Michael Offutt's Blog, page 161

Jugs

On Ellen, the host asked Sofia Vergara if she thought if brunettes or blondes had more fun.


Sofia responded:

"I would say the girls with the bigger boobs. I've been blonde and I've been brunette. I speak from experience."
Remember ladies. With great power comes great responsibility.
This gets taught to every guy sooner or later from the wise men on the mountain. I Love Modern Family. Ciao.

Ice Hockey and the Slipstream + Oculus Connection

I like writing about sports in fiction. J.K. Rowling did it with quiddich (or however it's spelled). I didn't want to make up a sport because that sounds too hard. So I chose one that I watch and understand. Ice hockey has a role to play in my first two books, and I'd like to explain why.

In SLIPSTREAM, the first book in my series A Crisis of Two Worlds, the entire plot hinges on Jordan getting an invite to a rather exclusive party that squad members from a professional team on an alternate Earth receive. It's his only way to get to a place so guarded, that other "secret agents" who tried to do so just got murdered. The sport you get in the first book is "wayyyy" out there intentionally. The sport you get in the second is down-to-earth, although I write about four separate games and in each one something sensational happens that you would rarely ever see.

In OCULUS, the sequel to Slipstream, Jordan must play hockey to attend Cornell University. Jordan needs Cornell like a man needs air to breathe. It's the only university that has everything he requires for his "quest". They have a particle collider. They have a scientist examining Antarctic ice cores for a climate change model. It really goes well together.

Here's the rub. Cornell has so many applicants every year, that they can pick and choose who they want. They are under no pressure to choose anyone at all. They don't need Jordan, but he needs them. And Jordan isn't rich. He has no "connections".

In the opening chapter of OCULUS, I speak of Jordan's S.A.T. scores. He got a perfect score in math.  But his other two areas were average. What gets him in are his hockey laurels. He gets a "likely" letter from the coach of the Cornell team and it is the coach who gets him qualified for a need-based scholarship (the only kind the Ivies have--they do not offer athletic scholarships).

OCULUS is the book where I amplify Jordan's stress to almost "stroke-inducing" proportions. His pride is to his doom. He won't ask for help. He won't cheat. And he won't take out loans. "Why?" you might ask will a student not take out student loans.

Jordan believes that his quest may kill him before he's 21. He's a proud person. He doesn't want to borrow money and never pay it back. So realizing that the odds are not weighed in his favor, Jordan refuses to borrow money. It's taking the whole "honor" thing to a dangerous extent.

It sounds ridiculous right? But THAT'S how stubborn he is. That's Jordan.

Jordan also knows that the only reason he's even in the college is to play hockey. So he feels that if he doesn't give it 150%, then he lets down someone that had faith in him--enough faith to save him.  Using the particle collider is really his only hope to succeed in his quest, so this is a pretty big deal.

I write with big stakes.  If Jordan doesn't complete his quest in Oculus, it will result in the destruction of Earth and the death of billions of people.

But again...even with all that at stake, he refuses to ask for help.

That's a lot of stress, don't you think?

Anyway, that's the ice hockey connection in my series thus far.

How To Train Your Dragon

"This is Berk. It snows nine months out of the year, and hails the other three. What little food grows here is tough and tasteless. The people that grow here, even more so. The only upsides are the pets. While other places have ponies, or parrots… we have dragons."

That's how the film opens up. And boy does Berk ever have dragons. Ever since I was a kid, I've been fascinated by them. I thought (wrongly) that they could never be reinvented. That dragons were a thing to be respected and feared. I probably got that from playing Dungeons & Dragons. But I just couldn't envision the cute, interesting, and fascinating variety of the ones that are in this movie. And I was pleasantly surprised. It worked. And it worked well. But honestly, what boy doesn't like dragons? I'd say they're pretty popular with girls too...provided that they aren't being sacrificed to them.
Here's what the author said about her dragons and it's a lesson to all of us writers that even the most jaded of creatures, the most overdone, from vampires to werewolves to mermaids and beyond can be reinvented. You just have to get out of the box and think about what it is that you want to do. Then you need to write about it before someone else does.
‎"The dragons I would write about would not be the rather generalized, big, green things that I had read about in storybooks. What I wanted to create was a multiplicity of different dragon species, of all shapes and sizes, adapted to their environment and habitats in the same way as birds or other animals we see today." 
             - Cressida Cowell, author of How To Train Your Dragon And then there is Hiccup. He is a stand in for every awkward, non-athletic boy who wanted desperately to fit-in and just never could. This is the boy with the overbearing father who is unsupportive of a son's endeavors because there is only one correct path to follow in life. This is the kind of father who looks at his son, decides with great disappointment that his boy cannot follow this one correct path, and then sets out to makes sure that they live the most mediocre of lives. The angry man. The drunk man. The selfish man. The man that should never have had kids. But to this, Hiccup says, "Winter in Berk lasts most of the year.. And hangs on with both hands and won't let go. And the only real comfort against the cold are those you keep close to your heart. I gave my best friend a pretty great gift.. but he gave me a better one." I wish I had a pet dragon when I was a kid. That would have been so cool. Well at least I have the series slated to come out on Cartoon Network this fall. Check out the preview for it below.

