Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 219

The Lucifer-to-Nita Brainstorming Posts

In January of 2016, I watched the pilot of Lucifer and frothed at the mouth because there was so much about it that I hated. I think “trip to Poundtown” was what tipped me into frothing. And then I started to try to “fix” it, by which I meant, make it something I would write. (This is why you should never try to fix somebody else’s work; all you do is try to make it your work.) So here are the posts that took me from “I hate this show” to “I’m writing a book about a female cop on Demon Island who meets a guy who’s the Devil Elect . . .” Oh and always read the comments; the discussion in the comments is always the best part of an Argh post.

Jan 27, 2016: Questionable: Character Chemistry with the Reader

Jan 27, 2016: My Lucifer

Jan. 31, 2016: Lucifer: Two More Fixes

February 3, 2016: The Lucifer Chat

February 26, 2016: Book Done Yet: This Book Is Going To Hell

October 27, 2016 So I Tried Lucifer, Season Two . . .

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Exploiting You in 2016

Welp, 2016 is almost over (thank god) and I hadn’t exploited you yet, so . . .

Hey, anybody interested in buying signed books by Jennifer Crusie?

Mollie cleaned out the Argh storage which was full of signed editions of my stuff, and she’s opening up a sale right now over at the Jenny Crusie store on Shopify. (English editions are up now; she’s adding foreign editions as fast as she can.) Argh People get to hear about it first because she knows you’ll find the glitches in the site and report them to her without yelling at her. Also, you should get first whack at the stock. And 15% off if you buy before Dec. 16 (that’s Friday); just use “arghink” as a coupon code.

Fifty percent of the profits will be divided between the ACLU and Planned Parenthood (because we’re gonna need those people); shipping is free if you order more than $50.

This has been your exploitation post for the year. Thank you.

ETA: Francois/Romney? Are you still here? I owe you books.

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Because I Said I Would . . .

Here’s the intro for the romance version of Nita. I don’t like it, which makes me think I’m writing a team story after all (constantly being rewritten after discussion in the comments):

Nita Dodd is a damned good cop with a sixth sense for crime which tells her that her friend Joey’s murder was more than a random drive-by; now she’s going to find out who ordered the hit, starting with the whack-job witness who thinks he’s the Devil.

Nick Giordano is Satan’s fixer and chosen successor, back on earth for one last job before he takes over in Hell; when somebody’s murdered in front of him, he has that mess to fix, too, and it’s not going to be easy because he’s got a weirdo cop asking questions, and she’s not believing his answers.

But when Weirdo meets Whack-job, they find that things are much worse than they thought, and the only thing that’s going to save them is their joint ability to believe the unbelievable, defeat the undefeatable, and finally accept the undeniable by falling in love.

I know, it sucks. Here’s the team version from the last post:

On Demon Island, tourists come to play at being devils and demons, but we know there’s much more to this island than green hats with horns and Hell Fries. We’re the Devil’s Minions, and we may not all be human, alive, or even corporeal, but we share the same mission: to protect everyone and everything on Demon Island, regardless of race, creed, or signs of life. Cross us, and there’ll be Hell to pay.

Here’s the single protagonist version, rewritten because I like the team version so much better:

You know, this is really the voice-over for a sequel, not for this book, so I edited it to make it that.

I’m Detective Nita Dodd of the Demon Island police force, and I have a helluva job: protecting and serving both the people who live on my island and the tourists who come to our amusement park and chief source of income, the Devil’s Playground. The tourists think the supernatural is a joke, but I know there’s a lot more to this island than hats with devil horns and Hell Fries. Thank god I’ve got my partner, Nick (he used to be the Devil), and our Minions; they may not all be human, alive, or even corporeal, but they share our mission: to protect everyone and everything on Demon Island, regardless of race, creed, or signs of life. Cross us, and there’ll be Hell to pay.

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Cherry Saturday 12-10-2016

It’s National Bingo Month.

Seriously.

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Anybody Here a Latin Scholar? Edited to Add: Never Mind

I ask because I have to figure out the scientific nomenclature for demons.

“Homo” covers people, and “Homo sapiens” (“wise man”) is humans, so I need a “homo whatsis” for demons.

Technically, humans are “homo sapiens sapiens,” so I’m thinking I could go with “homo sapiens internuntia” EXCEPT that that’s a male noun, male adjective, female noun, I think, which I think means, no I couldn’t (my two years of high school Latin from decades ago are just ashes in a corner of my brain now). The “internuntia” means the “mediary between gods and men” or “go-between” (I think). (I’m annoyed at all the “men” stuff in there, but I’m more confused by the Latin grammar so moving on . . .)

Basically I need a Latin term that’s parallel to homo sapiens, preferably beginning with “homo,” that indicates that demons are the intermediaries between gods and humans, working in the background (that is, not seen or recognized as demons) out of the control of human beings, making checks on the human world at regularly scheduled times and also in response to disruptive events.

Technically Devils are demons, but they’re different. Homo sapiens diabolicus? And I suppose so are angels although they’re not intermediaries, they’re more upper management. And not part of this story.

The devil is in the details in this book and so are the demons.

Edited to Add:

Lots of good stuff in the comments, but the big takeaway which I somehow did not think about is that scientists come up with taxonomy, and demons aren’t real as far as most scientists are concerned and definitely not available for stufy, so there wouldn’t be a scientific term.

Although Mort might be trying to think of one. Thank you all very much for playing, you were hugely helpful.

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Anybody Here a Latin Scholar?

I ask because I have to figure out the scientific nomenclature for demons.

“Homo” covers people, and “Homo sapiens” (“wise man”) is humans, so I need a “homo whatsis” for demons.

