Sidney Blaylock Jr.'s Blog, page 50
November 28, 2017
Unplanned Project=Project Skies
Planes in an Air Race, Image Source: Wikipedia
So, I tried really hard really hard to write a Character Sketch for Skye that I could be really proud of, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t figure out a way to encompass all facets of her character–feelings, physical description, likes and dislikes. I finally resorted to something that I know and am familiar with (even though it earns me little to no money): a short story. Yep, I’m writing a short story in the world of Project Skye with Skye as the protagonist in order to nail down her character–how she looks, how she acts, how she responds under pressure. I do intend to market the story, but even if nothing comes of it, I’m hopeful that it won’t be for naught. The goal is to take what I’ve learned int the story and transfer it a novel length work–hopefully, the character work that I do with the story will translate into a deeper understanding of her character so that I can work with her on a longer, more intensive work.
Jonny Quest “movie idea” as Inspiration
A white back–late 90s, early 2000s–the character of Jonny Quest became hot again. He was a character created in the 1960s, who along with other Hanna Barbera, had a resurgence of popularity in the early/mid 80s and again in the mid/late 90s. A live action movie was mentioned in the trades (my library used to have a subscription to Variety, a movie trade magazine & remember seeing mention of in there, if memory serves), but it never came to pass. I remember thinking how cool it would be to write the movie adaptation of it, and as I’ve seen all the episodes, for both the original and the subsequent sequel series, I set about developing a “plot line” for the “movie.” I really liked the original title sequence and wanted to update that for my JQ “movie,” so I developed this elaborate flight intro sequence around Air Racing (yes, alert readers can see where I’m going with this). Well, the movie never happened, Hollywood (for now) has lost interest in most Hana Barbera projects (the two live action Scooby Doo movies are probably the best known movies that came from that collaboration) and even if it had, as an unknown writer with no written or produced feature length scripts, Hollywood wouldn’t have been beating down MY door for the idea anyway. I never used that flight sequence or even wrote it down–it has existed in brain all these years.
Fly Free
Lester day I realized that I would never be able to write a traditional character sketch for Skye–that I was just beating my head against the wall. Instead, I turned my attention to what would happen if I put her in a stressful situation–maybe not the one I’d been working on for the novel, but another one. In fact, what would happen if I put Skye, instead of Jonny Quest, into the scenario I’d devised all those years ago for the “movie.” Well, I tried it and . . . it worked! I’ll have to check with my Writing Consultant, but Skye seems now like a living breathing person, a fully round three dimensional character who has wants, drives, needs, and feelings. She emotes, she feels, she does everything a good protagonist should do. Again, maybe I’m too close, but not only did I finish the first major “plot element” before I stopped writing, I was also able to outline all of the rest of the plot elements out to the “climax” of the story, which I left intentionally vague for myself (I have a feeling based on her character what’s going to happen, but I want the ending to feel “organic” and not overly plotted).
Still Committed to Project Star
Yes, I will be working on Project Star as well (where, o where will I find the time?), but I simply HAD to stop and draft Project Skies. It was necessary (IMO) to understand Skye’s character and without it, I don’t think that the novel would ever get off the ground.
November 27, 2017
Mini-Review: Spider-man Homecoming (No Spoilers)
Movie Poster for Spider-man Homecoming, Image Source: IMDb
Over the Thanksgiving Break, my family and I watch Spider-man Homecoming (SMH) and we liked it. It wasn’t our favorite Marvel movie, but it was still fun and exciting. I thought I’d do a Mini-Review for the blog based on my love of comic book movies, Marvel movies, and Spider-man movies. This one was very good–not the best, but still very good.