God of the Gaps

In the opening scenes of Pixar's Wall-E, the robot returns home from a full day of garbage cleanup with a little pile of treasures to add to his extensive collection. Carefully, Wall-E puts each item in its place, but a spork stumps him. Does it go with the spoons, or with the forks? He's never seen it before, so it will take some investigation to determine exactly what it is. This type of questioning is at the root of good science. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, author, speaker, and professor says: 

"In contemporary America, the notion that a higher intelligence is the single answer to all enigmas has been enjoying a resurgence. This present-day version of "God of the Gaps" goes by a fresh name: 'intelligent design.' The term suggests that some entity, endowed with a mental capacity far greater than the human mind can muster, created or enabled all the things in the physical world that we cannot explain through scientific methods. 

But why confine ourselves to things too wondrous or intricate for us to understand, whose existence and attributes we then credit to a superintelligence? Instead, why not tally all those things whose design is so clunky, goofy, impractical, or unworkable that they reflect the absence of intelligence? 

Take the human form. We eat, drink, and breathe through the same hole in the head, and so, despite Henry J. Heimlich's eponymous maneuver, choking is the fourth leading cause of 'unintentional injury death' in the United States. How about drowning? Water covers almost three-quarters of Earth's surface, yet we are land creatures--submerge your head for just a few minutes, and you die. 

How about the silent killers? High blood pressure, colon cancer, and diabetes? It's possible not to know you're afflicted until your coroner tells you so. Wouldn't it be nice if we had built-in biogauges to warn us of such dangers well in advance? Even cheap cars, after all, have engine gauges. 

Stupid design could fuel a movement unto itself. It may not be nature's default, but it's ubiquitous. Yet people seem to enjoy thinking that our bodies, our minds, and even our universe represent pinnacles of form and reason. Maybe it's a good antidepressant to think so. But it's not science--not now, not in the past, not ever. 

Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem. Once upon a time, people identified the god Neptune as the source of storms at sea. Today we call these storms hurricanes. We know when and where they start. We know what drives them. We know what mitigates their destructive power. The only people who still call hurricanes "acts of God" are the people who write insurance forms."

As a person that does not believe in intelligent design, I want to explain myself. I'm not against the people who do. But people who believe in intelligent design are trying to put this into the classrooms to teach children ideas that do not stand up to scientific questioning, and that's wrong. Keep it in your Sunday schools. Science has never knocked on the doors and insisted that evolution be taught alongside whatever it is that you teach. So why then is religion knocking on the doors of the science classrooms and trying to get their agenda passed?
Yesterday I got reviewed by Ben at the book blog, Dead End Follies. Please go read his review of SLIPSTREAM if you are so inclined (and introduce yourself to very intelligent young man). I will see you on Monday for my "H" post in the A to Z challenge.

Feeling struck by a tsunami of rewrites

In that crazy moment when you feel struck by a tsunami of rewrites (like when you get fifty pages of corrections from a beta-reader that means months of edits--I love you Jeff and Donna >,<)...
And you feel that you've been swept out to sea...
by your own Attention Deficit Disorder (ummm A.D.D. is bad for a writer...) OH SHINY OBJECT...I shall write two hundred pages about shinies and then my W.I.P. will only be 150,000 words and no one will mind that, right? Right?
Sorry...
for a moment I got taken over by Briane Pagel who writes 200,000 word blog posts...
Back to my Pixar-infused narrative... Ahem...

And you feel that you've been swept out to sea as if the whole world has turned against you. And the most obvious solutions in your writing
escape you, and you look like an idiot... Remember the words of Dory the fish And keep in mind that if, while you're singing this,
someone you meet ever says to you these words:
"You are my Nemo". 
That you should stop typing and go with them.
Because these words mean that they would searchevery inch of the world just to find you. When you get back, all the crap your betas gave you
will still be sitting there in the pile of dung that used
to be your manuscript.  It's all good.
Sometimes when stuck, all it takesis to make the best of a situation. Criticism gives you the
freedom to explore areas that you hadn't. Like maybe your story...
in case you wrote two-hundred pages about hockey games.
And when it's our writing, grab that shovel with both
hands, apply spit, and get to shoveling.
Writing is hard. George R.R. Martin said so. Hence,
it must be true. Have a great Friday.