Technically, humans are “homo sapiens sapiens,” so I’m thinking I could go with “homo sapiens internuntia” EXCEPT that that’s a male noun, male adjective, female noun, I think, which I think means, no I couldn’t (my two years of high school Latin from decades ago are just ashes in a corner of my brain now). The “internuntia” means the “mediary between gods and men” or “go-between” (I think). (I’m annoyed at all the “men” stuff in there, but I’m more confused by the Latin grammar so moving on . . .)

Basically I need a Latin term that’s parallel to homo sapiens, preferably beginning with “homo,” that indicates that demons are the intermediaries between gods and humans, working in the background (that is, not seen or recognized as demons) out of the control of human beings, making checks on the human world at regularly scheduled times and also in response to disruptive events.

Technically Devils are demons, but they’re different. Homo sapiens diabolicus? And I suppose so are angels although they’re not intermediaries, they’re more upper management. And not part of this story.

The devil is in the details in this book and so are the demons.

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What Have We Learned From This Binge Watch 1: What Kind Of Story Is This?

So that was fun. Kinda. I had to wade through a lot of Hawk to get to the good stuff, but I did learn some things, which I’m going to be cogitating about for probably days in no particular order. For right now, I’m focused on what the hell kind of story I’m writing, something the first season of Legends was great at showing what not to do.

1. Pick a lane.

I want this novel to be:

Women’s Fiction (Nita’s Journey)

Romance (Nick and Nita)

Team Story (Nita, Nick, Button, Rab, and a player to be named later but probably Max).

I can do all of those things, but one has to be first (main plot) and the others have to feed into it and support it (subplots). So time to pick a lane. Because if I don’t, I’ll have the first season of Legends of Tomorrow.

Legends‘ first season intro/Rip’s voiceover tells you what the problem is.

“In the year 2166, an immortal tyrant named Vandal Savage conquered the world and murdered my wife and child.

“I have assembled an elite team to hunt him throughout time and stop his rise to power.

“Unfortunately, my plan is opposed by the body I’ve sworn my allegiance to: The Time Masters.

“In the future my friends may not be heroes, but if we succeed, they will be remembered as legends.”

Look at that plot salad:

The first sentence says the story is about the speaker vs Vandal Savage who murdered his wife and child.

The second sentence says he’s assembled an elite team (lie, have you see these yahoos?) to stop Savage’s rise to power (lie, it’s to save his family)

The third sentence says there’s another antagonist, the Time Masters.

The fourth sentence and the one that should sum up the story, is that his team will be remembered as legends (lie, he’s seen the future and they’re completely forgotten) which says this is a team story.

It’s all over the place, spoken by an extremely unreliable narrator (also Worst Team Leader Ever).

Now look at Legend’s second season voiceover intro, spoken by a different member of the team each episode:

“Time travel is real, and all of history is vulnerable to attack, which is why we must travel through time to stop the spread of these so-called time aberrations and to erase their damage to history. We are a team of outcasts and misfits, so please don’t call us heroes. We’re something else. We’re legends.”

That’s a plot. More than that, it’s a team story because now it’s not Rip and his “elite” helpers, it’s “we.” “We are a team of outcasts and misfits.” One voice, speaking for the team which is the protagonist, giving its mission purpose: guard history from disruption from time marauders.

Legends intends to spread its stories evenly among its team members (hence a different team member doing the voiceover each week), and I’m not sure that’s a great plan. I think that the leader of each team needs to anchor the story the way he or she anchors the team so that the story overall has that sense of an authority in the text, that somebody’s in charge here and we’re going to follow the story through his or her eyes. That said, in a team story as a main plot, all the team players have to play major roles, so you’re going to have some dilution of focus automatically. That makes it doubly important, perhaps most important, that the team have a single focus that pulls everything together.

The Person of Interest team, for example shifts over five seasons from a two-person team to a six-person Machine Gang and from individual antagonists to Samaritan, but they never change their mission of saving the “irrelevant” numbers, and the first season introduction said just that in Finch’s voiceover:

“You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know, because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people; people like you. Crimes the government considered ‘irrelevant’. They wouldn’t act, so I decided I would. But I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You’ll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number’s up… we’ll find you”.

The key there, again, is “we” “We work in secret.” It’s not Finch and his helpers, it’s the Machine Gang.

Looking at those three voiceovers, two of which introduce teams and one of which introduced chaos, it occurred to me that it might be a good exercise for me to write an opening voiceover for Nita’s story. It won’t be in the book (might be cover copy) but it will help me decide whether this is women’s fiction, romance fiction, or team story. In fact, what I should do is write one of each for Nita just to see what I get. Stay tuned. Or better yet, write one for your story. You don’t have a story? Write one anyway. You’re gonna need:

A protagonist or a team (depending on what kind of story you’re writing)

A goal or a mission

An antagonist creating conflict.

Oh, and it should also make somebody want to watch or read the story.

Go. See you tomorrow. Or maybe the day after; this is going to be difficult.

Edited to add:

You know what’s easy? Team voiceovers:

On Demon Island, tourists come to play at being devils and demons, but we know there’s much more to this island than green make-up and Hell Fries. We’re the Devil’s Minions, and we may not all be human, alive, or even corporeal, but we share the same mission: to protect everyone and everything on Demon Island, regardless of race, creed, or signs of life. Cross us, and there’ll be Hell to pay.

You know what’s really hard? Romance voiceovers. I keep ending up with cover blurbs.

Also difficult, women’s fiction/mystery/single protagonist voiceovers, but nowhere near as difficult as that damn romance intro:

I’m Detective Nita Dodd, and my job is to protect and serve the citizens of Demon Island, an island on which there are no demons, just an amusement park with a Hell-ish theme and a lot of stores selling green baseball caps with horns. The island is quiet during the off season, but somebody just shot my friend Joey, one of the witnesses says he’s the Devil, and another one swears he’s seen demons. I’d say they were all just drunk, but lately I’ve been seeing things that aren’t there myself. Something’s going on here, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it and find out who ordered Joey killed, even if I have to go to Hell and back to do it.

