Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 134

Argh Author: Justine Covington’s His Lady to Protect

Justine Covington’s His Lady to Protect is now available to purchase. It’s Book 1 in Justine’s The Beggars Club (Regency romance) series:

The cost of his redemption is trust. Her trust…

When Nate promises to protect his best friend’s little sister from her traitorous uncle, he knows it’s the least he can do to atone for his past sins. And if a marriage of convenience is the most efficient way to guarantee her safety? So be it. He’s ready for anything…except how quickly his lovely new bride would steal his heart…

Susannah never intended to marry the man who led her brother to his death. The fact that she once loved him? Irrelevant. She just can’t allow herself to trust him again. But it’s not long before she starts to wonder if there’s more to Nate than meets the eye. What if he’s not the villain she assumed he was? And if that’s the case…can her poor, beleaguered heart survive another inevitable fall?

Nate and Susannah have much to overcome if they have any hope of finding their way to happily ever after. But what if trust is simply a luxury neither can afford?

Buy His Lady to Protect to read the first in an exciting new series centered around six friends from Eton and set in the infamous Regency period.

Buy Links: https://books2read.com/hltp

Free Prequel: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/70dc4hc0ju

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Questionable: How do you decide what your main plot is and who your antagonist is?

AG wrote:

So when is the decision to beef up your villain into the antagonist, and when is the decision to shrink the villain so that the focus is on the primary relationships? I remember that a common complaint has been that Marvel villains are weak, but for several of those films, that worked, since they didn’t get in the way of the primary relationships. But when does the complaint that the villain is weak become an actual issue?

There’s a lot to unpack there. I’ll tackle the first question at length and then hit the second on the way out.

Let’s start with the difference between a villain and an antagonist. A villain is a value judgement: This person is Bad. An antagonist is a role in a conflict: This character blocks the protagonist from his/her/their goal. Many stories have antagonists that are villains, but some are more complex than that. Macbeth is the protagonist of his story, but he’s also the villain by the end (big character arc into Hell). So when we’re analyzing story, it’s better to stick to roles (protagonist/antagonist) and avoid value judgments (hero/villain).

With that in mind, I’m thinking your first question is more along the lines of “When is the antagonist of the external action plot primary, and when is the antagonist of the love story primary?” And if that’s what you were going for (apologies for recasting the question), it depends on what story you’re telling.

So what story is Venom trying to tell?

We have two choices, Eddie vs. the Evil Scientist or Eddie vs. Venom. There is, as always, Eddie vs. Eddie as the protagonist fights his inner demons, but since that’s played out literally in the Eddie vs. Venom conflict, we’re going to just merge those two.

So let’s start with Eddie vs The Evil Scientist

• Protagonist: Eddie Brock

• Goal: Save people through investigative reporting

• Antagonist: Evil Scientist

• Goal: Save people by merging humans with aliens so humans can escape to live on other plants after we trash this one.

• Conflict: The Evil Scientist is one of those we-had-to-destroy-the-village-to-save-it kind of guys, so the rising numbers of homeless who are dying in his experiments draws the attention and opposition of Eddie.

There’s a nice symmetry there, plus while Eddie truly cares about people, at heart he’s an we-had-to-destroy-the-village-to-save-it kind of guy, too, since he takes the info from his girlfriend’s computer without thinking of the danger that will pose for her, accepts the help of the Evil Scientist’s minion without protecting her, and crashes a window in the lab to set free a screaming homeless woman he knows, only to inadvertently cause her death (Moral: If you’re female, don’t go to Eddie for help). Both Eddie and the Evil Scientist think they’re helping people but people are dying around them, especially on those dumb car chases; as a cop says later, there are bodies all over the city, so nice job on saving people, you jerks.

Unfortunately, the script as written does nothing with either of those parallels. Instead it sticks the Evil Scientist with long speeches, which could be a character trait once, but after that just becomes the place you fast forward through. So the Evil Scientist half of the equation is speech, big chase after Eddie, speech, big chase after Eddie, speech, get infected by an Evil Alien, big chase after Eddie. It lacks interest. More than that, it doesn’t push the action because, after the first half hour, there’s a new guy in the plot and he’s got the wheel now.

That would, of course, be the Eddie vs Venom plot.

• Protagonist: Eddie Brock

• Goal: Save people through investigative reporting

• Antagonist: Venom

• Goal: Take over Earth as an intergalactic Olive Garden to save his people.

