S. Evan Townsend's Blog, page 112

"Adult" Content

The other day I noticed on my DVR's programming grid that Turner Classic Movies (TCM) was going to show Captain Blood .  It's been years since I've seen Captain Blood and I remembered it as a fun, entertaining old movie (made in 1935) that made a star out of Errol Flynn and introduced Olivia de Havilland to the world.  So, of course, I recorded it and watched it a few days later.  And yes, it was just as fun and good as I remembered, based on historical fact (with a few liberties thrown in) and a fun movie.  But I realized that there was zero sex (some slight hinting at prostitution) and the violence was bloodless and more of the bang-bang-you're-dead type or more hinted at than shown.   It certainly wasn't like the violence one sees in movies today.  Captain Blood was a movie I wouldn't have qualms about showing to a 10-year-old.

Captain Blood was apparently a big hit when it was released despite staring the then-unknown Flynn.  It was also nominated for a best-picture Oscar.  But by today's standards it is very tame.

And it got me thinking about how much "adult content" entertainment needs to have to be entertaining.  Captain Blood is entertaining with almost zero adult content.  But the movie Rush was also entertaining but had nudity, bad language, and violence (in the form of car crashes and fist fighting).

Back when Captain Blood was made, entertainers had no choice.  The U.S. used an obscenity standard that was based on English common law which required (according to Wikipedia) "any material that tended to 'deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences'" and that was interpreted to mean the most sensitive individuals in a society which meant children.  Which meant that all entertainment had to be okay for children.  A series of Supreme Court decisions, ending with Miller vs. California in 1973 redefined obscenity (which did not enjoy First Amendment protections) as work that "applies to prurient interest" and lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."  That last part has been a pretty big loophole and a lot squeezes through it judging by the dregs of our culture.  So your novel can have the raunchiest sex scenes and the most graphic violence and assuming it has literary or artistic value, there's no problem.  So pretty much the law no longer regulates what "adult content" entertainment can have.

So this is where the word "gratuitous" comes in.  What if in Captain Blood there was a sex scene, with nudity, with the prostitute.  What if during the sword fights there was blood gushing everywhere.  Would that be gratuitous?  It obviously wasn't needed since it's a fine film without it.  But the violence of Saving Private Ryan was there for a reason and the movie needed those graphic, bloody scenes to make its point about war and the "Greatest Generation."

My opinion on "adult content" is probably pretty typical: if it's needed, use it.  In my science fiction novel Rock Killer the "F-word" is used three times.  Why?  Because I felt in those bits of dialog only the F-word would suffice to convey the meaning I wanted to convey.

In my Adept Series novels I have tried to keep the "adult" content" to a minimum.  Swear words are mild, sex is off-screen (so to say), and while the violence gets bloody it's not belabored.  But there are things some might find offensive.  For instance, in the first Adept Series novel, Hammer of Thor , there's a scene where a doorman at a speakeasy says: "No niggers, chinks, or Irish."  (I had a conundrum about this at a public reading and bowdlerized myself.)  In fact, the "n-word" appears three times in Hammer of Thor and I just used it in my unnamed work in progress (which is set in 1881 when racism was ubiquitous).

I'm not one that gets easily offended but there are people who are.  Should we write for them?  No.  We should write for our intended audience.  "Adult content" should never be gratuitous but should be used when it's needed for the story and the message.  Sex, violence, and bad language have their place.  And some readers want gratuitous sex, violence, and bad language.  As with all writing, remember your audience and you probably won't go wrong.

The Perfect versus The Good

One mistake a lot of writers make is to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  I think this is also a large source of writer's block.

What do I mean?

A lot of writers think their first draft has to be brilliant, perfect, inspirational, and evocative.  Because that's what they want their work to be.  So they sit there, staring at the blinking cursor, unable to come up with the perfect sentence.  Or they write a bit, realize it's not amazing, and quit in frustration.
I have news for you: your first draft will suck.  Get over it and write the damn thing.
An example: In my first draft of my forthcoming novel Gods of Strife (book four of the Adept Series) I described a female character like this:
I'd often heard the cliché "face of an angel" but in this case it appeared literally true.
And I hated it.  But I didn't stop to think of something better because I wanted (and needed) to keep on writing (there was an action scene about to come up I wanted to write).  So I kept pounding on the keyboard but that line kept nagging me.  I knew I could do better.  I wrote the entire first draft with that awful, cliched description in my work.  But I didn't forget about it and, of course, returned to it in the edit process.