That’s way too long, but still only half as long as the romance version. Maybe I should just go with:

She’s a cop, he’s the Devil, they fight crime!

Yeah, back at you later on that one.

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What Have We Learned From This Binge Watch: 1: What Kind Of Story Is This?

So that was fun. Kinda. I had to wade through a lot of Hawk to get to the good stuff, but I did learn some things, which I’m going to be cogitating about for probably days in no particular order. For right now, I’m focused on what the hell kind of story I’m writing, something the first season of Legends was great at showing what not to do.

1. Pick a lane.

I want this novel to be:

Women’s Fiction (Nita’s Journey)

Romance (Nick and Nita)

Team Story (Nita, Nick, Button, Rab, and a player to be named later but probably Max).

I can do all of those things, but one has to be first (main plot) and the others have to feed into it and support it (subplots). So time to pick a lane. Because if I don’t, I’ll have the first season of Legends of Tomorrow.

Legends‘ first season intro/Rip’s voiceover tells you what the problem is.

“In the year 2166, an immortal tyrant named Vandal Savage conquered the world and murdered my wife and child.

“I have assembled an elite team to hunt him throughout time and stop his rise to power.

“Unfortunately, my plan is opposed by the body I’ve sworn my allegiance to: The Time Masters.

“In the future my friends may not be heroes, but if we succeed, they will be remembered as legends.”

Look at that plot salad:

The first sentence says the story is about the speaker vs Vandal Savage who murdered his wife and child.

The second sentence says he’s assembled an elite team (lie, have you see these yahoos?) to stop Savage’s rise to power (lie, it’s to save his family)

The third sentence says there’s another antagonist, the Time Masters.

The fourth sentence and the one that should sum up the story, is that his team will be remembered as legends (lie, he’s seen the future and they’re completely forgotten) which says this is a team story.

It’s all over the place, spoken by an extremely unreliable narrator (also Worst Team Leader Ever).

Now look at Legend’s second season voiceover intro, spoken by a different member of the team each episode:

“Time travel is real, and all of history is vulnerable to attack, which is why we must travel through time to stop the spread of these so-called time aberrations and to erase their damage to history. We are a team of outcasts and misfits, so please don’t call us heroes. We’re something else. We’re legends.”

That’s a plot. More than that, it’s a team story because now it’s not Rip and his “elite” helpers, it’s “we.” “We are a team of outcasts and misfits.” One voice, speaking for the team which is the protagonist, giving its mission purpose: guard history from disruption from time marauders.

Legends intends to spread its stories evenly among its team members (hence a different team member doing the voiceover each week), and I’m not sure that’s a great plan. I think that the leader of each team needs to anchor the story the way he or she anchors the team so that the story overall has that sense of an authority in the text, that somebody’s in charge here and we’re going to follow the story through his or her eyes. That said, in a team story as a main plot, all the team players have to play major roles, so you’re going to have some dilution of focus automatically. That makes it doubly important, perhaps most important, that the team have a single focus that pulls everything together.

The Person of Interest team, for example shifts over five seasons from a two-person team to a six-person Machine Gang and from individual antagonists to Samaritan, but they never change their mission of saving the “irrelevant” numbers, and the first season introduction said just that in Finch’s voiceover:

“You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know, because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people; people like you. Crimes the government considered ‘irrelevant’. They wouldn’t act, so I decided I would. But I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You’ll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number’s up… we’ll find you”.

The key there, again, is “we” “We work in secret.” It’s not Finch and his helpers, it’s the Machine Gang.

Looking at those three voiceovers, two of which introduce teams and one of which introduced chaos, it occurred to me that it might be a good exercise for me to write an opening voiceover for Nita’s story. It won’t be in the book (might be cover copy) but it will help me decide whether this is women’s fiction, romance fiction, or team story. In fact, what I should do is write one of each for Nita just to see what I get. Stay tuned. Or better yet, write one for your story. You don’t have a story? Write one anyway. You’re gonna need:

A protagonist or a team (depending on what kind of story you’re writing)

A goal or a mission

An antagonist creating conflict.

Oh, and it should also make somebody want to watch or read the story.

Go. See you tomorrow. Or maybe the day after; this is going to be difficult.

Edited to add:

You know what’s easy? Team voiceovers:

On Demon Island, tourists come to play at being devils and demons, but we know there’s much more to this island than green make-up and Hell Fries. We’re the Devil’s Minions, and we may not all be human, alive, or even corporeal, but we share the same mission: to protect everyone and everything on Demon Island, regardless of race, creed, or signs of life. Cross us, and there’ll be Hell to pay.

You know what’s really hard? Romance voiceovers. I keep ending up with cover blurbs.

Also difficult, women’s fiction/mystery/single protagonist voiceovers, but nowhere near as difficult as that damn romance intro:

I’m Detective Nita Dodd, and my job is to protect and serve the citizens of Demon Island, an island on which there are no demons, just an amusement park with a Hell-ish theme and a lot of stores selling green baseball caps with horns. The island is quiet during the off season, but somebody just shot my friend Joey, one of the witnesses says he’s the Devil, and another one swears he’s seen demons. I’d say they were all just drunk, but lately I’ve been seeing things that aren’t there myself. Something’s going on here, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it and find out who ordered Joey killed, even if I have to go to Hell and back to do it.

That’s way too long, but still only half as long as the romance version. Maybe I should just go with:

She’s a cop, he’s the Devil, they fight crime!

Yeah, back at you later on that one.

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Legends of Tomorrow Binge Watch: Episode 2-1 : “Out of Time” Rebooting/Revising A Team Story

The first season of Legends was flawed and often terrible. But if you isolated out some of its parts, it was wonderful. I sympathize; this is exactly how I describe my first drafts. So let’s look at how rebooting a flawed series with huge potential is like revising a flawed first draft with huge potential. And of course we’ll start with . . .

