Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
Written by Charlie Jan Anders
Writer’s Block. It sounds like a fearsome condition, a creative blockage. The end of invention. But what is it, really?
Part of why Writer’s Block sounds so dreadful and insurmountable is the fact that nobody ever takes it apart. People lump several different types of creative problems into one broad category. In fact, there’s no such thing as “Writer’s Block,” and treating a broad range of creative slowdowns as a single ailment just creates something monolithic and huge. Each type of creative slowdown has a different cause — and thus, a different solution.
Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the terrifying mystique of Writer’s Block, it’s better to take it apart and understand it — and then conquer it. Here are 10 types of Writer’s Block and how to overcome each type.
1. You can’t come up with an idea.
This is the kind where you literally have a blank page and you keep typing and erasing, or just staring at the screen until Angry Birds calls to you. You literally can’t even get started because you have no clue what to write about, or what story you want to tell. You’re stopped before you even start.
There are two pieces of good news for anyone in this situation: 1) Ideas are dime a dozen, and it’s not that hard to get the idea pump primed. Execution is harder — of which more in a minute. 2) This is the kind of creative stoppage where all of the typical “do a writing exercise”-type stuff actually works. Do a ton of exercises, in fact. Try imagining what it would be like if a major incident in your life had turned out way differently. Try writing some fanfic, just to use existing characters as “training wheels.” Try writing a scene where someone dies and someone else falls in love, even if it doesn’t turn into a story. Think of something or someone that pisses you off, and write a totally mean satire or character assassination. (You’ll revise it later, so don’t worry about writing something libelous at this stage.) Etc. etc. This is the easiest problem to solve.
2. You have a ton of ideas but can’t commit to any of them, and they all peter out.
Now this is slightly harder. Even this problem can take a few different forms — there’s the ideas that you lose interest in after a few paragraphs, and then there’s the idea that you thought was a novel, but it’s actually a short story. (More about that here.) The thing is, ideas are dime a dozen — but ideas that get your creative juices flowing are a lot rarer. Oftentimes, the coolest or most interesting ideas are the ones that peter out fastest, and the dumbest ideas are the ones that just get your motor revving like crazy. It’s annoying, but can you do?
My own experience is that usually, you end up having to throw all those ideas out. If they’re not getting any traction, they’re not getting any traction. Save them in a file, come back to them a year or ten later, and maybe you’ll suddenly know how to tackle them. You’ll have more experience and a different mindset then. It’s possible someone with more stubbornness could make one of those idea work right away, but probably not — the reason you can’t get anywhere with any of them is because they’re just not letting you tell the story you really want to tell, down in the murky subconscious.
The good news? Usually when I’m faced with the “too many ideas, none of them works” problem, I’m a few days away from coming up with the idea that does work, like gangbusters. Your mind is working in overdrive, and it’s close to hitting the jackpot.
3. You have an outline but you can’t get through this one part of it.
Some writers work really well with an outline, some don’t. For some writers, the point of having an outline is to have a road to drive off, a straight line to deviate from as far as possible. Plus, every project is different — even if you’re an outline fan usually, there’s always the possibility that you need to grope in the dark for this one particular story.
Actually, there are two different reasons you could be getting stuck:
1) Your outline has a major flaw and you just won’t admit it. You can’t get from A to C, because B makes no sense. The characters won’t do the things that B requires them to do, without breaking character. Or the logic of the story just won’t work with B. If this is the case, you already know it, and it’s just a matter of attacking your outline with a hacksaw.
2) Your outline is basically fine, but there’s a part that you can’t get past. Because it’s boring, or because you just can’t quite see how to get from one narrative peak to the next. You have two cool moments, and you can’t figure out how to get from one cool bit to the other. (More on that here.)
In either case, there’s nothing wrong with taking a slight detour, or going off on a tangent, and seeing what happens. Maybe you’ll find a cooler transition between those two moments, maybe you’ll figure out where your story really needs to go next. And most likely, there’s something that needs to happen with your characters at this point in the story, and you haven’t hit on it yet.
4. You’re stuck in the middle and have no idea what happens next.
Sort of the opposite of problem #3. Either you don’t have an outline, or you ditched it a while back. Actually, here’s what seems to happen a lot – you were on a roll the day before, and you wrote a whole lot of promising developments and clever bits of business. And then you open your Word document today, and… you have no idea where this is going. You thought you left things in a great place to pick up the ball and keep running, and now you can’t even see the next step.
If it’s true that you were on a roll, and now you’re stuck, then chances are you just need to pause and rethink, and maybe go back over what you already wrote. You may just need a couple days to recharge. Or you may need to rethink what you already wrote.
