's less satisfying as an explanation. Halfway to solving it.

The last one is a fantasy that I wrote almost all of 10 years ago and while I liked most of the events and characters, the structure has never worked for me. So it's been sitting there waiting for a reworking, which I thought I had solved last year and 10K in went 'Oh, yeah, no.' I'll pull it out again this year.

I just need to DO more and finish more! It's the problem with being an editor, you're mid-flow when you suddenly go 'Hmm, that creates a strange tempo, let me just read back …'

I should probably send you £10 a month to tweet 'Get the fuck of Twitter and write books!' at me…

[ravurian]

I have just seen that David Bowie has rather emphatically ensured that Labyrinth II will not be going into production, though I can't help feeling that we sort of predicted this (in a rather roundabout way) in our vague references to the mysterious Decline of the Goblin King. My goodness, aren't we topical? (But also: damn on two fronts).

I would read any of your three novels, in whatever state they appear, though I have proved utterly unable to prevent myself asking all sorts of annoying questions when reading people's novels. I also display a lamentable tendency to cover them in red pen. Terrible, appalling habit.

I have a growing stack of enormous and terrifying stories in my head, but they're never small, never things I think I may be in any way equipped to doing justice, and they just seem so immense that I can never imagine actually, you know, writing them. I am fond of telling people parts of them, though, which seems to scratch the itch. I wish you better luck with yours!

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

In retrospect, his most recent songs were a bloody big clue. But we were all so used to him killing himself off in his music, we failed to spot the final time.

And now I really want to write that fic …

All right Mr Red Pen, I will send you the first one finished -- very likely to be the crime story -- and you can interrogate away, because that is how stories get better up to a point (if you try to explain EVERYTHING, they get worse again). And then, once I have a nice jusicy agent and contract, I will take advantage of my spare time when procrastinating on my own work to say 'Oh no, good sir, I think you will find that is a scene, and it clearly needs to be a book, and no-one else could write it like you, AND THINK OF ALL THE MEDICAL RESEARCH YOU COULD FUND!

Then we will both be able to fly to wherever and swap pages and wield terrible editors' pencils, but have the other say 'Oh yes, MUCH better!' a lot.

[ravurian]

My friend Nat said I should watch the video for Lazarus, and this morning I did, and then I watched the video for Black Star, and now I am mildly freaked out because I kind of feel that not only was he announcing his imminent demise, but he was also leaving a road map for his resurrection. I mean. Gosh. I feel like I should make a petition against anyone bedazzling his skull and placing it on the back of a kneeling woman of child-bearing age. Or, you know, that I should stand ready to disrupt that ritual and slam that door shut with all my strength. Because, you know, he's not the only thing behind that door. Um. NOT THAT I AM CREDULOUS AND HAVE AN OVER-ACTIVE IMAGINATION, you understand, just that I have some experience of telling stories, and quite a bit of being a story. ANYWAY. And yes, you should write that fic (and maybe refer to the Goblin King's successor as the Black Star? IDK, I'm just saying).

And, ugh, my friend Mohammed is always listening to my ideas and nodding wisely over his drooping hand-rolled fag and beer and saying that what I think is a short story is a novel, and what I think is a TV show is a series of novels, and what I think is a novel is possibly some sort of cult manual or a bible, and that I should probably write my stories or risk enacting them instead. That is, he says, a very real risk for storytellers. I can't say he's entirely wrong.