Who’s the protagonist? What is his goal?

Who’s the antagonist? What is his goal?

What’s the conflict?

What needs to be fixed, what needs to be changed, what needs work?

What must be kept?

What do you expect/hope will happen after this?

FIRST SEASON:

Who’s the protagonist? What is his goal?: Rip Hunter wants to save his wife and child.

Who’s the antagonist? What is his goal?: Vandal Savage wants to conquer the world; behind him the Time Masters want to defeat the Thanagarians.

What’s the conflict? This is a good question. Rip wants to stop Savage killing his family because he loves them, and Savage wants to kill them because . . . we’ll let you know in Episode 15. Of a sixteen episode series. Until then, it’s just “Vandal Savage is a sonofabitch. Pass it on.”

What needs to be fixed, what needs to be changed, what needs work?

Oh, god, let me count the ways: the protagonist and his goal, the antagonist(s) and goals, the complexity and sheer wrong-headedness of the conception of the conflict, the weakness of Rip and the Hawks, the scattered and non-complementary skill sets of the team, Ray’s gormlessness, the complete lack of any structure for time travel, that horrible Hawk love story . . . AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH, it was awful. Also bring back Snart.

What must be kept?

Sara, Mick and Snart. The great premise of traveling through time. The team at the end, bonded and efficient and really caring about each other. The Mick and Ray odd couple partnership. Sara at the controls of the ship. Jax as a time ship mechanic. Captain Canary (the Sara/Snart porcupine romance).

What do you expect/hope will happen after this?

I really expected they’d bring back Rip as captain but I hoped they wouldn’t. I also hoped they wouldn’t add anybody else to the team and the Hawks would leave, so at least there’d be six people instead of nine. I hoped to hell that Vandal Savage was gone forever never to return. And I really hoped that when Snart died over the Oculus, it’s timey-wimey-ness would send him somewhere not dead so they could get him back; an earlier timeline Snart won’t do it because that would erase that great character arc from the first season.

SECOND SEASON:

Who’s the protagonist? What is her goal?: SARA! And her goal and the team goal is to safeguard the timeline from time marauders now that they’ve wiped out the Time Masters. GOOD goal, huge series potential, great showcase for the team. Go, CW! (Also she wants vengeance on Damian Darhk for killing her sister, but unlike Rip, she’s not going to be mentioning it every fifteen minutes.) Also the protagonist or extension of her: The Legends who really are a team now: emotionally bonded, complementary skills, shared sense of purpose, the works.

Who’s the antagonist? What is his goal?: Ding dong, Vandal Savage is dead, dead, dead. Who’s the antagonist? In the first episode it’s the Flash’s first season antagonist, Eobard Thawne, an efficient time-travelling son-of-a-bitch if there ever was one. Oh and he’s partnering up with Damian Darhk, one of the best antagonists Arrow ever had, master of the occult arts and killer snark. To be added later in the season to form the League of Doom: Malcolm Merlyn, Arrow’s first season antagonist, once the leader of the League of Assassins,Thea’s real father, and General Good Time because he’s played by John Barrowman; I’m betting it’s Malcolm who says, “You know what we should call ourselves? THE LEAGUE OF DOOM! Come on, guys, LEAGUE OF DOOM.” Fourth member of the League of Doom: Leonard Snart, who will refuse to be grouped under that name and threaten to kill Malcolm weekly. Honestly, it’s like they looked at Vandal Savage and said, “We must do penance,” and brought in four characters who are really powerful, really amoral, really fun, and don’t mind killing people. As to what their goal is: no idea. Which is not good.

What needs to be fixed, what needs to be changed, what needs work?

So they fixed the protagonist and her goal; they fixed the antagonists (not sure about their League of Doom goal but I’m sure it’s dastardly); they’ve simpled up the conflict in this first episode at least (Thawne wants to nuke NYC during WW2 to help the Nazis win, the Legends want to stop them from nuking NYC so the Nazis won’t win); they got rid of the Hawks and Rip’s on leave of absense, lost somewhere in the timeline near Broadchurch; they fixed the scattered and non-complementary skill sets of the team by making Jax the ship mechanic, Mick the ship’s expert on time travel (thanks to all those years as Chronos) and Sara’s Lancer, fixed Ray’s gormlessness by pairing him with Mick who still needs some I-have-morals ballast now that Snart’s gone, got rid of the horrible Hawk love story, and they’re bringing back Snart, granted as an antagonist but I’m assuming Sara and Mick will have a few things to say about that.

What they haven’t fixed: the complete lack of any structure for time travel, the overcrowding on the team because they added two new members: another affable goofy guy who can turn into Steel (hey, this stuff is from the comics, you want nuance, go watch high class TV), and a woman from the forties who has an amulet that lets her channel animal spirits, an idea that is not working on TV.

What must be kept?

Sara, Mick and Snart. Kept except for Snart (stay tuned).

The great premise of traveling through time. Kept.

The team at the end, bonded and efficient and really caring about each other. Kept.

The Mick and Ray odd couple partnership. Kept.

Sara at the controls of the ship. Kept.

Jax as a time ship mechanic. Kept.

Captain Canary: They killed Snart, for which I blame Miller, but with any luck, Sara and Mick will slap upside the head whatever Snart shows up in the League of Doom and bring him back on board.

What do you expect/hope will happen after this?

I got most of what I wanted, kind of.

Rip’s out of the picture as captain, and according to one of the actors, when he comes back, he comes back changed. Change is good.

I hoped they wouldn’t add anybody else to the team and the Hawks would leave, so at least there’d be six people instead of nine. They got rid of the Hawks and Rip left temporarily which left them with Sara as the Leader, Mick as the Lancer and time travel expert and muscle and growly snark (there’s a reason Mick’s the MVP this season), Stein as the Smart Guy, Jax as the Mechanic, and Ray as the Chick. Then they added another Badass Female Fighter (we have one those, she’s our leader) and another Goofy Nice Guy (have you met Ray?) so that was step back.

