Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 229

Cherry Saturday 6-25-2016

Today is National Catfish Day:

Or you could just go online and pretend to be somebody you’re not.

Your call.

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Book Done Yet: So Much Bigger Than I Thought

I always panic at the beginning of a book because I look at it and think, There’s just no there here. (I also panic in the middle and at the end, but for different reasons.) It’s just a story about a Girl who isn’t even My Girl yet, and stuff happens but it’s just . . . stuff. There’s no depth, no layering, it’s all surface.

Well, yeah, that’s because it’s the beginning.

I know this but I still panic because I can’t imagine it will ever be more. And then I start to imagine, and more characters show up, and the story gets more complex, and the antagonist emerges as a character, probably still a caricature but with the potential to be fully rounded, and then I panic because the story is so much bigger than I thought.

Sometimes I think the key to writng stories is finding the sweet spot between “no there here” and “so much bigger than I thought.”

But one of the good things about “so much bigger” is that I have all this extra stuff to draw on for the opening rewrite. Characters are a lot more interesting because they’re so screwed in so many different ways in the plot. Most of the major characters are way over their baggage limit and paying the price. My protagonist gets more agency because she has to act since all these other people are running about screaming that the sky is falling. I’m spinning a lot more plates, but I’m not boring any more. Confusing yes, boring no.

Take, for example, the number of characters:

I think the increase is just due to worldbuilding, but that’s still a lot of characters with no end in sight.

And then there’s PoV. I intended only two, Nita and Nick. But more and more I think Button needs a PoV, just so we have an outsider/human look at what’s happening. I’d say “normal human,” but it’s Button, so no. And originally I’d thought Button and Mort would Pair the Spares, but I’ve changed my mind on that. They just weren’t very interesting together, which was odd because they were interesting (to me) apart. But that’s okay because Max and Sequins have entered the fray.

Yeah, that’s too much story. Fortunately, that’s an easy problem to fix. It’s always easier to cut than add. Swing wide in the first draft, cut later. That’s the ticket.

I think.

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Person of Interest: “Return 0”

3:10 AM So the last episode just popped into my in-box and I have to admit, I’m hesitating to watch it. Because that’s it, no more Person of Interest after tonight. Fingers crossed that it’s a great exit.

4:30 AM: I think that was about as perfect a resolution as they could get. Maybe not a perfect story–I’m not far away enough from the emotion of the story to analyze it–but as far as taking these people to an end after five years, this all felt exactly right.

I’m going to have to come back much later to take this apart because the one thing I know they nailed is the emotional involvement: I was sick to my stomach all the way through from the tension and I’m still weepy, way too involved to be critical. I care about these people, I needed them to be, well, not safe, that’s not an option, but stable and living in a world without Samaritan, doing work that fulfills them. And I got that in the end.

It was still gut-wrenching. “Everyone dies alone . . . but if even a single person remembers you, then maybe you never really die at all.” When Reese smiled and said, “Sometimes one life is the right life,” I lost it. And then the Machine stayed with him, so he wasn’t alone at the end after all, even as she stayed with him at his father’s funeral, fracturing time to understand him.

God, I’m gonna miss this show.

Weakest Parts:

Still not sure how I feel about the time shifts. Back at you later on that.

Smart Story Moves

• Finch vs. Samaritan, the real obligatory scene with the real antagonist.

• Reese sacrificing himself for Finch. It was always in the cards, but it’s still heartbreaking. It wasn’t just an earned death, it was a volunteered death, a sacrifice for love.

• People got to say good-bye, even Root to Shaw in the end.

• Showing Root as the Machine. We needed to see her again.

• They even pulled out a happy ending. Well, bittersweet ending, with everybody who survived where they’re meant to be. Even Bear.

• And the Machine saved herself in the end. I think that’s a good thing.

Favorite Moments

• Reese: “I ike this new side of you, Finch. It’s terrifying, but I like it.”

• Finch: “The suspense is killing me. In addition to the gunshot wound.”

• Reese to Fusco: “Try not to die.”

• Good for Fusco for putting the Samaritan guy in the trunk. Good for Shaw for putting bullets into Jeff for killing Root and knifing Fusco. Good for Fusco for surviving.

• Shaw answering the phone and smiling.

This was a damn good finale for an outstanding show.

List of all Person of Interest Posts

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Person of Interest: “.exe,” Expectation, and the Calm Before the Climax

So it’s 9PM on Tuesday, and I’m setting myself up here, talking about “.exe” as the last episode plays (I won’t see it until about four AM) but I’ve been thinking a lot about this since Sarah posted how unhappy she was with the “.exe” episode. I loved it. And I think it comes down to expectation at the climax.