Excited and hopefully not misunderstood

I'm excited. My first book is already on sale on Amazon and other websites. But I have apprehensions, and I thought about Ken and his note to the other toys on Toy Story 3. At how they probably don't understand him (as colorful and wonderful as he is).

When in your excitement, you write something But the people that read it have gottenthe wrong impression of who you are as a person. You are just being you. You tryto convey it through your blog. But might be sorely misunderstood by thosewho have never seen your kind before. So...I hope this doesn't happen. My story is about a boy. He's seventeen. He's cute. He's smart. He's athletic. He has six pack abs, blond hair, and blue eyes. But unlike random chance, there are reasons for all of these things. But all is not perfect for him.

He does a lot of hard drugs. He makes awful choices.He is immature, self-centered, but lonely.He's gay, but it's not something he admits right away.He's bright and that sometimes makes him smug.He's proud to the point of it being a vice.He falls for a very bad boy.He loses his virginity; it's not a lovely experience for him.But he helps broken people.He redeems them. He fixes things.And in so doing, he learns to understand who he is.And maybe, he can learn to fix himself.The world of SLIPSTREAM is dark and evil.
I'm excited for you to read it. But I'm also afraid. Please don't misunderstand who I am. SLIPSTREAM is not a book written for Catholic nuns. Senator Rick Santorum would hate my book. Michelle Bachmann would decry it.

No matter what our differences are, I think you are wonderful. Thank you, from this "Ken" who hopes you are on the same page as me. But even if you aren't, I appreciate you anyway.

Slipstream Cover Reveal and Double Dragon Publishing

I already did my "C" post for "Cars" but as it is still Tuesday, I can also use the words "Cover Reveal", right?  Ladies and gentlemen, this is my book. I'm extremely happy with how it turned out. Deron Douglas (the artist) is quite talented and all my fears have been laid to rest. I'm leaving this post up tomorrow for "D" as well.  "D" can stand for Double Dragon Publishing, Deron Douglas, and the delight I had at opening this attachment in my email.
I think it's just perfect. The people that read my ARC should agree with me. The green color is symbolic of Life Green, the glass spider is a symbol of just about everything taking place in my book, and the technology in the background is both a symbol of the A.I. and the differences between the two worlds.

If you want to mark it "To Read" it's on Goodreads. Click the button on the sidebar. :)

Cars, Confidence, Communication, and the Celebration of You

From Long Live Lemons.

"The car who has her headlights as her eyes from Cars 2.

I drew her the way I see her in my mind - beautiful; like all the of the lemons. I even gave her a name, Claudette. 

One of the lessons of Cars 2 can be interpreted [as] bullying is a bad thing. The movie gives us the examples of cars from an era of which they just couldn't catch a break; this is true. The movie shows these characters as what we're supposed to see as mature men...so it leaves us to believe that their bullying happened the most when they were younger.

As the years passed and they progressed into the adults they are today, they finally broke down...and they took it to drastic measures. 

One of my signature things in the Cars fandom is drawing the characters the way they want to be seen. I don't draw the lemons with rust and angry faces. At the same time, I don't draw them as incredibly happy cars as well. Here we have a lemon because her eyes weren't built the way the other cars were built. I guess we should interpret this as a disability. At least, that's the way I write it in my fan fiction. I didn't draw her rusty and crazy like the movie portrayed her to be. I drew her casually. 

The thing about Cars is that when you change the way they look, you're changing their character. Each character is made to look a certain way. If people did more research and looked up the meanings of colors, one would find that the color of their paint jobs actually means something that has to do with their personality (besides the tuners and modified cars). I can see how some would think that I change the characters when I draw them the way I do. I agree, I do change their character. I make them more confident, but they're still the same character. 

If you were someone who didn't feel so great about himself, you would tend to wear clothes that match your mood; your own looks will mimic your own feelings. However, that one day you smile and your clothing and appearance matches your attitude now, does that mean you've changed your character? No, it doesn't. Confidence does not equal a personality change and I say that because people think that moods are the same as personalities. Personalities are permanent while moods are not, no matter how permanent they seem. If you're feeling sad one day, even if you're entire day feels like it's been sad, there was a change in your mood at some point in the day, even if it were for a split second. 