Action AND Humor
One thing that SPH really gets right is the action sequences as well as the humor of the character. One of the crucial things that filmmakers don’t really get about the character is that Peter Parker is a “sincere” human being having to react to some of the scummiest situations (both in terms of everyday life and over-the-top villainy) that are out there. His defense mechanism is his ability to turn every situation into a joke or a wise-crack. Yes, as Spider-man, Peter is insanely powerful and gifted, but it is the humor that helps him deflect much of the trials and tribulations that he goes through. While not nearly as funny as say, Guardians of the Galaxy, there’s still a bit of that irrepressible mixture of deft humor along with very strong action scenes that help to sell the movie and Tom Holland’s performance of the character. As much as I disliked the high school stuff (see below), I think that Tom Holland’s performance of Peter Parker might be my favorite so far (I’ll have to reflect more on that as the year ends and I see it more times to be sure).
Straight Outta’ High School
So why isn’t this my favorite of all the Spider-man movies? In two words: high school. The filmmakers decided to “reset” Peter as it were, and placed a significant portion of it in Peter’s high school life/activities. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is where quite a bit of both the tension and the humor comes in, but I’m just not one who really likes (for the most part), high school narratives in movies. In this case, while well done, these were (again, for the most part) some of the least interesting parts of the movie. Yes, they were well acted and all the rest, but having collected Spider-man comics during my high school and early college years (freshman & sophomore years), I really think that the true strength of the Peter Parker narrative comes from his struggle to support himself as a young photographer at the Daily Bugle with J. Jonah Jameson. Yes, I know Peter originally started in high school, but I personally don’t feel that the stories came into their own until his college/work years, and this perception colored my feelings towards the movie. I liked it, but I would have liked it even more had the filmmakers chosen to “age-up” Peter’s character (as I assume they will in future movies).
Marvel Movie Genres (This would be the YA Movie)
The Marvel movies have been good with mixing different genres into the standard comic book movie formula (well, with the exception of “horror” movies which they don’t seem to want to do even when it is the most appropriate genre–Age of Ultron). However, this one would the YA movie, if that’s the case. Much like movies like The Hunger Games, The Spiderwick Chronicles, etc., the reliance on such a young cast and the focus on quite a bit of high school drama/activities makes this feel more in line with a YA movie than it does with a typical Marvel movie–not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but something to be aware of. I should note, however, that the performances by the cast, both younger members and older members, were excellent and well done. I look forward to their next outing whenever Marvel and Sony team-up again to produce another one. My only hope is that we move past the high school setting into college and work-life and that they can make that as compelling in the movies as it was in the comics.
Overall Grade: B (Solid performances, action, and humor, dragged down by an over-reliance on high school drama and a bit (not too much, but a definitely bit) of teen angst/drama).
Implications for my Writing: I have to understand that I don’t really like certain genres/things: the “heist” movie, “crime” movies, and apparently “high school” movies. If I don’t like them, it’s probably not a good idea for me to try to write them in that I probably won’t be able to create a story that is credible and true to the genre because I can’t see past the “flaws” of the genre to do it justice. There are probably genres that I won’t be successful writing, and the “high school drama” might be one of those genres.
November 26, 2017
Updated: Spider-man Homecoming (added to Ranking of Marvel Movies & Ranking of Spider-man Movies)
[image error]
So, rather than add new blog posts for my rankings of Marvel movies, I’ve added Spider-man Homecoming to my ranking posts. You should be able to view them now if you want to see how I think SPH falls in the rankings of Marvel movies and Spider-man films.
November 24, 2017
Started: Project Star & The End of the Semester
Image of the birth of a star, Image Source: BhmPics
So I’ve started another short story–“Project Star.” It has a title that I will reveal once I’m finished with the “Working Draft.” It will probably be the last project I work on for the year. It should take me up to Christmas Break.
Project Star was inspired by Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (the movie–I’ve not had a chance to read the book yet), Diane Duane’s So You Want to Be a Wizard series, and by an idea that I’ve had in my head for a long time–years, in fact, of a protagonist who jumps off a very high place, but lands safely in a hovercar, similar to Anakin in SW: Attack of the Clones (so I guess that’s an inspiration as well).
Anyway, it is still in the early stages of development. I know that I do want it to be a far-future project, whereas All Tomorrow’s Children was a near-future project. I’ll (as always) detail more of its construction on the blog.