• Conflict: Eddie wants to save the Earth; Venom wants to eat it.

That’s a nice tidy conflict. There’s also some symmetry in the conflict which the script lampshades when Venom tells Eddie that they’re a lot alike, he’s a loser on his planet, too. The weakness in this conflict is the weakness in all romantic conflicts, they’re going to have to compromise at the end, but since this is one of those romances where one lover destroys the other lover to set him/her/them free from toxic beliefs, we actually can get a strong conflict out of this: Eddie has to convince Venom to turn on his alien people and help Eddie save his Earth people. Which he does, by doing absolutely nothing. Venom just spends some time merged with Eddie, decides he’s a good guy, and switches sides, the entire HUGE character shift explained when Venom says, “I like you, Eddie.” He also says that Earth is beautiful, but that seems like a weak motivation if your race is starving on another planet they also borked (look! another parallel the movie doesn nothing with).

The thing about picking antagonists is that you have to use them, they’re characters with motivations and agency. The Eddie vs. Venom conflict has all the juice because they’re fighting over his body (“You’re my ride,” Venom tells Eddie) and they’re entertaining as all hell, but the conflict doesn’t make sense—Venom can get another ride, Eddie knows how to permanent evict Venom—without showing the arc of the relationship that leads them to voluntarily choose each other. That arc is the relationship plot, and it’s not on the screen. Meanwhile, the Eddie vs. Evil Scientist conflict makes perfect sense and is on the screen, but it’s so tired (Evil Scientist tries to take over the world, Good Old Local Boy picks up slingshot to stop him) and repetitive that, while it’s logical, it’s ho-hum.

And of course running two antagonists is always problematical: Pick a lane, people.

For example: This story hums whenever it’s Eddie vs Venom, slows to a crawl when it’s Eddie vs Evil, so obviously, we’re gonna pick Eddie vs Venom. But without the Evil Scientist, there’s no pressure on Eddie to bond with Venom, and our Evil Scientist subplot is already a bomb. That subplot picks up considerably when the Evil Scientist runs into Riot, the leader of the aliens, and gets merged. He’s thrilled with the merge (contrast with Eddie, who is not) and there’s a nice moment when Riot says something like, “And then I will do this,” and the Scientist says, “We will do that,” and Riot says, “Right, we,” and everybody in the audience says, “Fat chance, you’re toast, Evil Scientist,” so their subplot conflict could be a nice contrast/foil to the Eddie/Venom struggle that begins with Eddie hating Venom and ends with them bonded. Could be, but isn’t because there’s no time to develop that because of the long running times of the Dick Scenes.

So cut that opening stuff down to five minutes, ten tops since it’s mostly about how the aliens came to Earth and traveled to the West Coast which is an incredible waste of story real estate which could be solved by somebody saying, “OMG, the aliens have landed and they’re on the West Coast!” Then use the time gained to arc the Eddie/Venom conflict-to-compromise, using the Evil Scientist/Riot conflict as a (minimal) foil to strengthen that plot, leading to the climax where Venom sacrifices himself for Eddie and Eddie reaches out to take him back to defeat Riot and the Evil Scientist, the Venom-Eddie team winning because they’ve changed and bonded by choice and the Riot and the Evil Scientist losing because they never understand each other and would never sacrifice for each other. The tweaks to the script to accomplish all of that would be so small (unlike the cuts to the action scenes) that it would still essentially be the same movie, it would just be focused and make sense.

So to return to the beginning:

“When is the antagonist of the external action plot primary, and when is the antagonist of the love story primary?”

Pick the plot that has the juice, the plot where the story bounces because it’s new wine in old bottles, and make that antagonist and plot primary. Take the other plot and make it subplot, parallel to the main plot, supporting it through parallel action and/or as a foil, making it serve the main conflict, a relationship story complicated/echoed/contrasted by an action subplot, or an action story complicated/echoed/contrasted by a relationship subplot.

And to claim my hypocrisy, yeah, that’s what’s been wrong with the Nita book. I was having so much fun worldbuilding and working with nutso secondary antagonists, the I dropped the ball on the relationship story which, as it turns out, is the primary one. I did the same thing that the Venom writers/director did. I didn’t pick a lane and ended up with a weaker story because of it. People who live in glass plots, Jenny . . .

Sidenote: You know that poster up above? It’s a dead giveaway to the story dynamic. Look at how the cast is arranged. Annie, the traditional romance antagonist, is off to the right. The Evil Scientist, Drake, the traditional action antagonist, is off to the left. Who’s in the center with Eddie, looming over him, dominating him? That would be our antagonist.