If you’ve been stuck in the middle for a while, though, then you probably need to do something to get the story moving again. Introduce a new complication, throw the dice, or twist the knife. Mark Twain spent months stuck in the middle of Huckleberry Finn before he came up with the notion of having Huck and Jim take the wrong turn on the river and get lost. If you’re stuck for a while, it may be time to drop a safe on someone.
5. You have a terrible feeling your story took a wrong turn a hundred pages back, and you only just hit a dead end.
This is the worst. You made a decision that felt bold and clever – you threw the dice and dropped a safe on someone – and now you’re realizing that you made a horrible mistake and you’ve gone off course. Worse, you can see where your story should be right about now, if you hadn’t made that dreadful error.
If you’re absolutely sure that you’ve gone the wrong way, then there’s no point in going forward any further. Is there any alternative to rewinding all the way to the original mistake and starting from there? Yes, but it might suck. Sometimes, if you can see clearly what your story ought to be like at this juncture, you can just keep going from here, as if you had gone the right way in the first place. Thus leaving yourself a giant hole that you’ll have to go back and plug later. You can also rewind partially, going back 50 pages instead of 100 and then pretending you made the right choice originally.
In either case, though, beware – you’re going to end up with two alternate timelines in your story, and it’s up to you to keep straight what happened in the timeline you’re sticking with, as opposed to the one you’re discarding.
6. You’re bored with all these characters, they won’t do anything.
You created these bold, vibrant characters, and now you’ve written dozens of pages… about them brushing their teeth and feeding their cats.
Let’s start with the obvious: characters who don’t do anything aren’t interesting characters. Either what you’ve got here are just your supporting cast, and you haven’t created your main character yet, or you haven’t found the thing that your characters really want, or the conflict that will spur them into action. You have some characters, but not a story, not yet.
Sometimes you have to find the knife before you can twist the knife.
The good news is, sometimes writing a few dozen pages of nothing much happening can be super valuable – you’re getting into the world, and you’re working out for yourself what these characters are about. It’s entirely possible that once you’ve done that, a conflict will present itself, or one minor character will suddenly start looking like your protagonist. Just be prepared to toss out all these pages after that happens. (As you probably will with almost everything in a first draft, anyway.)
7. You keep imagining all the reasons people are going to say your story sucks, and it paralyzes you.
Otherwise known as the Inner Critic – you can’t make any choices, because you keep imagining how someone at GoodReads will tear you apart for it later. Actually, the person at GoodReads doesn’t exist, and it’s just your own internal critic talking here. You’ll need that inner voice of scorn for later, when you’re revising – but while you’re working on a first draft, you have to drown it out, possibly with loud Finnish death metal.
Chances are the ideas you’re putting down aren’t nearly as bad as your darkest fears tell you they might be. But in any case, you can always fix it in rewrites. (Although this does mean that you’ll have to be twice as harsh when it comes to revising the thing – that’s the bargain you make when you write a quick first draft with an eye to revising later.)
8. You can’t think of the right words for what you’re trying to convey in this one paragraph.
I’ve had this one – I know what I’m doing, and where I’m going next, and the story is humming along. But I can’t move forward until I find just the right verb in this one sentence, and I spend a whole day’s writing time staring at the screen and trying to figure it out. This seems like a silly waste of time – just use the wrong verb for now, fix it in rewrites! – except that sometimes hitting on the right word is partly a matter of visualizing the scene in your head. Plus, what if this happens during rewrites?
There’s nothing wrong with spending a day or two fussing over one sentence. It may seem like a waste of time, it may feel like you’re stuck – but actually, you’re just paying close attention to your writing and to the way you’re depicting the scene. If this goes on for a week, though, just pick a verb and move on.
9. You had this incredibly cool story in your head, and now you’re turning it into words on a screen and it’s suddenly dumb.
Is this your inner critic talking? Are you sure? Are you really sure?
Okay then. It’s possible you’re actually seeing a real problem with your idea, and with the execution. And, you know, there’s nothing wrong with abandoning a novel and starting afresh. Sometimes these dead half-finished novels serve as great fertilizer for the awesome novel you’re going to end up writing.
But don’t give up too fast. It’s possible that part of your idea is salvageable, or that the idea is genuinely cool and you’ve gotten yourself stuck into a weak execution of it. Sometimes it’s helpful to step back and write a synopsis of the stuff you’ve already written, so you can see how it fits together and whether there are some buried parts that should be turning points in the story. Sometimes it’s helpful to try writing bits of your story from a different character’s point of view, to see how they look from another vantagepoint.