I hoped to hell that Vandal Savage was gone forever never to return, and he’s dead, dead, dead.

I wanted Snart back, and he’s coming back, but he’s appearing in all three (four?) of the CW Arrowverse shows so he won’t be a regular on Legends. That’s not enough.

But the big news is: The surviving team members really are a team now with complementary skills (I’m ignoring the New Sara and the New Ray) especially after they run into the Justice Society and see how a disciplined team behaves. And the new premise of protecting the timeline is a great. And Sara is a terrific lead character for many, many reasons, but let’s also praise the CW for putting a bi woman in a position of power and respect. And white leather, but you can’t have everything all at once, baby steps to liberation.

So how does the new improved Legends of Tomorrow do in its second season premiere? Well enough that I thought, “Hmmm, maybe I misjudged this show,” and went back and watched the first season which is how we ended up with the bitchy binge watch.

Episode 2-1 “Out of Time.”

(The picture above is of the Season Two Legends Team as of the first episode. The guy with the white hair is Albert Einstein who will not be staying with the team in Episode 2-2. If you’re thinking, “That’s ridiculous,” you’re obviously not part of the Legends target audience, which requires that you not only embrace the Absurd, you tell it that it has nice eyes, pat it on the butt, and take it to dinner.)

The best advice for starting a story is “Start as late as possible,” and this episode does exactly that. The problem with starting that late is that you have a lot of back story to catch up on. In this case, that starts with Nate Heywood the Historian crashing into the office of Oliver Queen the Mayor (and Green Arrow) with the breathless news that the Legends are in Trouble! No, they really are, they’ve disappeared and the Waverider is at the bottom of the ocean. So Nate and Oliver go to the bottom of the ocean (just go with it) and enter the Waverider, where they find the guy most likely to make backstory entertaining: Mick. At this point, I’d watch Dominic Purcell growl the phone book while changing the oil in his car, so Mick’s explanation of how he came to be in stasis all by himself in the Waverider at the bottom of the Atlantic is actually entertaining, especially since Mick the Oafish Crook is giving the story to Oliver Queen, the Gentleman Mayor. There should be more scenes with Mick and Oliver Queen. (Also Mick and Supergirl, but “Skirt, call me” is eight episodes from now.)

Okay, here’s a shocker: Mick’s story is told in flashbacks. I liked them.

I know, it boggles my mind, too. But the first flashback is an example of what they’ve been doing in the six months since the first season ended: they’ve been traveling around time fixing the damage to the timeline that bad guys have created, like Louis XIII’s France, where they have to protect the king so he’ll consummate his marriage to the queen and French history will happen. But the cardinal has hired guys with laser guns to kill the king, and the Queen turns out to be Sara’s type, and the whole flashback is a brightly colored cartoon of laughing women and guys in puffy shirts facing bad guys (you know they’re bad because they’re dressed head to toe in black). They save the king and Oliver interrupts Mick’s story to tell him that he has a life he’d like to get back to. Oliver Queen doesn’t like flashbacks, either. So Mick explains that when they got back to the ship, there was a timequake (new term for the playbook) because the Nazis nuked NYC in 1942. So even though they’ve been warned not to go to 1942, they have to go to 1942. That’s thirteen minutes into the show and I’m having a wonderful time.

There’s another flashback–this one for twenty minutes–explaining that the Legends had to kidnap Albert Einstein and his wife to save NYC from Damian Darhk’s plan to nuke NYC . . . you know, you had to be there. It was fun. The Waverider took the force of the blast but right before it hit Rip sent everybody but a wounded Mick into the timestream, so NYC is saved, but now Mick and Nate the Historian track time anomalies to find Ray being chased by a dinosaur, Stein and Jax threatened with execution in ninth century Britain, and Sara about to be hanged for corrupting the women of New England in Puritan times. Still missing: Rip. Everybody else goes back to 1942 to fix the last glitch and save history, after which they meet the Justice Society of America, superheroes from the 40s comics.

Clear protagonist: Nate, aided by Mick, and then the whole team, acting as a team.

Clear antagonist: Damian Darhk and the Nazis

Clear conflict: Stop the Nazis from nuking NYC

What must be kept: Pretty much everything: It’s bright, it’s colorful, it’s moving, there is no navel-gazing, no dopey love stories, everybody is competent and the things they do make sense, played out in steady rising action to strong climax. It’s a miracle.

What needs fixed: Rip is still swanning around in that duster, bitching at everybody; I could lose him. Oh, wait, he’s gone at the thirty minute mark. Okay then, bring back Snart.

By damn, they fixed Legends of Tomorrow.

2-1 “The Justice Society of America:” This was probably more fun for comic geeks who got to see Golden Age superheroes in the Justice Society. I loved it because the Legends went to a Nazi nightclub wearing forties clothes, Stein quoted “Back to the Future” and then sang “Edelweiss,” and Ray started a bar club fight because he couldn’t bring himself to do a Nazi salute. Good times. The theme running under this one is that the Legends, in comparison to the JSA, is kind of a lousy team: no leader, arguing constantly, acting impulsively, generally amateurs. Working with the JSA gives them a model to follow: Sara becomes the leader, Nate joins the team as a historian (very helpful), and the team stops fighting. Mostly.

2-3 “Shogun:” One of JSA, Amaya Jiwe, boards the ship and tries to kill Mick because she thinks he killed one of her teammates. Mick takes it pretty well, and after some misunderstandings are sorted out, Amaya joins the team to find the time traveler who killed her friend. This leads to Sara, Amaya, and Mick fighting ninjas in feudal Japan (Mick saying, “I don’t want to fight you guys. I love ninjas!”).

2-14 “Abominations:” Civil War Zombies. Sara gets respect from General Grant. And there’s a fairly serious look at slavery through Jax’s eyes without slowing down the action.