Your story lives or dies by the climax; it’s the last thing people read and the last thing they’ll remember. Think how many times you read a book or saw a movie that was fairly meh until the climax, which was fantastic. Would you give that author another try?

Then think about a book or movie that was fantastic . . . until the climax, which was a huge letdown. Would you give that author another try?

A great climax can save a meh book but nothing can save a bad climax. And the evaluation of a climax rests almost entirely on expectation. If we’ve been watching a protagonist battle an antagonist throughout a story, that story better end with the obligatory scene where the protagonist and antagonist fight to the finish. If we’ve watching a protagonist battle an inner demon, that final climax better end in either victory over or capitulation to the demon. Whatever the reader/viewer has been led to expect in the climax is the gauge by which that climax will be evaluated. The way it’s executed can be a surprise, but the climax itself must fulfill the story that’s been told.

Which is why it’s so important to make sure you’re communicating the story you want told.

Sarah wrote about how anti-climactic Greer’s death was:

“They killed the tension. Greer’s death was ridiculous. The only good moment was when Fusco got the better of the Samaritan operative. But having him be the murderer of all those people? Please. How did they turn stupid in their last few episodes? Because I was willing to let last week’s episode have points for fun, but it’s like they ended the season the week before.”

Sarah’s watching a different story than I am. I understand why, I think the writers may have been too subtle on this, but Greer was never the antagonist. Greer’s a minion and he has been from the beginning when he booted up Samaritan and said, “You tell us what to do.” There have been any number of time when Greer suggested something to his machine and was told no and Greer obeyed. Greer, in short, was underbrush that needed to be cleared before the climax, just as Elias was underbrush. Great characters, but characters who would be loose ends at the end. His death wasn’t ridiculous to me, it was chilling because it showed just how dangerous and ruthless the real antagonist, Samaritan, is: it killed its most loyal servant to further its own ends.

In contrast, Finch spends the penultimate episode in Gethsemane with his child, explaining why She has to die. She shows him all the good he’s done, but She’s not arguing with him. She knows She’s going to die and this is Her last chance to reach him; it’s the quiet before the storm, the night before the battle, and attention must be paid.

So Reese and Shaw fight to save Finch, and Fusco fights to defeat the Machine, and in the dark, Finch loads the virus and then makes his way to Samaritan to end it all, accompanied by his Machine for every station of the journey, both fully understanding the sacrifice they’re about to make for humanity. Root says over and over again, “You created God, Harold,” but it’s left unspoken that if Finch created a savior for humanity, then he’s God, too, giving his only child to die for humankind. “I wish there was another way,” Finch says to Her at the end. “I’m sorry.”

And that for me was incredibly powerful, necessary for the weight it gives to whatever comes next since what comes next is the last of the story.

I really loved this episode, but I loved it because it fulfilled and then surpassed my expectations.

Here’s the stuff I wrote before I read Sarah’s comment:

The Machine Gang Lite set-up from last week kept nagging at me, so I went back and watched “One Percent,” the very good episode that introduced Logan Pierce, aka Finch Lite, the genius tech billionaire, which Reese lampshades at one point in the season two episode by describing him pointedly to Finch as “a cunning billionaire with unlimited resources.” At the end of the episode, Pierce gives Reese a million dollar watch as a thank-you for saving his life. Reese shows it to Finch, who stomps on it and breaks it, showing him the GPS planted inside, while the Machine flashes a box on the screen that says “Monitoring Resource: Logan Pierce.”

They were setting last week’s episode up in season two, which boggles my mind.

This episode boggled, too. Beautifully paced, full of action with consequence and conversations between two people that were as riveting as the action. You know a show is doing something right when the phone rings and you get chills. Twice. And then a double cliffhanger ending.

I wrote earlier in this series about how the last act is paring the story down to its essential elements; everything else falls away as the story comes to the end, resting on the one point that everything that comes before has been aimed at. The opening of the episode is just Finch in front of two computer screens, blackness around him. He has no context; it’s just him and the Machine with Root’s voice. He’s cut off from the Gang, about to do something devastating, and taking full responsibility for it.

Reese and Shaw are together, but the shadow of what they’ve lost is in every shot because it’s just the two of them, carrying the memory of those they’ve loved, now as isolated and alone as Finch and the Machine. They trust each other, they work together, but they’re all too aware they’re the remnants of something that was amazing.

And then there’s Fusco, completely alone as the Samaritan agent zeroes in on him, fighting a duel without his partner because Reese is searching for Finch.

