Part 1 of 3

November starts on monday... and with it comes NaNoWriMo. Doesn't seem like a whole year, does it?

if anyone wants to friend me, i'm here. This year, i'm doing a sequel to a story i wrote about a hundred years ago.

It's the second sequel i've ever attempted - the first was abandoned after my sister beat me with a Doc Martin boot. She gets very... punchy on the subject of sequels, and most of the time i tend to agree with her. After all, at best a sequel takes a bunch of characters you love and throws them back into a terrible situation, after they spent all that time and effort getting out of danger. At worst, they kill off the people you care about and sabotage relationships (hello, Alien 3 and Men In Black II, respectively). Plus, as someone much smarter than me once pointed out, a movie (or book, or whatever) is supposed to be about the most exciting/interesting story in the character's lives. So any sequel is going to be about the SECOND most exciting/interesting story in their lives. And who wants to pay £6.50 for that?

Don't get me wrong, i've nothing personal against sequels. Some of my best friends are sequels. I may be the only person you'll meet who's watched The Fly II more times than both the originals put together. Piranha 2 had flying piranhas AND Lance Hendrickson ditching a helicopter into the sea. Terminator 2, Aliens and Ghostbusters 2 were all better, imo, than the originals, altho i'm sure not everyone would agree.

What i dislike is the current trend for setting up franchises. Every freakin movie you see these days seems designed as the first in a series. No one gets to kill the bad guy, save the love interest and live happily ever after anymore - the bad guy has to survive, the love interest has to stay fiesty and out of reach, and we all go home and wait for the next movie. It irks me.

The Bitter Script Reader said something similar recently, which is maybe why it's on my mind.

so i'm wondering, is the same sort of thing happening with books? Does every novel need to be the start of a franchise? (Or, at least, the first of two or three?) Do we need to start being like Brian Keene and STOP THE GODDAMN STORY RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE?

It's got me thinking because i was talking to a few of my writery friends (we were in a coffee shop and everything), and, apart from me, they're all working on the first of three books (or the second of five, or... you get my point). It seems to be the done thing at the moment. Now, is this a corresponding trend in the publishing industry? Do publishers look at submitted manuscripts and say, "well, it's good, but it's a stand-alone novel. There's no way we can get a sequel out of this. PASS."? Would you get marked down for NOT leaving potential to continue the story?

why can't stories be told in a single book or film anymore?

does that question make me sound old?

i'll see y'all for the start of Nano on monday. :)

hmm

don't seem to be doing so well with my NYR of keeping this blog updated. Pleh, i'm not cut out for this interweb business.

anyways. Things are slightly hectic here. I've got a new job (of a kind - it's actually an unexpected transfer to a different department, but at least the contract's for a year instead of a month), which is eating a lot of my times, but does at least let me go to court (i'm a stenographer!). Aaaand i'm about two days away from finishing a new story.

this makes me very happy. Of the four things i've written in the past year: one is a time-travel novel with so huge a central flaw i doubt anything can be salvaged from it; another is a super-hero-dectective story abandoned at 60k words after i realised a) i can't write detective fics, and b) i apparently can't write superhero fics either; the third was my nano novel; and the fourth was my attempt at script frenzy which started out well and now i can't even read through because i don't know where to start making it better. So it's kind of a relief to finish something and it not be awful.

I mean, it's not good yet. That goes without saying. Also I think everything i write is an attempt at copying a writer i love, in which case this is my David Eddings story. It's a D&D setting without the magic and with added zombies. Oh, and in the jungle. So kinda like Sapphire Rose meets The Rising meets Platoon, but minus the overbearing sense of futility and Willam Defoe.

Um, that maybe makes it sounds better than it is.

there's also some tentatively good news about one of my older stories, Home Ground, but i'm reluctant to jinx it by getting excited too soon.

a first... probably not a last

rather belatedly, i've realised what's been bugging me these past few days. I was at an acting workshop on sunday, and at one point got partnered up in improv with this amazingly good-looking guy - he could've walked straight out of Tokyo Drift, he was that pretty. Anyway, in the course of things, we found out he was 17. Just turned 17.

now, i know this is not an original freak-out or anything, but i'm old enough to be his mother.

well, if it'd had him when i was 14, but still, that's still POSSIBLE, isn't it?

that is the first time i've ever looked someone up and down, then realised they're young enough to be my son. And it won't be the last time, of course not. But it's the FIRST time, and, like your first grey hair, it's a sign of the inescapable passage of time.

he was DAMN pretty tho. Siiiiiiiigh.

Feck-Arse Industries

so i reckon i'm at the end of a first draft of the dumbass story i'm working on, which always provokes mixed emotions. I'm happy it's done, but i'm less happy it's totalled a grand 76 thousand words. that's... shorter than i wanted. And less than i expected. I've also got the usual worries that it's generally a bit pile of poo and i've wasted three months of my life on it.

on the plus side, i think i've figured out what's wrong with the beginning - i started in the wrong place. Once again i've tried to jump into the middle of an exciting scene to, y'know, stop everyone falling asleep, then realised i've not developed the world or the characters enough and tried to jam in a load of backstory and exposition, in what's supposed to be an action scene. Gah. I've also belatedly realised my last three and possibly four stories have suffered from the same problem. What the heck's wrong with me?

so i've got the easter weekend to kick the crap out of the stupid story and maybe make it into something good. Yaaaay.

fangirl overload

my husband bought me this movie today. How happy? MOST happy.

i love Dave Bautista. I know it's sad and i know the movie's gonna be awful and i have a sneaky suspicion Mr Batista's not even going to be in it for long (like they gipped me with Chris Jericho in Android Apocalypse) but, my god, i can't help it. The man brings out the fangirl in me.

You know what i'd love to see? A God of War movie with Batista as Kratos. I think that would be the best thing ever.

Screnzy

so i'm planning to do Script Frenzy this year. Tried last year with a graphic novel, failed, am trying again.

Wanna friend me? Pls?

these are the Glengarry leads

ahahahaha, thank you Royal Mail, you finally came through for me. And, may i say, BOUT TIME.

this, the thing i hold in my sweaty palms, is Ex-Heroes by Mr Peter Clines. I am VERY excited about it. *squeeeee*

EDIT: btw, i don't actually live in a store cupboard, it's just the way my webcam is angled, honest.