After several iterations I settled on:

Her features were china-doll delicate, as if she would shatter when first touched without care. Fair skin almost the color of freshly-fallen snow seemed flawless, without a mark or freckle.

Much better.  Maybe not perfect but so much better.

I stick to the Dory (the regal blue tang fish from Finding Nemo who had to keep reminding herself to "Just keep swimming") philosophy of writing: "Just keep writing.  Just keep writing.  Just keep writing."  You won't write anything if you don't write.  Seems simple but a lot of want-to-be writers forget it.

My freelance work helps with this.  I have deadlines.  I have to get the thing written.  So I have to hammer it out.  Then I can go back and fix things.  Sometimes I have only a few days to get the story written (once I only had hours).  So I have to write it, proof/edit/revise, and then call it "good enough" and send it out.

This is sort of, as I understand it, the thought behind NaNoWriMo: write out your 50,000 words and don't worry about how bad it is.  But I do think a lot of NaNoWriMo participants forget that their first draft sucks and that they now need to spend a few months editing, revising, proofreading, and editing, revising, proofreading again until it is, if not perfect, as good as you can make it.

But it won't happen until and unless you get that first lousy, awful, desperately-in-need-of-work first draft done.  Just keep writing.

Daylight Saving Time is Bad for You

Back in 2010 I wrote this on my old (now defunct) blog:

(Some of the links don't work anymore)

Over the weekend we all (well most Americans and some Canadians) did our annual ritual of "springing forward" and turned our clocks one hour ahead.  Daylight Saving Time (DST) was expanded in 2007 by a 2005 act of Congress in the hopes of saving energy.  It doesn't save energy and in fact probably costs energy and you money.  Laurent Belsie writing for the Christian Science Monitor's "The New Economy" blog tells about a study that shows DST is an energy and money waster:

The move to Daylight Saving actually used 1 percent more electricity than if people stuck to Standard Time, according to a 2008 study on residents in Indiana. In other areas of the United States, the time change could cost people even more.

Indiana is a special case because a lot of the state didn't observe DST until recently.

While Indiana residents saved on lighting by switching to Daylight Saving Time, they spent even more on extra heat and air-conditioning.
During the colder months of Daylight Saving, Indiana residents turned up the heat because they were getting up an hour closer to the coldest part of the night, the researchers found. In the summer months, they cranked up the air-conditioner because they were getting home an hour closer to the hottest part of the day.
The extra electricity cost for Daylight Saving: $3.29 per Indiana household per year or $9 million for the state as a whole.

And if you live where it's colder or hotter than Indiana, you're probably spending more.
But it's not only that DST doesn't save energy and does cost you money: it's dangerous, too.  John Miller in a National Review Online piece tells how dangerous (link original):

According to Stanley Coren, a sleep expert at the University of British Columbia, the number of traffic accidents and fatal industrial mishaps increase on the Monday after we spring forward. (Check out one of his studies here.) The reason, presumably, is because losing even a single hour of sleep over the weekend makes a lot of people a bit drowsier on what we might usefully call Black Monday. Unfortunately, there's no compensating effect of a super-safe Monday as we go off DST and "fall back" in the autumn.

Sounds like a typical government program: costs you money and is deadly.

Maybe the best idea would be to scrap the whole thing.

Writing Requires Discipline

Why do you write?  Ask fifty writers and you'll probably get fifty different answers.  A lot of them will probably say they enjoy it and it's fun.  And it is.  As a writer I'm sure you don't stare at a computer screen, avoid all human contact, and risk carpal tunnel syndrome simply because it pays the bills (boy, it does not pay the bills, am I right?).   You love it.  You don't know what you'd do if you'd couldn't write.