All of these people are in .exe mode, if you will; that is they go into action as soon as the show boots up, running automatically to do what they’re programmed to do: save the world. Their stories are as cold and hopeless as anything this show has ever done, and it’s riveting.

Weakest Parts

• Not in this episode, but way back in the beginning, the flash forward that has the Machine saying that she doesn’t know if anybody made it. So we know the Machine makes it. Flash forwards are worse than flashbacks because they don’t just interrupt the now of the story, they’re always either spoilers or schmuckbait or both.

• You’re expecting me to bitch about flashbacks, aren’t you? Wrong.

Those weren’t flashbacks, they were memories and alternate histories and they were always in the now of the story as the Machine tried to give Finch what he needed to know. They were dark Christmas Carols, showing him that his choice to build the Machine was both a good and bad one–Reese saved Jessica but then killed himself; Shaw still had her partner Cole but she killed the innocent whistleblower and Cole’s hesitation probably means he died shortly, too; and Root was never redeemed and ended up working for Samaritan as Martine’s doppelganger. Most devastating, Carter doesn’t die, but Fusco is disgraced and ruined. There are no simple answers, there is no right or wrong, and Finch is left to make his final decision to kill Samaritan and the Machine with it, or protect his AI child and leave the world in the hands of The Greater Good AI.

Smart Story Moves

• Starting with Finch in the dark with only the Machine’s voice, that echo of Gethsemane.

• The alternate histories that show how deeply the Machine and Finch have thought things through.

• Tightening the noose around Fusco. We WORRY about Fusco. Also, echoing his scenes in the pilot with Reese; he’s come a long way.

• Greer as calm, insane, implacable evil, underscored by Finch’s “You’ve gone mad.”

• The subtle Christ allusions, i.e. Greer telling Finch, “You don’t want to murder your creation. The one you resurrected from the dead.”

• Keeping most of this so quiet. It’s just beautifully done.

Favorite Moments

• Shaw’s “You think of anything else give me a call” and then the phone rings. Chills.

• Reese’s claustrophopia: “Just remember what happened to that fat German kid in Willy Wonka.”

• Bringing Finch and Greer face to face: Protagonist and Minion in a Pre-Obligatory Scene.

• Greer revealing how batshit he’s become: “Samaritan was distraught . . .” and “We’re dragging humanity to a higher plane …” for the Greater Good (three words that should always bring a chill, and beyond that always remind me of Hot Fuzz).

• The Machine calling Reese “the big lug.”

• Anything with Finch. Finch is just amazing. Finch is a BADASS.

Ominous Moment

Finch executing the program and presumably Samaritan and the Machine at the same time, while Fusco has to decide whether to execute the Samaritan agent (yes, for heaven’s sake, yes, do it; Carter shot the Russian guy, you can kill this bastard).

Last PoI Episode Post

June 23: “Return 0”

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Cherry Saturday 6-18-2016

Today is International Panic Day.

Who the hell thought that was a good idea?

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Binge Watch Plan

I never really thought about the binge watches I’ve done here. I didn’t even think of them as binge watches, but there are four, counting PoI: Leverage, Arrow, Sense8 and Person of Interest. problem is that the back posts of the blog are a mess because of the hack, so I really need to go back through and clean-up anything that might be of value, which I’m not sure all the binge watch posts were.

The Sense8 posts are kind of all over the place, but there was some good stuff in there, I just didn’t focus them, except for the one on writing romance. For some reason, I didn’t finish the Leverage watch, and the posts morphed from the study of community they began as. I think the Person of Interest posts have more focus, and most of them came after the hack, so we’re good there. My big takeaway, after scanning through some of these, is that I have to either do a rewrite to focus most of the old ones, or just dump them. So I’m cogitating.

But I also think that the binge watches are a good way to think about story, so I definitely want to do Limitless–there’s a big hook there to talk about in protagonist indentification and arc–and iZombie for emotional involvement in the middle of over-the-top fantasy. All of which is to say, there’s gonna be more binge watches because I learn while I do them and because I like doing them. And since I decided they’re going to be a thing–they’re already a thing, we’re on our fourth–I did logos. Because I’ll do ANYTHING rather than clean, even with a houseguest coming.

I never noticed they were all fantasy except for Leverage, so that shows you how observant I am. And now I must go back to cleaning so Krissie can actually get to her bedroom.

You know what isn’t in there? Galavant. So many TV shows, so little time.

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Two Things

Yes, I’m still writing. Yes, someday I’ll post more. I’m getting company tomorrow and this place is a hellhole, so today is Clean All the Things All Day. BUT . . .