Or there’s the one sheet poster, that’s practically Spy vs. Spy in it’s simplicity:

Okay, doing story analysis by poster is probably a bad idea from an intellectual standpoint, but it might be fun. As in, “Nita’s front and center on the poster, but who’s on there opposing her, Cthulhu or Nick?” Right, Nick. Sigh.

The answer to the second question—”when does the complaint that the villain is weak become an actual issue”—is “always.” The protagonist’s motivation pushes the plot, but the antagonist’s opposition kicks that motivation higher and continually escalates the pace of the story as it shapes the story to the climax. A powerful antagonist powers a story much better than a weak one.

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day. The candy is probably on sale by now.

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This is a Good Book Thursday, February 13, 2020

I’ve been reading Trisha Ashley and Jennifer Crusie. And crochet patterns and recipes. Lots of loose plotting in everything.

What have you read lately?

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Working Wednesday, February 12, 2020

I’m keying in changes to Nita from the hard copy, possibly the most boring job in writing. Still crocheting like crazy.

What are you up to?

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So Here’s What I Would Have Done: Venom

The last time I looked at a piece of pop culture storytelling and said, “You know, I’d have done it THIS way,” I ended up spending four years writing Nita Dodd. So I’m a little leery of going there again, except that the film Venom is such an interestingly flawed story. Generally monsters, even super monsters, aren’t my thing which is why it took me so long to get around to this one. Also, I’m kind of Marvel-ed out. And yet, this is one of those movies where the good parts are really good, and the bad parts are just blah (as opposed to those movies where the good parts are really good and the bad parts are horrible–see January Man).

This kind of story always fascinates me. If they could get the good stuff right, why couldn’t they avoid the bad? Hypocrites R Us, of course, my books have the same problem. Still, I wanted to take Venom apart to see why Rotten Tomato critics gave it a 29% favorable rating and regular people put it at 80%. Here’s my take (spoilers all over the place below):In the end, I decided it came down to knowing what your story is really about and focusing on that, no matter what you’d planned before.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE AHEAD.

Venom is another Marvel comic book movie, although it appears to happen independently of the Avengers-et-al stories. The protagonist is Eddie Brock, a feckless, reckless journalist who has an elemental approach to life (basically get the story no matter what the cost), a successful investigative news show, and a beautiful fiancee named Annie he plans to marry soon. Life is good. Then a gazilionaire Evil Scientist brings four aliens to earth that can only survive if they bond with human beings, most of whom die from the merge. The local landfills are already full of bodies of the homeless that Evil Scientist has been experimenting on for medical breakthroughs, so a few more from bad alien hook-ups barely register, except on Eddie, who’s a people person. Eddie steals info from his girlfriend Annie’s computer (she’s a lawyer and her firm reps the Evil Scientist) and confronts the Evil Scientist with it on air, and Evil Scientist gets Eddie fired and then makes him unemployable, and Annie leaves him because he’s betrayed her by using her password to get to her files (good call, Annie), which has also gotten her fired. So Eddie hits bottom hard, out of money, out of a job, and out of his engagement, only to be approached by one of the Evil Scientist’s minions (a terrific Jenny Slade) who tells him he’s right about the Evil Scientist killing the homeless and offering him proof. She takes him into the Evil Scientist’s research facility, where things go wrong and one of the aliens infects/bonds with Eddie, proving just when you think you’ve hit bottom, there’s another bottom below that (aka, “great plotting”).

But that’s the first thirty minutes of the movie. Yeah, thirty minutes of set-up while you watch the screen and think, “My god, this movie is slow.” Turns out, that’s because it hasn’t started yet.

Because this movie is not Eddie vs. the Evil Scientist, it’s Eddie vs. Venom, the alien who bonds with him (“I am not a parasite!”). It is, in fact, a kind of perverse romantic comedy/buddy picture as Eddie and Venom try to come to terms with their time share of his body: Venom can’t live without Eddie’s body, and Eddie’s only alive because Venom’s supernatural powers are protecting him from the Evil Scientist’s sadistic henchmen.