As I move towards the end of the semester, I will continue to write, but once the semester winds up, I’m going to shift my focus more to revising and getting the stories that I’ve finished in the Working Draft form, and move them into Submission Drafts. Perhaps, with more “product on the shelf,” someone, somewhere will start to purchase. I’ll also devote more time to my longer works and do more with them as well.
November 21, 2017
As EA’s Value Rises With its Shareholders, EA’s Value is Plummeting With Gamers (especially me)
Okay, as you know, I try to have this blog reflect my diversity of interests and as video games are now were a lot of really interesting things are happening in Science Fiction and Fantasy (& one could say Horror, with the explosion of VR and non-VR Horror titles), it is safe to say that I devote quite a bit of time to video games on this blog.
However, some may have noticed that I’m not talking about some of the games that I profiled earlier in the year from EA even though two of them have been released: Need for Speed Payback & Star Wars Battlefront II (2018). This is because EA has lost their focus as a company and I’m not really interest anymore in the product that they are producing.
Let’s Talk About Audience
So this is going to be about micro transactions, right? Well, yes and no. EA has been trying to walk a fine line for a long time. They want to publish video games and make a profit by having more people buy them than it takes to make them. However, they’ve increasingly wanted to appeal to their shareholders with business strategies that are designed to get more money, but not through games. They had a program called Project Ten for a while, designed to get customers to pay ten dollars more for “Deluxe/Enhanced/DLC/etc” for their games, before that it was Season Passes, and so on. They were the publisher who partnered with Microsoft to make the original Titanfall game an X-Box One exclusive (even while the console was “going down in flames” due to its original “Always On” conception & restrictive used game policies). In the past month, EA has cancelled a Star Wars game, shuttered a Studio, and included micro transactions in two of its flagship titles (one of which it has “temporarily” rescinded). All of this is great news to shareholders, but horrible news for gamers–the people who actually purchase games. Currently, EA seems to feel that they’re number one job is pleasing the shareholders and not their core audience. Not a great move.
The “Mass Effect Andromeda” Effect
So, I realized what happened after I bought the game Mass Effect Andromeda for full price when it was first released. I reasoned, “yes, the reviews are lackluster, but this is a seminal “brand” for them–they wouldn’t completely mess it up or they would destroy their fan base. They would have the same care of the ME brand as Disney had for the Star Wars “brand” after they bought it from George Lucas. We’ll, Caveat Emptor (let the buyer beware). The game was a buggy mess that was mediocre at best. Yes, it ran, but not well–from glitches, to frame rate issues, to a storyline that started strong, but meandered and filled with quests and side quests meant to pad the length of the game–it was a huge disappointment. I linked to it before, but below is a video of a longtime Bioware/ME fan who quit the game out of frustration for such a disappointing effort.
Why did this happen, you might ask? The answer was simple: the game just needed 6 more months of development time. However, six months would have put it into the window of Star Wars Battlefront 2 (which is releasing now). They can’t push that game because of the movie (The Last Jedi) which opens in month, but also they have Anthem coming down the line, and so they chose to release something that wasn’t ready and sell it at full price.
I personally finished ME:A–my completionist nature at work–but I decided that, while I would still buy games from EA, they would now receive the lowest consideration on my part, to be bought only when I bought/played all the other games I was interested in playing. It will be at least a year based on school and other games in the queue before I get around to purchasing an EA game–and I’m okay with that–and that’s the problem.
Unholy Alliances
Between that experience and the micro transactions, EA has proven that they care not a whit about me as a gamer and as a consumer. They prefer their share holders over me, so I’m content to wait. The whole goal of a company is to produce products that an audience loves and will purchase again and again–Apple, anyone?–not to try to dig extra money out of your audiences pockets through tricks and manipulative schemes, so that your numbers look all rosy at the next Investors’ Conference Call. You can’t make “moon-calf” eyes with the angel while dancing with the devil.
As someone who has bought games from EA, back when they originated (heck, I even remember when Trip Hawkins founded the company and have some of the company’s newsletters from that time period) and they produced games like: Starflight (the “original” ME:A back in the day), Skyfox, and The Bard’s Tale II from the company’s inception, all the way into adulthood, I feel that EA is missing the point by chasing the fickle investor who will dump their stock like a ton of bricks no matter what EA does the moment EA’s dividend doesn’t meet with their expectations. EA needs to get its priorities straight and until they do, I’ll buy games from other companies that still seem to “get it.”