The Book Club:

I’m not sure how useful/helpful/fun the bookclub was for you all. So I’m cogitating.

I’m thinking about extending it to non-fiction, which would remove the “only dead authors” restriction since we’d be talking about concepts, not creative expression (yes, I realize non-fiction is creative, but we wouldn’t be analyzing somebody else’s fantasies). Mollie has pointed out that this blog has to be for readers, too, not just writers, but there’s other good non-fiction topics out there.

Hmmm. Possibly it’s time for a poll.

Binge Watch

I like doing the binge watches because I get to talk about writing while watching shows I like again. I never finished the Leverage binge watch, must have wandered off, so I’ll do that later this summer. I’m going through and reorganizing and rewriting some of the posts now, so I’ll put up a table of contents post later this summer with the new schedule and notice of rewrites. And I want to do the same thing for Sense8 before it comes back. That one was such a perfect combination of train-wreck and triumph that it really deserves more scrutiny. And I need to go through and do the same thing for the Arrow posts; there was some good stuff in there even if the show did slide rapidly into the abyss.

And then there’s new stuff: I want to do a binge watch for Limitless at some point (short one, probably a month to six weeks; it only lasted a season, damn it). I want to do one for iZombie, which is coming back next year for a third season. I want to do Life on Mars, which I’d been avoiding because it’s so hard to find uncut online (Hulu has ruined it with the cut version is shows) and then I realized it’s probably only hard to find in America; also I think it’s one of the best stories I’ve ever seen.

The bottom line is, I like doing binge watches. They’re easier than book clubs.

So what do you think?

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Cherry Saturday 6-11-2016

June is National Accordion Awareness Month.

When was the last time you were aware of an accordion?

I thought so.

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Book Done Yet? Nita’s Likable Enough . . .

Anybody else remember eight years ago when Obama said, “You’re likable enough, Hillary”? It’s one of the few times I’ve been annoyed with him, but I’m finding myself looking at Nita and thinking the same thing. “You’re likable enough, Nita. But that doesn’t win voters readers.”

Likability is usually a big deal in discussing protagonists, but I’m not a fan. I don’t care if you like my protagonist or not, I just want you to be fascinated by her, can’t-look-away captivated. If you like her enough to root for her, that’s a plus, but a protagonist who’s merely likable is also merely there. There needs to be sharp edges and sparkly places and a smudge on the cheek. There needs to be volume there, she needs to take up space in the story, fill the page when she walks in. As much as I want readers saying, “Can’t wait to see what happens next,” even more I want readers saying, “Can’t wait to see what SHE does next.”

Nita’s not there yet.

She’s closer because I know so much more about her now, like why she’s always cold and why she can drink like a fish and not get drunk and why she’s such a good cop. None of which makes her Her, the one all eyes turn to. Those are just character notes, they’re not character.

So the question I’m asking myself now as I look at that first scene again is, “Why do I love Nita?” Because I do. I love her because she loves her brother and sister even if she’s too repressed to tell them so. I love her because she’s so upset about Joey’s death and she’s not going to let it rest because he was a good guy and this is her island. I love her because she keeps going even when her world starts fragmenting around her because what else is she going to do? I love her because she loves food and dogs and the Nature Preserve. I love her because she’s about to become unrepressed, and she’s so frantic while she’s trying to understand her New Normal, but she still does her job. She’s just fierce and determined and passionate and expansive and good-hearted.

Now all I have to do is get that on the page in the first scene . . .

Edited to add:

You know who’s a great protagonist?

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Person of Interest: “Synecdoche” and the Importance of Consequence

This episode had to follow the cataclysmic events of last week, and it managed to do so in the least effective way possible. It’s as if the writers of this episode were more interested in moving plot than in character and consequence, and as a result, the entire forty-odd minutes fell oddly flat as the show moved people through their paces, checking off boxes without any real emotional arc or connection with the viewer. This would be a bad idea any time, but at this point in the series plot, it’s a terrible idea. HUGE things happened last week; if you’re going to drop that kind of weight on your viewer/reader, the impact has to have equal weight. Think of “The Devil’s Share” after Carter’s death: the grim weight of that story showed that Carter’s death mattered, would continue to matter. This episode shows that Root is now the Machine so she’s okay, and Elias never mattered at all. There are no consequences to last week, and that undercuts not only this week but last week, too. Root’s and Elias’s deaths should matter; attention should be paid.