Not everyone can be the super cool, super agent car

I think most people don't sit there and take the time to analyze the Cars movies. They just see that it doesn't work and they don't give it the chance they deserve. There's a lot to pull from both of them. Yes, I said both of them. 

You know what else doesn't work? Talking toys, fish, rats, and so on. None of it works because none of it is real. This, my friends, is the beauty of fiction. To be able to be pulled into a world that is crazy; that is completely insane. That's why it's so fun."

I have nothing to add to this.I agree totally.Learn from Cars.Celebrate you.Write fiction.

Brave

This is our first sort of fairytale," John Lasseter told an eager crowd on the of Disney's D23 Expo in Anaheim, California, "This is our first period piece. This is our first female main character. This is Brave."
The first clip showcased featured the lead, Merida (Kelly Macdonald) riding on her giant horse through the forest, shooting down targets hanging from the trees with her bow and arrow. The horse stops short of a log, throwing her into the mud. In anger, she throws a clod of mud at the horse's nose, and he snorts it back to his face. She approaches him, angrily, but then kisses his muzzle.
Lasseter was joined on stage by the film's director, Mark Andrews (clad in a kilt) and producer, Katherine Sarafian. They pointed out that they had two different research trips to Scotland to get everything down.

"We're inspired by all the stories that are already there," Andrews told ComingSoon.net backstage after the presentation, "There are stories about every landscape and every tree and every rock. It was inspiring to try and fuse that idea of how it connects us all."
Sarafian told the crowd that Scotland's phenomena of blue bog gas, called Wil-o'-the-wisp, will feature prominently in the story. The wisps have the power to "change your fate", and lead Merida to the cottage of a witch. Seeing this as an opportunity to get away from being married, she insists the witch cast a spell. Naturally, everything goes wrong and the spell starts a chain of events that brings the highlands closer to war.
Concept art for the witch in BRAVEMacdonald and fellow voice talent Kevin McKidd then took to the stage. McKidd pulls double duty in the film, voicing both Lord. MacGuffin and his incomprehensible son, Young MacGuffin.

"He's a lovely guy and his heart is in the right place," McKidd told us, "but no one can work out what he's saying because he has a strong Scottish accent."

The next clip featured King Fergus (Billy Connolly), who has called Merida's suitors together to compete in a game of her choosing, the winner will receive her hand in marriage.

"[Merida] is reeling against her mother," Macdonald said backstage, "She doesn't want a suitor. She's quite happy and wants to live her life, but her mother is trying to create this perfect princess. It's a bit of their battle and their reconnection."
Concept Art for Queen Elinor
"Merida sees an opportunity here," Andrews told the audience in reference to the clip, "Do you know what game she picks?"

To which the crowd shouted back, "Archery!"

Unfinished, the scene played with some parts featured only as animatics and others roughly rendered. Most of the parts with Merida in them played beautifully. As the suitors shoot their arrows, Merida and King Fergus laugh about their ineptitude.

First is Macguffin. He timidly shoots his arrow and barely hits the target. Next is the Gene Simmons-esque son of Lord Macintosh, who fares better than Macguffin but misses the bullseye. He angrily tosses his bow into the crowd, where a young girl shouts "I caught it! Yay!" Finally, the aptly named young Dingwall goes next, barely enough brains in him to knock the bow. King Fergus angrily shouts at him to get on with him, and the spooked by looses the arrow and miraculously gets the bullseye.
Enraged, Merida appears on the field and shouts that she will be competing for her own hand. As she gets a perfect bullseye in the first target, her mother screams at her to get stop. Merida ignores her, and goes to the second one. At Dingwall's, she not only splits the arrow, but her arrow cuts all the way through to the scaffolding of the target. Merida then turns to face her furious mother and the clip ends.
"We have our own take on Scottish lore," Sarafian said of the overall tone of Brave, "It's really Pixar lore, but it's set in Scotland and its inspired by Scottish storytelling and designed to be a story that's perfectly set in that landscape."

Brave hits theaters on June 22, 2012, right after Prometheus :)) Oh summer...how I love thee.

Awesome Andy Davis

Growing up is hard to do... You remember the real questions And your play friends you left behind It is the girls and boys inside us all that allow us to love Thank you Andy. Thank you Pixar. All things end.Even childhood.But at least it stays with us to inspire our stories for the next generation.
I liked Andy so much that I named a major character after him in my second book, Oculus, and essentially, based his appearance off of what he might look like in college. I'm sure there's lots of amazing young men out there just like him. And now I have one in my book. :)