But writing, at least professionally (and if you are selling books even as an indie, you are writing professionally) is a job.  Sorry.  And like all jobs, it has some unpleasant parts.

One thing I hear from a few would-be writers is "Oh, I've got a thousand things started but nothing's finished."  Why don't they finish what they start?  Because they get a new idea and start working on it.  It's a lot funner to work on the new idea than to drudge through and get the previous idea finished.  What these writers lack is discipline.  And successful writing requires discipline.

For instance: I am currently working on a western/fantasy mashup that is in the same world as my Adept Series (the first novel of which is Hammer of Thor ).  But last Tuesday as I was showering I had another idea for a science fiction novel.  And I found myself writing scenes for it in my head and plotting it out.  And I thought about a scene I had written many years ago, a vignette really, that I could incorporate into this novel.  And . . . what about my western/fantasy?  Well, I'm about 22,300 words into it (of a goal of 60,000) and it's sort of bogging down and I need to figure out some stuff and boy would it be more fun to work in the science fiction novel.

But I can't.  I have to be disciplined.  I have to finish the western/fantasy and then go back to the science fiction piece.  So I wrote the first scene I had in mind for the science fiction novel, took some notes, did some preliminary calculations to see if I was out of my mind on the science, and now I'm setting it aside until I finish the western.  Is that the funnest thing to do?  No.  Is it what's required.  Yes, if I want to be a successful writer.  It is what being disciplined means.

Being disciplined as a writer means you do the less-than-fun-stuff in addition to the fun stuff.  You drive through and finish your current WIP before starting another.  You get the edits done on your WIP before you work on your next project.  You keep pushing and working on that novel until it is published.  Yes, you might start a new WIP while you're waiting for beta reads or your publisher to get back to you with edits.  But you keep working.  As I said, writing is work; it is a job.

Because if you're not disciplined and you don't get the book finished and published, you aren't a writer, you're a tinkerer.

Movie Review: Rush

I suppose if you play basketball at the "Y" you have some idea what it takes to be a professional basketball player: the physical stamina, the skills, the talent.  Of course, you know you'd never be able to compete at a pro level (running up and down that court kicks your ass) but at least you know the joy of a well-placed basket.

It's sort of the same way with me and racing.  Since I've driven on a racetrack I know something of the physical endurance (you'd be amazed), concentration, discipline, and skills that race car driving takes.  Oh, sure, I know I could never compete at the pro level (maybe the amateur level) but I have an inkling of what it takes to be a professional race driver.  I do know that after 20 minutes on a racetrack I am exhausted and that I gave the effort the greatest concentration I have ever given anything.  Anecdotally, a driving instructor told me that a surgeon said driving on a racetrack takes more concentration than doing surgery.

The common lament among racing fans is "When will there be a good movie about racing?"  Probably the best movie about racing is 1966's Grand Prix directed by John Frankenheimer.  The opening sequence is amazing.  But the film goes down hill from there turning into a bit of a soap opera and, like all racing movies, tends to concentrate on the sensational bits about racing: i.e., the crashes.

Last night I watch Rush , directed by Ron Howard.  This is a film about the true story of the rivalry between two Formula One (F1) drivers, James Hunt and Niki Lauda.  And I'm feeling conflicted about the movie.  It is, in total, a very good movie about two men who were completely different in style, personality, and motivation.  Lauda (as portrayed in the film) was very serious, saw racing as a business and driving was only a means to be successful in that business.  Hunt (as portrayed in the film) was a playboy, loved to drive, loved racing for the excitement of it, and had a joie de vivre that Lauda couldn't seem to understand.  There could hardly be two different men.

And Chris Hemsworth, who is best known for playing Thor in the Avengers movies, did an amazing job playing John Hunt, right down to the right accent (Hemsworth is Australian, Hunt was British).  When Hunt's wife leaves him for Richard Burton, you see Hunt's pain even though he is joking about it with the press.  I was very impressed and it showed that Hemsworth can actually act.

But, with the exception of one exciting race sequence where Hunt is trying to win the F1 World Championship and Lauda's horrible accident, the movie could have been about any sport or even business, acting, writing.  Racing was more of a background to the story.  Again, the movie did not capture what it takes to be a race car driver.  Maybe no movie can.