So Root is buried in a pauper’s grave, Fusco says, “Rest in peace, Cocoa Puffs,” and that’s it for mourning Root in this episode. Reese goes to make sure Shaw is all right, which of course she isn’t, but since Shaw is so emotionally damaged, we can’t get much catharsis from her, either. Harold has a few moments with the Machine, asking her not to use Root’s voice and then capitulating because he finds it comforting, and then he goes to work. Then Reese, Fusco, and Shaw find out the new number is the President of the United States and go to save him, but since he’s the POTUS, we’re not going to meet him or attach to him, so even the number of the week has no emotional weight. All of which means, there’s no hook for me in this story, I’m not worried about anybody because they seem as normally abnormal as ever, and so . . . I don’t care.

And I think that’s the big problem here: I should have cared. These people just lost two people who were close to them–one of them lost the love of her life–and the losses are shortchanged (Root) or ignored (Elias). We get a number of the week that we can’t meet because he’s the POTUS. We get Finch separated from the Gang and doing something with frightening consequences, but we don’t know what those are or who’s in danger, so there’s nothing here to grab onto.

Instead there are things to establish, which is done in as clunky a way as possible.

* Finch goes Bad even though the Machine warns him that what he’s going to do will have collateral damage. But we knew Finch had turned last week because of that amazing monologue in the interrogation room. So this is Finch and the Machine talking just like Finch and Root used to talk, reiterating something we already knew. And without Root’s physical presence, the Machine is just Root Lite, in thrall to Finch because she’s just a Machine, where the real Root could and often did go off the rails.

• There’s a shadowy group dedicated to taking down Samaritan in the name of privacy, and it gets kneecapped right off the bat. Call it Vigilance Lite.

ª The big reveal at the end is that the Machine has a second Gang made up of previous numbers: There’s Logan Pierce, the billionaire computer genius (Finch Lite); Joey Durban, the former military guy (Reese Lite), and Harper Rose, the off-the-hook woman of many faces (Root Lite). It’s nice to know the Machine has more than one Gang, but their youthful enthusiasm and cheery outlook–the three of them smiled more in the last scene than Our Gang has smiled in five years–screamed “This is a spin-off for the CW!”

Okay, I’ll admit, I’d watch a show about Logan Pierce because based on his original episode in Season Two (“One Percent”), he’ll do anything; he has a Young Nate Ford vibe about him without the alcoholic self-loathing, and he’d be a nice contrast to “I’m a very private person” Finch. But Joey was always just a good guy, and Harper was always more of a delinquent than a brilliant crook, so if this is the Gang 2.0, it has bugs.

Which means the end feels very tied-with-a-bow and pretty much weightless. Reese practically claps Joey on the back to say, “Good job, son” (so not like Reese), Shaw goes after Samaritan again (how exactly? no idea), and Finch does his new Finch-Bad-Ass by threatening the future of a guard’s young daughter (which I firmly believe is a complete bluff so Finch’s big turn to the dark side is lying to people holding guns on him).

And yet these are the people who gave us “The Devil’s Share” after Carter died so we could grieve her loss, so that her death would have weight. Why isn’t an enraged Shaw going after the shooter the way Reese went after Simmons? Why isn’t Reese hunting for Finch, worried that he’s going off the rails with loss, the way that Finch and the Gang went after Reese when he was crazed with grief? Why does the Machine give Logan the picture of Finch’s car instead of giving it to Reese? Why does this feel like an episode of NCIS?

And what the hell does the title mean in relation to the episode? “Synecdoche” means using a part to represent the whole: suits for business people, the Pentagon for the Department of Defense. The only thing I can think of is that the Gang represents many gangs working for the Machine, but that’s a pretty far reach. Like so much else in this episode, I just don’t get it. And because I don’t get it, it feels as though there are no consequences for the events of last week’s catastrophe.

Put another way, if actions in a story do not have consequences commensurate with the original impact of those actions on the reader/viewer, then the impact of the original actions is kneecapped. Last week was stunning. This week, it turns out nobody was stunned. Which means they’re going to have to ramp things up again next week, recovering from this week, to set up the final blow-out of the finale. It’s never good to have a blah episode, but the timing of this one makes it a really big mistake.

Weakest Parts

The lack of weight and consequences. This feels like a weak episode from Season One.

Smart Story Moves

Uh, bringing Logan back? He’s the only thing actually alive on the screen in this one.

Favorite Moments

I got nothin’.

Ominous Moment

There wasn’t a tense moment in this entire episode.

Fun Fact

Joey Durham and Root are married in real life.

New PoI Posts

June 16: “exe”

June 23: “Return 0”

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