10. You’re revising your work, and you can’t see your way past all those blocks of text you already wrote.
Revising is a nightmare – and if you’ve adhered to the “write a first draft quickly and then fix it in rewrites” school of thought, you’ve agreed to a Faustian bargain. There’s no way to make this process go faster or more smoothly, a lot of the time. Sometimes it takes a while of looking at your text from different angles to figure out where the problems are, and sometimes you need more feedback from more people to figure out where the real structural weaknesses are.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if you’re getting stuck during revisions, that’s not any type of Writer’s Block (as nebulous a concept as Writer’s Block is), but rather just the natural process of trying to diagnose what ails your novel.
Although one thing that works for me when I’m getting stuck with revisions is just to rewrite large sections from scratch, without looking back at your original draft. Same story, new words. Sometimes, it’s a lot quicker than trying to wrangle the words you already put down.
About a year ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration unveiled a series of nine large cigarette package labels that add vivid images to existing text-only warnings about the dangers of smoking. These new “enhanced warning labels” include pictures of corpses, a diseased mouth, lungs, and throat, and infants threatened by second-hand smoke followed by phrases such as “Cigarettes cause cancer” or “Smoking can kill you” and an 800 number for help.
The labeling system, part of the Family Smoking Preventing and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, was to go into effect this September until a group of tobacco companies sued to block the requirement. While one federal judge ruled earlier this year that the warnings violated the free speech of the cigarette makers and granted a preliminary injunction, an appeals court in a related case disagreed, making it likely that the issue will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
I was listening to a report about the ongoing case on NPR two weeks ago and I was particularly struck by the kind of language that the judges, federal officials, anti-smoking advocates, and constitutional experts used to describe the images and their impact on consumers. read
A guest post by commenter phoebeprunelle:
Because Africa always gets a bad rap in the Western media, not many of its positive aspects are in the forefront of the minds of most Americans. What they see is black women who do not wear tops and speak an odd language. Here are some of the most popular stereotypes about continental African women (note I am
Great insights
By Zack Smith, Newsarama Contributor
posted: 21 February 2012 06:02 pm ET
Adrienne is a princess. Adrienne hates being a princess. Adrienne specifically hates that as a princess, she’s required to wait in a tower guarded by a dragon for a prince to rescue her. Adrienne has decided to take matters into her own hands. With her dragon and her considerable wits by her side, she rescues herself and sets out to turn the kingdom on its head.
That’s the premise for Princeless, an all-ages series from Action Lab Entertainment that’s been building acclaim since its debut late last year, and will feature its first collection in April. We spoke with writer Jeremy Whitley about how he created this new series, and turning the princess myth on its head.
Newsarama: Jeremy, how did Princeless come about?
Jeremy Whitley: I’ve loved comics my whole life, but I don’t feel like they’ve done a solid and consistent job of appealing to a larger audience. When I talk to my wife’s sisters, for the most part they’ve never picked up a comic book.
Who can blame them? As young black women there was nothing there that represented or spoke to them. I want my daughter to be able to share the love of comics I’ve had, and I think I’m not the only parent who feels that way.
Nrama: That is something notable in the book, though not directly commented upon, Adrienne and her family being black – fantasy is often a lily-white field of storytelling.
Whitley: Well, Adrienne has always been black from the first pages of this book I wrote. I wanted a character who represented a group of women who are very rarely represented in comics or fantasy stories.
When I saw The Princess and the Frog, it bothered me that Disney felt the need to place this story in the real world. When Thor came out, it bothered me that so many people reacted negatively to Idris Elba being Heimdall. read full interview
(CNN) — In “The Hunger Games,” wealthy Capitol citizens of all races and ethnicities come together to watch the 74th annual bloodbath of the same name. It seems some present-day moviegoers, however, are a bit less “post-racial.”
Earlier this week, some “Hunger Games” fans tweeted their discontent because the characters of Cinna, Thresh and Rue are played by black actors in the big screen adaptation. This, despite the fact that both Thresh (Dayo Okeniyi) and Rue (Amandla Stenberg) are described as having “dark skin” in Suzanne Collins’ novel, while Cinna (Lenny Kravitz) is simply described as having short brown hair.
Whether fans’ remarks — such as, “Awkward moment when Rue is some black girl and not the little innocent blonde girl you picture” — stem from poor reading comprehension or intolerance, they’re indicative of a larger issue in Hollywood, said Harry M. Benshoff, an associate professor of radio, TV and film at the University of North Texas who co-wrote “America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies.”