If you're not a racing fan, Rush is a very good movie about two men with completely different approaches to life.  If you are a race fan, Rush is a very good movie but don't expect it to be a great racing movie.

Lazy Writing

A while back I watched (on Blu-Ray) a movie called 2 Guns .  It was fairly entertaining and occasionally funny for a cop/buddy/action movie.  It starred Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington as (respectively) a Navy NCIS-type officer and a DEA Agent.

The biggest problem I had with the movie was not the stars, not the acting or direction, but the writing.  It was lazy.  The bad guy, played by Bill Paxton, was (wait for it) a CIA agent who was in cahoots with a drug dealer shipping drugs into the US to pay for CIA operations.

And I'm thinking "Come on, guys!" (I guess it was kind of sexist of me to assume the writers were men thinking women wouldn't write this tripe)(they were men).  Take some stupid and paranoid conspiracy theory about the CIA and use it as a basis for your plot?  I was almost waiting for the CIA to distribute crack in the 'hood.

This is just lazy writing.  Instead of coming up with an original idea, they rehash an old, desiccated conspiracy.  How often has the "CIA is evil" plot been used in movies and books and TV shows?

Don't be a lazy writer!  Don't use overused plots, ideas, tropes, and cliches.  Don't rehash decades-old ideas.  Be original!

That extends to other areas of writing, too.  Make sure your character development is strong.  I know, I'd rather be writing a shoot-out or a car chase or a love scene but then you're not writing good fiction, you're making comic books.  No, wait, that's an insult to comic books.  You're writing stuff like 2 Guns.

Writing is hard work.  You do it because you love it.  So you want to do the best possible job you can.  So, don't be lazy.

Firing Guns in Space

Saturday on "Mythbusters" (which I didn't watch until Sunday night having DVR'd it), they fired a gun in a vacuum.  This was to see if a gun could fire in space.  (I didn't blog about this until today because I had to think about it for a bit because I was sure something was wrong.)

Now, I'm keenly interested in this subject because in my science fiction novel Rock Killer there are many guns fired in space, specifically on the Moon, in the first chapter.  My research at the time of writing the novel let me to believe that guns would fire in space.  Primers and propellant are self-oxidizing (they don't need oxygen in the air to burn) so the lack of oxygen wasn't an issue.  The one thing I couldn't find a definite answer to was vacuum welding.  Would the tight-fitting metal parts in a gun and/or cartridge vacuum weld in vacuum?  Don't know.

I was very curious to find out how Mythbusters was going to test this.  Because in space the vacuum is near absolute (interstellar medium has about one hydrogen atom per cubic centimeter) and that's very difficult and expensive to replicate that on Earth.

Way back when when Mythbusters set out to disprove the conspiracy theory that there was no Moon landing, NASA let them use one of their vacuum chambers that probably would come pretty close to space conditions.  But I sincerely doubted NASA was going to let them fire a gun in that gazillion-dollar vacuum chamber.  And I was correct.

The Mythbusters built a vacuum chamber out of bullet-resistant plastic (which meant long seams to leak air through).  And yes, they made a partial vacuum in that chamber.  The problem is there is an asymptotic relationship.  As you approach a perfect vacuum, the energy needed to extract those last few molecules reaches infinity.  So the lower vacuum you want, the more energy it will take to create and maintain it.  They didn't show the vacuum pump used but I doubt it was very big (it wasn't looming in the background).

According to Wikipedia, outer space has a gas pressure of 0.0001 Pascal (Pa) or one ten thousandth of a Pascal to less than 0.000000000000003 Pa.  That's three quadrillionths of a Pascal.  Since atmospheric pressure is about 101,300 Pa (or 14.7 pounds per square inch) the air around you is about one billion times higher than the highest gas pressure in space.  (The actually atmospheric pressure you experience depends on air temperature, your altitude, and the weather you are experiencing.)

And, according to Wikipedia, it is possible to get about as low as one millionth of a Pascal of vacuum on Earth which is below the upper range for space.  But that's using very specialized and expensive equipment.