2-5 “Compromised:”

I’m not actually sure what happens during this one. It’s something about Darhk making a deal with the Russians by giving them the nuclear codes and putting a bomb in the state dining room . . . nope, I got nothing. But it was the eighties and it was fun and good stuff happened including Mick and Ray becoming partners so really, good story overall.

2-6 “Outlaw Country:” Another Western, not as good as last season’s because no Snart, better than last season’s because no Hawks. Oh, and this one moves the plot, first because it has a plot (some gang leader has changed the future so that the Western half of the US isn’t the US), and second because they discover a lot of the stuff that powers Ray’s suit. Also, no extraneous subplots about the past. Just fast-paced storytelling about a team that really works well together.

I posted all those pictures because they pretty much capture the fun of this series this year:The team in different time periods, working as a team to defeat bad guys–Nazis, evil warlords, zombies, Russian spies, evil outlaws–with the Legion of Doom lurking in the background. The key here is that the people behind the show, now freed from a dead wife and child and the comic stylings of Vandal Savage, are swinging wide and having a good time, anchoring everything in the team instead of in a bunch of unrelated subplots and boring love stories. The stories are fine but I’m really watching for the team interactions and the team in action. Legends this year so far is a much goofier, fantasy-based Leverage.

How I’d Fix This:

I don’t have to. They fixed it.

Okay, fine, drop two members from the team and bring back Snart.

What I Learned From This:

• Cut anything that isn’t working no matter how much I love it. The temptation is to fix the places that are broken, but the truth is if you can just have them fly off or get lost in the timeline, you’re better off. Putting bandaids on plot weaknesses is just a waste of time. Cut the dead weight. Which in my case is a big chunk of that first scene, just to start with. Especially cut anything that’s there because it explains something, or sets up something, or does anything except entertain and move story. Somebody on this show loved those damn Hawks, and it almost brought down the series.

* If you arc the team to at least semi-competence and cohesion in the first act, you have the rest of the story to have a good time in. Right now I have the team coming together at the midway point, but that’s too late. I’d had the first act as Nita’s big shift and the second as Nick’s, but the team has to start in that first act, too, even if they’re just assembling in the background as Nita and Nick freak out at the changes in their lives.

• Show what the antagonist wants early, clearly. This season is fun, but I still don’t have a grasp on what the forces against the Legends want. They’re defeating them on things like nuking NYC, but I’m not clear on why they want to nuke NYC, what the long range plan is. That leaves Season Two as a lot of fun individual stories without a strong season arc but with strong individual arcs because there are good antagonists in each episode. That would work as a short story anthology, but it wouldn’t work in a novel. This is key for me because I STILL don’t know who Nita’s antagonist is for sure.

• Those individual interactions within the team are crucial for not only showing the bonds but moving story. The Mick-and-Ray team is not one I was expecting, but it pays off in a lot of different ways as odd couple pairings often do. I think Button’s going to be gold for that, but also possibly Rab. I keep going back to Mort as the much-mocked demon expert and Rab as the Earth Studies guy (he has his master’s degree) and them comparing notes; it’d be a great way to get the demon and island back story on the page without identifying it as back story that something somebody remembers or god forbid flashes back to. If it’s something they have to figure out as part of the ongoing story, it’s not back story, it’s now story.

* Don’t get so bogged down in intent that you forget to have fun. A good story almost always has a serious bedrock, but you don’t want to tell the bedrock, it’s just there for foundation. You want all the great topsoil and flowers and trees and I just lost control of my metaphor, but you know what I mean. Know the serious stuff, write the exciting/fun/mesmerizing stuff.

• Do not put more than five people on a team, six tops, because it dilutes the page time that each character has, multiplies the page time you have to spend on character arc and relationships, smothers the plot, and confuses the hell out of the reader/viewer. I actually have about ten characters that were to end up working on Nita’s side and Nick’s, which is fine, but they can’t all be the Team. And since two of the team are Nita and Nick, using everybody would be a team of twelve. No. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Time to winnow.

The post Legends of Tomorrow Binge Watch: Episode 2-1 : “Out of Time” Rebooting/Revising A Team Story appeared first on Argh Ink.

Legends of Tomorrow Binge Watch: Episode 14 “River of Time” by Courtney Norris & Anderson Mackenzie, Episode 15 “Destiny” by Phil Klemmer & Chris Fedak, Episode 16 “Legendary” by Phil Klemmer & Marc Guggenheim: Crisis, Gotcha, Climax, Anti-Climax

The last three episodes of the first season of Legends of Tomorrow are: Episode 14: “ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?,” Episode 15: “Now THAT’S a Climax,” Episode 16: “Oh, Yeah, We Still Have To Kill Vandal Savage.”

I think the reason this series made me so nuts when I finally watched the first season this year is that it had huge potential. When it was on its game, as it is in “Destiny,” it’s just terrific. Unfortunately, it was rarely on its game because it had too many team members, too many of those team members were annoying, the writers kept trying to make two blocks of wood the Greatest Love Story Ever Told, the crap crowded out the good stuff (Sara, Mick, Snart), Vandal Savage was a cartoon, and Rip Hunter was the Worst Team Leader Ever. Also, no plot and that damn reveal in Episode 14 that made me insane with rage. How do you fix a series story like this? Kill it with fire.

Well, no, we want to keep Sara, Mick, and Snart. And the time travel premise. And . . . Yeah, it’s worth saving for a second season.

But first we have to clean up this one.

1-14 “River of Time”

Warning: There may be swearing in the discussion of this episode.