“Hollywood has never been on the forefront of the civil rights movement,” said Benshoff, who hasn’t read or watched “The Hunger Games.”
Despite certain character descriptions being spelled out in the book, Benshoff said, people typically project themselves onto a character in order to empathize with that person.
“For a white person reading a book, they’re very rarely going to go, ‘I’m just assuming this is a black character’ if he or she isn’t marked as such,” he said. “A nonwhite person might project their own identity onto the character.”
Skin color is a recurring but understated motif of the novels. Many Capitol residents, for instance, dye their skin to make a statement of affluence, taking on exotic hues like green, gold and olive.
The way Hollywood sees it, the more people who identify with a character, the more tickets a movie might sell, he added, referencing Donald Glover’s May 2010 Twitter campaign for the chance to audition for Spider-Man. (The role eventually went to British actor Andrew Garfield).
“Put Donald Glover as Spider-Man, (and the movie) will only make $80 million rather than $100 million,” Benshoff said. “If it’s Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield, it’s a Spider-Man movie. With Donald Glover, it’s a black superhero movie.”
In June 2010, African-American blogs lit up when Angelina Jolie’s name was proposed for the lead role in the upcoming “Cleopatra: A Life.” The book’s author agreed that the actress would be a good fit in the role as the Egyptian queen.
An Essence.com post stated: “Honestly, I don’t care how full Angelina Jolie’s lips are, how many African children she adopts, or how bronzed her skin will become for the film, I firmly believe this role should have gone to a Black woman.”
And there are plenty more instances of white actors snagging minority roles: Fans were disappointed when Jake Gyllenhaal was cast as the Prince of Persia, and the lack of Asian actors cast in M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender” prompted some people to boycott the film.
Usually fans are angry when a film adaptation strays too far from a novel, said casting director David Rubin. In “The Hunger Games” “They’re being true to the source material, so I don’t see what the issue is,” he said.
Having cast film adaptations of popular books like “The Firm” and “The English Patient,” Rubin added, “It’s impossible to be slavish to the way characters are described in a novel because those characters exist in the readers’ mind in a purely subjective way. … It’s often … a self-referential image.”
Rubin recently worked on HBO’s “Game Change,” in which Julianne Moore and Ed Harris play Sarah Palin and John McCain, respectively. He said casting historical and political figures, who are known to the audience, is different from putting a face to a character from a novel.
“[Moore and Harris' performances] are not impersonations, and certainly not caricatures,” Rubin said. “They are evocative of those people and they have their own integrity. But they’re close enough to make people feel like they’re watching the real thing.”
Even so, Moore said she underwent quite the physical transformation to play Palin, spending two hours in makeup before shooting. Similarly, Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson both changed their hair color for “The Hunger Games.”
“As a casting director,” Rubin said, “I’m concerned about the quality of performance much more than hair color, and if an audience leaves a film overly concerned about the color of a character’s hair, something might be missing from the storytelling.”
As far as the backlash over casting black actors in “The Hunger Games,” he said “I like to think Hollywood studios would take the high road on this issue, and remain true to the story regardless of what a segment of the population might object.”<img alt=""
Meet the superheroes behind the superheroes as award winning Harlan Ellison introduces ten of the worlds greatest comic book artists. Exclusive interviews and samples of their sensational art reveal the philosophy and creative process behind their finest characters, stories, and series. Trace the evolution of comics – from the “Golden Age” beginning in the ’30 to today’s best selling graphic novels – with the MASTERS OF COMIC BOOK ART.
Interviews with:
- Will Eisner
- Harvey Kurtzman
- Jack Kurby
- Steve Ditko
- Neal Adams
- Berni Wrightson
- Moebius
- Frank Miller
- David Sim
- Art Spiegelman
Famed author Harlan Ellison introduces ten of the world’s greatest comic-book artists in this documentary. Examples of the artists’ works are featured along with interviews. Among those showcased are the creators of the Batman and Superman comic book
February 14th, 2012
Author Graeme McMillan
I know it’s a question that’s been on your mind a lot lately, but now you can rest easy – Tintin is not racist, according to a Belgian court:
Documents from the court of first instance in Brussels show that it did not believe the 1946 edition of Tintin in the Congo was intended to incite racial hatred, a criteria when deciding if something breaks Belgium’s racism laws. The decision was issued late on Friday…The Belgian court said the book was created at a time when colonial ideas were prevalent, and there was no evidence that Hergé, who died in 1983, intended to incite racism. “It is clear that neither the story, nor the fact that it has been put on sale, has a goal to … create an intimidating, hostile, degrading or humiliating environment,” the court said in its judgment. read more
08
Feb
12