The Mythbusters had a vacuum gauge on their vacuum chamber and when they fired the gun it read -90 kPa (or -90,000 Pa).  Atmospheric pressure is 101,300 Pa as stated above.  So they got the gas pressure in their chamber down to 11,300 Pa (101,300 - 90,000) which is a very, very poor vacuum.  In fact, 11.15% of atmospheric pressure remained and the pressure in the chamber was 1.64 pounds per square inch.  Hardly space-like conditions.

The gun fired, but this was nothing like the conditions in space.  Their vacuum had 113 million times more pressure than the highest pressure in space (0.0001 Pa).

Even if you use the Karman line (the point above the Earth, 100 kilometers above sea level where traditionally space is said to start) as your definition of "space" the gas pressure there is 0.032 Pa and the Mythbusters "space" had 353,125 times more pressure than that.

So it's still an open question if a gun will fire in space.

Characters Who Are Neurodiverse

Over the weekend of the 14, 15, and 16th I attended a science fiction and fantasy convention called RadCon in Pasco, WA.  And somehow I ended up on a panel called "Writing Neurodiversity" all about:

Creating neurodiverse characters with autism, Aspegers, ADHD, bipolar, OCD, and synesthesia, can give your writing new dimensions. Come learn the right way to represent these unique strengths and weaknesses.

And, it seemed, I was there as the bipolar representative (I was diagnosed Type II bipolar about five years ago).

It was a very interesting panel and I learned a great deal about autism, Aspergers, and synesthesia (there were two women on the panel with synesthesia, which is a very interesting phenomena in which letters and words and sounds manifest to them as colors or smells or some other sensation in addition to just the primary sensation).

The problem is, the panelists agreed, that portrayals of people with these conditions (I hesitate to use the term "mental illness" because it's often more like a "mental difference" than a negative thing) in popular culture are cliched and "flat" (my term).  The character is defined often by their condition. "Monk" is OCD, Sheldon Cooper is Aspergers, etc.  But the real-life experiences of these people is so much more than their condition.  I know this personally because I am more than my bipolar.  Yes, when I'm not on my meds I can have crippling depression mixed with manic episodes that would have probably destroyed my marriage if it weren't for the infinite patience of my wife.  But I am not just my bipolar.

As much as you wouldn't write a cliched character, you shouldn't write cliched persons with these conditions.  And that means research.  And the best place to research is in the writings (blogs, etc.) of people who have these conditions and talk about what it is like for them.  Yes, some scientific investigation is appropriate but if you want to know what it feels to have Aspergers, then find a blog by an Aspy.

I've never written about being bipolar on this blog before so this blog would not be a good source.  But I am sure there are many blogs written by people with one of the four times of bipolar (as I said, I'm type II).  Your character with a neurodiverse condition needs to be as layered, nuanced, and complex as your character who is does not have such a condition.

Fake Realistic Dialog

Have you ever watched a
The other day I spotted The Caine Mutiny on my Dish Network guide and thought, "Wow, the good ol' Caine Mutiny with Humphrey Bogart and all those other guys and I haven't seen that in years."  So I set up the DVR to record it.  But when I sat down to watch it, turns out it wasn't the old classic movie, but some made-for-TV movie called "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial" and it was directed by Robert Altman.  I watched it for a bit then had to turn it off because, a) it wasn't what I wanted to watch and b) I don't like Robert Altman's style.  I believe MASH is the only movie of his I've actually sat through.

The problem is that Altman tries to be too realistic with dialog.  If you listen to people talk they talk like people in an Altman film.  They talk over each other, they repeat things, they don't speak in complete sentences.  It's very realistic dialog that Altman portrays.  And I can't watch it.  Probably because with many years of T.V. and movie watching, I'm used to how everyone else does dialog.  It's not as realistic as Altman but it's easy to understand.  I don't know if it's because I've been trained to expect dialog in movies and T.V. to sound a certain way, or because in the pursuit of realism, Altman leaves his audience behind.

As a writer you have a similar conundrum.  You want your dialog to sound authentic, but if you write as people actually talk, no one would be able to read it for long.