I think the best way to start is to quote the Wikipedia summary:

“Upon the revelation that the Leviathan was technology from the distant future, proving Savage has manipulated time, Rip believes the Time Masters will finally ratify his mission and sets course for the Vanishing Point. Jefferson fixes the damaged time drive, but is exposed to time radiation which ages him prematurely. Stein is forced to send him back to 2016 in the jump ship to reverse the process. Carter, now named Scythian Torvil, is kept prisoner while Kendra tries to restore his memories, causing a rift between her and Ray which effectively ends their relationship. Savage tries to manipulate some of the team members, allowing him to escape his cell. Just as Savage is about to kill Kendra, Scythian regains his memories as Carter and saves her, but is stabbed by Savage before Kendra knocks the latter unconscious. The team arrives at the Vanishing Point, where the Time Masters reveal that they have been working with Savage, who is to be sent back to 2166 to carry on with his plan while Rip and his team are put under arrest.”

Yeah. The Time Masters have been working with Savage the entire time. And here’s the part that’s going to send the showrunners to storytelling hell: The Time Masters manipulated the Legends so that the things they do make Savage stronger and safer. Put another way, the reason that the Legends are such idiots and Rip Hunter is the Worst Team Leader Ever is that the Time Masters stripped them of their free will in the beginning and have been using them like puppets ever since. Put another way, we don’t really know these people because they’ve never made any decisions on their own. Put another way, the writers are trying to handwave away the IDIOTIC things these characters did by saying, “Oh, that was the Time Masters.”

Put another way, they just threw the whole season down a garbage disposal and set it to “pulverize.”

You do not do this to readers or viewers. This is a Gotcha: “We knew this all the time and we were playing you, HA!” Yeah, screw you guys, I’ll never trust you or your narratives again. Listen, a storyteller is not the antagonist of his or her readers/viewers, we’re PARTNERS. The story teller puts the narrative on the page or screen and the readers/viewers participate, invest in characters and read meaning into the events based on their own worldviews and experiences. The reason stories are powerful is because we enter into them, trusting the storyteller will lead us on a journey that will transform us.

The Legends writers just yelled “Psych!” and laughed at us. And then said, “Seriously, here’s what’s going on. No, wait, where are you going?” We have a great episode next. Hello?”

Dickheads.

One other thing about this episode:

Savage plays Psych 101 games with the crew and escapes his cell, finally facing Snart and his cold gun. I’ve quoted this dialogue before, but it’s important so:

Look at that exchange. You have your main antagonist, an immortal madman, raging through your heroes’ ship, He comes up against one of the team. And what does he do?

He declaims the most ridiculous dialogue in the history of modern TV.

And what does our anti-hero do?

Emphasize how ridiculous the antagonist by mocking him.

I love this exchange because it’s classic Snart, but what it does to the antagonist is just dumb. He should be striking fear in our hearts, and instead we’re pointing and laughing at him. Among all the crimes this series committed, making Savage a cartoon was probably the worst. A story cannot stand without a strong antagonist.

And then there’s the part where Sara confronts Rip and says, “Vandal Savage says you’d sell out the team to save your family,” and Rip says “He’s not wrong.” Rip Hunter, Worst Team Leader Ever.

Also flashbacks, ten thousand flashbacks.

But back to the big problem: The writers are trying to tell us that it doesn’t matter that Savage is a string of pop beads because it turns out that the real antagonist is the Time Masters. The problem is, we didn’t know that. If we’d known that at say, the first turning point, this would have been a much more interesting story: The Legends (rogue Time Masters) vs the Time Masters (the corrupt establishment) so that every move the Legends made would have to be second-guessed, they’d have to find a way out from under the Time Masters control, they’d be taking out Savage as a Time Master pawn so it would have been okay that he was a scenery chewer because he was just a game piece. All of which goes back to a basic tenet of storytelling: Suspense is much more powerful than Surprise. The guy who jumps out and goes “Boo!” is a shock for a second; knowing there’s a guy who’s going to jump out and shout boo, and not knowing where he is or when he’s going to jump, can result in story-long suspense that builds to that breaking point called a climax.

So at the end of this clusterRip of an episode, the Time Master’s army boards the Waverider and takes almost everybody prisoner. They miss Jax, who’s heading back to 2016 because that will somehow reverse some kind of time poisoning he has, and Snart and Sara because when Snart heard heavy boots boarding the ship, he didn’t say, “We must fight!” he said, “We need to find someplace to hide” and showed Sara a trapdoor he’d found the first day on the ship. My kind of hero, the smart kind.

If you want to know what this season could have been, look at the great episode we got once the Legends found out they were being played:

1-15 “Destiny”

When last we left Snart and Sara, aka two of the three effective members of the team, they were hiding in the floor as the Time Masters captured the rest of the team. Sara says, “We go rescue them,” Snart says, “They’re dead, we escape while there’s still time.” Sara refuses and Snart pulls his gun on her and threatens shoot her, which the Snart at the beginning of the season would have done without batting an eye. She defies him, telling him he’s not the same cold-hearted bastard he was before, but she’s not begging, she’s going straight for the jugular. It’s Snart’s crisis turning point, and while I was sure he wasn’t going to shoot Sara, I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t get in the jump ship and leave. Then the phone rings and it’s Gideon (why is the ship’s computer calling on the phone?) with a plan. “This is a bad plan,” Snart says later as they’re putting devices on the Time Master’s fleet in the Vanishing Point’s hanger. “It’s Gideon’s plan,” Sara says. “You’re not helping your argument,” Snart says, and then they run back to the ship because . . .

The rest of the team is imprisoned in plexiglass cases that make them look like museum exhibits. Time Minions drag Mick away to be brainwashed and tortured back into Chronos, more minions come for Kendra who manages to defeat both of them while turning her back on the door (honest to god, Kendra) so the next wave of minions knocks her down and drags her off. Well, this is depressing. The Time Master orders everyone killed, but somebody attacks the base (that would be Sara in the Waverider) and then Snart shows up (“Somebody here order up a rescue?”) and takes out the guards. But then Chronos comes in, newly brainwashed and faces Snart. “Kill him,” the Time Master says, and Mick turns and shoots him instead, and then goes over and steps on the guy’s head like a watermelon (off camera, satisfying but not gross). The team escapes, and as the Time Fleet tries to follow them, Sara triggers the devices which make all the ship computers sing “Love Will Keep Us Together” like drunk barflies, grounding the ships. And back on the ship, Mick tells Ray that he withstood the brainwashing because the team wouldn’t survive without him.