November 20, 2017
Mini-Review: Die Another Day
Okay, so I finally saw and finished Die Another Day (DAD). Why is this so moments, you might add in the light of movies such as Thor Ragnarok & Justice League releasing this month? Well, it means that I have see ALL James Bond movies that have been released so far. And, as expected, it was a slog–that was the reason why I missed this in the theaters and why I didn’t watch it all the other times it had previously been on streaming–it isn’t very good.
00Camp
It is way too campy, but played with a straight face. It almost wants the audience to laugh AT it rather than WITH it. Most of the blame for this comes from the story and script. James Bond, particularly under the Roger Moore era, has some really corny and goofy things happen, but as I mentioned in a previous post, that was reflected in other movies of the era. Much of the “campiness” of Bond during Roger Moore was a desire to appeal to American audiences who were far more likely to have seen/enjoyed a movie like Smokey and the Bandit–which is mostly campiness with a few places of seriousness. However, DAD hit all the wrong notes. Audiences in America wanted a more realistic treatment of the spy genre–which is where Bourne (Jason Bourne) fits into this equation. He was hyper resourceful and hyper capable, like Bond, but he was serious–no double-entendre, quips, or gadgets. The honest-to-goodness down-home appeal and brutal/lethal moves when necessary.
00BadScript
As mentioned before, the script is really what hurt DAD. From paper then characterization, to dialogue that didn’t work, to relationships that were unnecessarily muddled, etc., this is truly what kept this movie from shining–not necessarily the acting. This wasn’t new Hollywood with its eye on the future and fingers on the pulse of the movie-goer, this was old Hollywood–you’ll like this movie because it is the next iteration of James Bond, darn it, and we know how much you like James Bond.
00Completionist
Still, for all my griping about the movie, it does feel good to have a complete repertoire of James Bond movies under my belt. Until now, I’ve always had to put in that except or but when speaking about the franchise. I really wish this could have been a stronger entry, but even successful teams don’t always get it right: Spectre for James Bond and the appropriately titled Jason Bourne for Jason Bourne. Neither of these two movies did a great job in returning their characters to audiences in their last outings. Both seemed to lose the thread of the character based on thrilling, climatic, and revelatory the previous outings before their respective latest movies arrived.
Implications for my own Work
I’m learning that character and story (plot) go hand-in-hand. You can’t divorce the two. For my writing, plot is what comes in first (99% of the time), but it is the characters that people fall in love with and invest with and I’m learning that I need to spend as much time developing the characters as I do the plot. For the makers of Bond and Bourne, they perhaps need to do what I’m doing, but on plot rather than characters, as it is there plots that are hindering their characters.
Overall Grade: D (Below Average)
November 16, 2017
Update: Time out for Grading and Presentation
[image error]
Person giving a presentation, Image Source: ethos3.com
Sorry I missed a blog entry yesterday, I had to prepare for a presentation today and also I needed to grade papers. Unfortunately, the plan is much the same today, so this super-short blog post serves as an update on why I haven’t been posting on a regular basis. I hope that the blog posts will return to the normal frequency by tomorrow, but if not, I should be back with quite a bit next week.
I just wanted to let you know that I haven’t gone anywhere–just trying to survive the end of the school year “crunch.” 
November 14, 2017
Wednesday & Saturday Writer
Writer Wednesday Graphic, Image Source: Huffmanpost.com
I seem to have found a writing pattern that works. In the past two weeks, I have been more productive than usual. Quite a bit of that I ascribe to my Writing Consultant at the Writing Center here at MTSU (thanks!) as we’ve tried to work on a helping get to a good start with my novel.
I found that for the past two weeks, I’ve had a fairly good run in terms of creating and drafting on Saturday and Wednesday. On Saturdays, I find that I am fairly creative and I’ve been able to create and work on generating projects. On Wednesdays, I’ve been able to draft and revise projects in the time just before and just after the writing partnership sessions.