"Uh, whadday think about, uhm, going to Dairy Quee-"
"Naw, DQ sucks, les go to McDonalds and have a cheeseburger."
"-have a cheeseburger, yeah, cool.  Now?
"Uhm, yeah, what time is-"
"'Bout five or so."
"Yeah, les go McDonalds.  You wanna drive?"
"Yeah, I'll drive, you gonna chip in for gas?"

See what I mean?  How would you like to read 80,000 words of that?  Oh, you're saying, that's because the subject is mundane.  Well, yes.  So let's try some copyrighted material in the same style:

"He's here."
"Obi-Wan Kenobi? What makes you think-?"
"Tremor in the Force. The, uh, last time I felt it was in the presence of, you know, my old master."
"He's gotta be he's dead by now, I'd think, don't yo-?"
"Don't underestimate the Force."
"Oh, all the Jedi are extinct and their fire has left the, uhm, universe. You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion thing."
(Beep)
"Yeah, what is it?"
"We have an emergency alert in detention block AA-23."
"Damn, you mean the the Princess' block? Put all sections on alert-now!"
"Obi-wan's here and the Force is with-"
"Him, yes.  If you're right, he can't escape or-."
"He is not plannin' to escape.  I have to face him alon-"
"Alone? Okay.  Better you than me, pal."

(That was harder than I thought it would be).  But do you see what I'm saying.  You have to write dialog that is not realistic but reads as if it is.  Otherwise you'll jar your reader out of your story.

How do you do that?  By having the dialog clear yet sound real.  I learned to do it by reading and writing . . . a lot.  But please don't write like Robert Altman directs.

PS: Did you know that "dialog" can also be spelled "dialogue" and means the same exact thing?

Cover Reveal: The Glow by Helen Whapshott

Today on Writer's Thoughts we are happy to exclusively reveal the cover of The Glow by Helen Whapshott releasing March 1, 2014.

Helen was born in Aldershot (UK) in the year of 1980. She survived the infant, junior and senior schools of Cove. Helen started her working life in a bakery before deciding catering wasn’t really for her that she wanted to work in the care industry.

After attending Farnborough College of Technology, where she did her diploma in nursery nursing she took on a variety of roles that included being a Nursery Nurse, a Special Needs Teaching assistant, a support worker for people with special need and a care assistant in a nursing home.

She’s worked as a Health Care Assistant at a local hospital for eight years and also works as a bank carer at a children’s hospice in surrey.

She has five wonderful nephews, a lovely niece, two very understanding parents and extremely patient brother and sister.

Helen has always loved stories, ever since her Mum used to read Hans Christian Anderson and Roald Dahl to her at bedtime.  When she learnt to read by herself she couldn’t get enough of books becoming a big fan of authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s, Sherlock Holmes stories, as well as Neil Gaiman and Ben Aaronovitch.

With a love of reading came a love of creative writing. She recalls how her first hit was, “How The Kangaroo Got It’s Hop, at infant school when I was six, but I missed out on seeing my classmate’s enjoyment because I was off several weeks with the mumps; when I got back the hype had died down. A disappointment I’ve never really gotten over! Being able to share my creations this time and is a dream come true.”

And now . . . the cover of The Glow:


What would you do if you saw a ghost? Would you ignore it hoping it would fade away, or would you go up to it and see if it needed your help? 
When Thirteen year old Megan Webb discovers she has been gifted with The Glow, so called because it gives off a light, like a candle in a dimly lit room attracting ghosts, spirits, and others who belong to the supernatural and paranormal world, she has to learn to come to terms with seeing the world in a whole new way.  And if this wasn’t enough to deal with during the delicate years between childhood and adolescence, her parents makes the shocking decision to move her away from everything and everyone she knows to live in a creepy hotel inherited by a late aunt. 
But it isn’t just the hotel that is creepy, the whole town seems a little odd until she makes friends with a strange boy, a Witch, and a chain-smoking spirit guide who help her adjust. Life couldn’t get any more complicated … could it? 
AVAILABLE FORMATS: e-Book on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com and Paperback available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. (It will be available for other retailers after October 2014)