So basically, Venom is a marriage-of-convenience romance, one that hints at moving to an OT3 if they can they talk Annie around, (there’s evidently a healthy selection of Eddie/Venom slash fan fiction out there), which leads to Eddie’s big synthesis moment at the end of the movie when he announces “We are Venom” and bites a guy’s head off. It’s a nice moment, really. The guy was asking for it. Once I twigged to that, it’s easy to see what keeps me watching again and why I do something else for about half of the movie. I love a good romance.

Tom Hardy plays both Eddie and Venom, and the man earns his paycheck. Without him, this would have been a complete disaster. With him, as long as he’s on screen, this rips along, a lot of fun, with two characters you become invested in. Yes, Venom is a murderous alien who plans to eat everybody on Earth, but he’s willing to make exceptions. Yes, Eddie is a relationship idiot who doesn’t understand how much pain he’s caused others until a human-eating alien points it out to him, but he does care and he does eventually see. They’re buddies/lovers in the best possible way: they change each other for the better. I love the way Hardy plays Eddie as an often whiny schlub instead of a shiny hero: Eddie is a mess. I love the way he plays Venom as the powerful bad guy with the moral astuteness of a ten-year-old until Eddie’s basic good-guy-ness begins to infect him. It’s just a great protagonist/antagonist dynamic.

Except whoever wrote this move thinks the antagonist is the Evil Scientist. The actor who plays him does his best, but the way the character is written makes him a dead spot every time he shows up because the Evil Scientist loves to lecture, pontificate, and generally Polonius every scene he’s in. Okay, there’s one great moment when the Evil Scientist has Eddie in his lair, and Eddie insults him, and the Evil Scientist says, “That’s hurtful. Long journal entry on that tonight.” I laughed out loud. But I think that just emphasized the blandness of the Evil Scientist’s character in general. The rest of the Eddie & Venom movie is comic in an extremely violent, male-action-extravaganza way. Then the movie cuts back to the Evil Scientist who’s killing people we like and explaining ad infinitum why it’s important to do that for his Evil Plan. I’m fine with the Evil Scientist being a complication, but as an antagonist, he’s like every other bad guy in the movie: he gets his ass kicked by Venom.

In fiction writing theory, there are a lot of really-more-of-a-guidelines for antagonists–they should be stronger than the protagonists, they should have a goal as strong as the protagonist, they should actively oppose the protagonist–and the Evil Scientist meets all of those. But he misses on the most important one: he should be more interesting, or at least AS interesting as the protagonist. And the Evil Scientist is just another one percenter, albeit with plans to colonize space by hooking up aliens and humans. Meanwhile Venom is not just stronger than Eddie, he’s stronger than everybody; he’s invading Earth so his people will have a source of food which is a compelling goal, and he’s controlling Eddie while Eddie tries to escape, all the while being active, funny, and interesting. Best of all, his interactions with Eddie are great, the two of them powerful, clueless beings, first fighting each other and then trying to work together as they come to an understanding. As long as Eddie and Venom are talking on screen, the movie works (again, Tom Hardy really earned that paycheck).

This is even evident in the action scenes, most of which are Dick Things. Dick things, as defined by the great Regina Barecca in I Used To Be Snow White But I Drifted, are the things men do because they can’t take it out and wave it around. She mentioned excessively long guitar solos, but in Venom, it’s clear that excessively long, meaningless action sequences are the Movie Dick Thing. So Eddie rides his motorcycle through San Francisco for what seems like hours, causing all kinds of accidents (and Eddie’s been clearly and carefully set up as a guy who works to protect and save people) and doing absolutely nothing to change the story; it’s “the bad guys chase Eddie until they catch him.” And it goes on for days. Same thing with the big action multi-sequence at the end. There’s good stuff in there but it’s buried in a lot of confusing CGI and repetitive bashing. And that crap sucks up a lot story real estate that could have been spent on the stuff that actually worked, Eddie and Venom (and to a lesser extent Eddie and Annie).

The thing is, Eddie is a great flawed character that we really root for. Yes, he screws up, but he does it with good motives and he keeps on trying. And even when he’s down and out, he’s still careful to be good to people, especially the people in his poor neighborhood. Hardy really sells that aspect: Eddie is a good old boy. And since the cast in this story is very, very good, every interaction Eddie has is great, especially his dealings with the Evil Scientist’s minion, played by Jenny Slade, excellent as always. These are characters we care about, but just as we’re getting invested, there’s another chase or action sequence that goes on forever, wasting the great cast.