So we have Snart’s character arc finalized, Mick’s emancipation from the Time Masters made clear along with his allegiance to the team, the team working together in a great escape, followed by Snart making the closest thing he’s going to get to a pass at Sara after he’s apologized for threatening to shoot her–“I’ve been thinking about what the future might hold for me. And you. And me and you”–followed by Sara saying, “You want to steal a kiss from me, Leonard? You better be one hell of a thief.” Considering the reason he’s on the ship is because he’s a master thief, this is not so much a rejection as it is an invitation, porcupine style.

The key piece of info Rip took away from his meeting with the Time Masters is that the only place free will is possible is the Vanishing Point, which is also where the Oculus (the thingy that makes it possibly for the Time Masters to control time and destiny, try to keep up). So clearly, they’re gonna have to go back and blow up the Oculus.

No, really. That makes sense. A lot of great stuff happens–this is a good episode of TV–and then they reach the Oculus which has a failsafe device that prevents it from being rigged to explode.

Here’s Ray deciding to sacrifice himself instead of finding a rock to prop up the failsafe device, only to be knocked out and replaced by Mick, who decides to sacrifice himself instead of finding a rock to prop up the failsafe device, only to be knocked out and replaced by Snart, who decides to sacrifice himself instead of finding a rock to prop up the failsafe device . . .

But at least we got this:

Sue me, I’m a romance novelist. I needed that kiss even if they killed him immediately after it.

Which they do: in the next two minutes, Sara drags Mick to safely, the Head Time Master comes running in at the last minute yelling, “Stop that,” which shows you just what jokes the Time Masters are, and Snart snarls “There are no strings on me,” and dies in a flash of white light to save his team and the future.

Okay, they gave him a great death, but from a storyteling standpoint, that was annoying. You have three excellent characters that could carry a whole show, you do not kill one of them. I know it was in Miller’s contract that he’d leave at the end of the season, but back up the money truck, don’t take out one leg of your three-legged story stool.

Back on the Waverider, having destroyed the Time Masters and everything to do with them, the team is dealing with Snart’s death. Mick says he wants to kill somebody, and Ray points out that Vandal Savage is still alive and has Kendra captive. Mick says, “He’ll do nicely,” which leads to the last anti-climactic episode . . .

Episode 16: “Legendary”

They go to kill Vandal Savage and make a plan where they need to kill him at three different places in three different times while he’s standing next to a meteorite SIMULTANEOUSLY because they still don’t understand time travel, or at least they haven’t explained it to me. This is Rip’s plan, so of course it involves dividing the team . . .

Yadda yadda yadda, they kill Vandal Savage. There’s some other stuff, the team members check in with their loved ones and then they assemble on the rooftop where they started and Rip invites them to join him as the last guardians of the timeline since the Time Masters are kaput. The Hawks say no because they want to start their lives again and fly off, and Mick says, “Every time they do that, I get hungry for chicken.” Never change, Mick. (One thing: Mick goes back to Snart in a time before they got on the Waverider to say good-bye and tells him that he may not think he’s a hero, but he is one to Mick, which leaves the old hostile Snart frowning and perplexed. I’m wondering if that’s the Snart that’s going to be part of the antagonist team next time, and if that little bit of interaction won’t pay off then.)

So they’re all ready to go, but then somebody appears from the future and tells them not to get back on the ship; if they do, they’ll die.

Pretty sure that in the second season premiere, they’ll get back on that ship.

How I’d Fix This:

Reveal the Time Masters have obliterated free will at the first turning point. Make the Time Masters the antagonists for the entire season. Have the team on the run, finding out how to subvert the Oculus, trying to put down Savage since he’s the point man for the Time Masters, until finally they get to the Vanishing Point and blow up the Oculus, freeing everybody. Do not kill Snart.

New Season: Get rid of the Hawks (done) and Rip as leader. Put Sara in charge with Mick as second-in-command. Keep Stein and Jax because they’ve stopped bickering and because Jax is now a time ship mechanic, very useful. Tell Ray he can stay as long as he doesn’t fall in love with anybody because these doomed loves–Anna, Felicity, Kendra–are just depressing. Make Ray Mick’s new partner. Establish some rules for time travel and stop handwaving. Get a strong antagonist. Embrace the absurdity that is Legends of Tomorrow. Plot the whole season. Bring back Snart.

What I learned from this:

• No gotchas. I already knew that, but it bears repeating: NO GOTCHAS. Play fair with the reader, giving him or her all the information that your PoV character has. And whatever you do, don’t have your characters doing inexplicably dumb things that you intend to give a reason for at the third turning point; your readers will loathe them by then and you won’t get them back. (See the Cordelia Beast plot on Angel, the first half of the first season of Agents of Shield, and Legends.)

• Write your first draft and then identify your strongest characters; yes, you can strengthen others, but the ones you make strong instinctively are the ones you’re most interested in. Rip was pretty clearly intended to be the protagonist here, but the juice was Sara, Snart, and Mick. I’d had Dag planned as Nick’s right hand guy, but I have infinitely more fun with Rab. Rab’s moving up the character list.

• No Hawks.

The post Legends of Tomorrow Binge Watch: Episode 14 “River of Time” by Courtney Norris & Anderson Mackenzie, Episode 15 “Destiny” by Phil Klemmer & Chris Fedak, Episode 16 “Legendary” by Phil Klemmer & Marc Guggenheim: Crisis, Gotcha, Climax, Anti-Climax appeared first on Argh Ink.