I generally work best when I can start small and work my way up, so perhaps this is what I need: consistency (even at a small level). I’m going to work on keeping this going and see where it takes me for the remainder of the year.
November 13, 2017
Finished a Story: All Tomorrow’s Children
Image of two possible telepaths communicating with each other, Image Source: YouTube.com
So, last night I finished the rough (very rough) version of my Working Draft of a new story that I’ve been working on. I’ve referred to it in previous posts as Project Children. It’s full title is All Tomorrow’s Children. It is a Science Fiction story and it is in the “punk” genre. In today’s parlance, many non-traditional sci-fi stories that are set in the current to near future and have a speculative element to them are labelled with some sort of label describing the setting and then “punk” added to it. Gothic turn of the century technology = “Steampunk,” while a dystopian world set in an icy/cold environment = “Frostpunk.” True story, as I’ve seen things as exotic as Magepunk.
All Tomorrow’s Children falls into the category of “Mindpunk.” I’m not sure that there’s even a current “punk” associated with the mind, but “Psiberpunk” sounds too much like “cyberpunk” (the original “punk” genre) and too pretentious (for me) even though the story deals with Psionics and mind-powers. I think “Mindpunk” best describes the story and is how I intend to market it: Sci-Fi Mindpunk story set in the near future. While it is a different world (in my mind) than that of Skin Deep, it shares some of the same themes and deals with a story about those who have “mind powers” and those who don’t.
I don’t have time to do a full Author’s Note for the story, but I will definitely do one for it when I think I have the story fully revised and edited and I begin to submit it to publishers. Right now, I’m just trying to bask in the satisfaction of having finished a (short) story after a long tune, probably not since Silence Will Fall. Now if I could just get the Ship of Shadows (Graphic Novel) and Project Skye stories off the ground, I’d be a really happy writer dude–but for now, I’ll guess I’ll stick with plain old happy writer dude!
Fae going on sale today!
[image error]
Image of Fae Cover in a Forest, On Sale Now for .99 cents.
Also, I just discovered over the weekend that FAE (the anthology where my story “Faerie Knight” was published) is going on sale today (11/13/17) at BookBub.com. The email I received said it would be on sale on Monday, but I don’t know how long the sale will last, so if you’re at all curious about my story (and the story of other fine writers), you might want to head over and check it.
November 10, 2017
Students Hate to Revise (Figuring out how to get past the Do It Once paradigm)
Cartoon of an Angry Man who hate revision, Image Source: MemeGenerator.net
So, I don’t usually talk about teaching or my students or anything like on my blog as the purpose of the blog and my teaching endeavors don’t usually mix. However, something happened in a class a couple of days ago that I really feel merits discussion. I don’t have a lot of time so I’ll be brief: a discussion came up about revising and having the opportunity to revise and change an essay, and the comment was made (and I’m paraphrasing): I know its not quite right, but I just don’t want to have to go in and work on it again.
That’s the whole point of Revising/the Revision Process. We got into a short discussion about it and I tried to make it a “teachable moment” by telling them that’s how real writers write. They weren’t having it (for the most part–I think I got through to some of them). To them, the whole I idea of revision stinks because it means more work on their part–not the it is to make it better part.
Yesterday, I had to reread Kate Chopin’s The Awakening for class. I’d already read it in High School, but I went back and dutifully read it again. I got much more out of it than I had before just by going over it a second time and I revised my opinion of the work (see what I did there). In addition, I got a Rejection Notice on a story. The editor was nice enough to provide feedback and gave two places where the story broke down for her. I went in, revised the story, “fixing” those to places (i.e., adding in more detail that I thought would explain those places better) and resubmitted it to another publisher, but I will submit another story to that market until I get one that sells.
Not to dilute my message, but I’m convinced that’s the reason that people also don’t want to outline either. Too much work involved. So, no (or little preparation) to write something, and no (or little) revision after the work is written. I, as an educator, have to break down these barriers if I want my students to truly be successful writers.