There is one action sequence that is excellent because it’s not about showing off, it’s about telling the story. Eddie has escaped from the lab (obligatory chase scene that ends with acrophobic Eddie at the top of a very tall tree), and has come home to his crappy apartment freaked out by what happened in the lab and afterward in the tree because he hasn’t realized he’s now a twofer and because he’s now hearing a growly voice in his head. While he’s trying to deal with that, the bad guys attack him, and Venom gets to do his thing, introducing himself to the viewer by mutilating the minions right and left while Eddie apologizes to the mutilated because he doesn’t understand what’s going on. By the time, Venom throws them both out a window to escape, Eddie is barely holding on, telling himself, “Eddie, you have a brain tumor,” before roaring off on his motorcycle. It’s a great “meet Venom and see what he can do scene,” full of character change and humor, and then it’s stepped on by an interminable action scene that does perk up at the end when Venom bites the head off a minion and then throws Eddie into the bay, escaping and ending with Eddie confronting the thing that’s taken up residence inside him. Great scene in the apartment, great confrontation scene, separated by what feels like two hours of cartoon carnage during which many people must have died that Eddie doesn’t notice or care about. WTF?

Basically the Argh edit of this thing would have cut out the center sections of most of the action scene, made the Evil Scientist more fun and cut his speeches, and gotten Eddie and Venom together in the first ten minutes of the movie, fifteen tops. This is the Eddie and Venom show, and the minute the camera isn’t on them, the story starts to collapse.

Having said all of that, it’s a fun ride and you can hit the kitchen for a snack during the long action scenes (nothing happens in them) so it all works out. And it helped me see that while even though I’m fascinated by Big Bad, the story is Nita and Nick.

Conclusion: Your protagonist and your antagonist are your story, keep the focus on them and make sure you’ve tagged the right character as the antagonist.

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Impatiently Happy

. So it turns out–research has shown–that too much patience makes you unhappy. Evidently a little is all right and possibly healthy, but if you carry that delayed gratification too far (beyond the 88th percentile, whatever that means), it makes you miserable. The takeaway: Delayed gratification takes too long; joy is in going for it. (That’s my takeaway, your mileage may vary.)

How did you lunge for happiness this week?

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Cherry Saturday, February 8, 2020

It’s Laugh and Get Rich Day. I’m not sure about the rich part, but I’ll sign on to anything that makes me laugh. Calvin and Hobbes. Airplane. Monty Python and the non-flying parrot. Pratchett’s Discworld. Hot Fuzz.. P. G. Wodehouse. Bloom County.

Your turn. Give me your favorite all-time funnies, please.

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Good Book Thursday, February 6, 2020

I’ve decided I want to write a book called Surprise Lily. I have no idea what it’ll be about (aside from Lily, whoever she is) but I’m very intrigued. I am also reading for what I sincerely hope is the last time, a book called The Devil in Nita Dodd.

What are you reading?

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Working Wednesday, February 5, 2020

So on the 3rd I realized I’d boggled Lee’s DailyFebruary2020 by not drawing a damn thing. I had, however crocheted every day because that’s what keeps my fingernails out of the ceiling. So harking to her low-bar-benefits-everybody approach, I’m counting my crochet. It includes the hearts I made as a start for my temperature blanket and a scarf I started because this stray ball of yarn I had was annoying me (I’m on Day Two of that one). Anyway I crochet every day anyway, so I’m not sure that should count. I feel like I should be blazing new trails for Lee’s February. OTOH, low bar and a lot of horrible things–taxes, business–that I have to do, so crochet may be my only hope.

So what did you all make this week?

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Happiness is Socks

Okay, socks are ONE kind of happiness, but making them is something new I’m learning and I’m finding it enormously satisfying even though I have more socks than any one woman needs. Maybe it’s “Happiness is Learning a New Skill,” although I also get tremendous happiness from the weird socks I’ve bought, like Nita’s the Loch-Ness-Monster-Pretending-To-Be-Cthulhu knee socks. The weird thing is, those socks have disappeared from the internet, much like the Loch Ness monster. I cannot find them anywhere no matter how hard I google. I’d think I’d made them up, except I own them. I can see them. I HAVE them, therefore they exist.

Where was I?

Of course, making vertically striped socks does have the added pleasure of choosing yarn and feeling like a pioneer woman. Assuming pioneer women made socks. Which they must have because where else would they get them? Which leads to the question, where did they get the yarn?

This week I’m having focus problems, but that makes me happy, too. If I start to actually focus on my problems, I’m less happy.

Enough about me. What made you happy this week?

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