"The Barrier", "The Disruptors", and Relationships

This week, besides work on "The Barrier", and "The Disruptors", I also thought about how I should develop the relationship back-stories for characters.

"The Barrier"

My rewrite of "The Barrier" has gone quite slowly, but I managed to finish 5 of the 39 scenes I plan to rewrite. Once do I get started it goes smoothly, but I find it far too easy to put it off.

So far all of the revised scenes run longer. Version 0.6 of the movie runs about 86 minutes. If all of the scenes I rewrite end up longer by the same amount, it looks like the new version could run almost 2 hours. That is longer than what I'd like it to be.

There several existing scenes that seem repetitious to me. Maybe I can shorten the movie if eliminate those. It can get tricky when you try to cut stuff out though. I read somewhere recently that it is much easier to add material to a script than take it out. On the other hand, I've found with some of my earlier movies, that cutting out material would often improve the movie.

"The Disruptors"

I had planned to leave "The Disruptors" until later, but I had a bunch of ideas about the characters that I had to write down before I forgot them. I have a plot in mind, but after I did "The 89th Key" I decided I needed to put more effort into creating the characters before I develop the plot in more detail.

Relationships

Another thing I learned from "The 89th Key" was that it is important to define the relationships between the characters. Relationships develop during the course of a story, but what I have in mind is to develop a back-story for the relationships. I am not sure how I should go about that. I've seen questionnaires writers have set up to help them develop their characters. I haven't seen any to help you develop your characters' relationships.

I came up with a few ideas:

§         Are they friends, enemies or neutral?

§         Are they rivals or team mates?

§         Do they trust each other?

§         Do they like each other?

§         How strong is the relationship?

§         When did they meet?

§         How did they meet?

§         Was it one event that brought them together, or did it develop slowly over a longer period?

§         What do they have in common?

§         What do they normally talk about?

§         What do they disagree about?

§         What aspects of the other are they unaware of?

I'll need to give this list some more thought. It seems to me that there must be many other important questions to ask. Some of questions seem to duplicate others.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Swift Progress

I made some progress on my short story: "Tom Swiftly and his Incredible Traffic Model". I broke it up into seven sections and I have four done now. I might get a first draft done next week, although it looks like it will be busy. There were a few lines I wasn't happy with, but I decided to skip past them for now. I'll try to fix them in the rewrite.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

The Dunning–Kruger Effect Gets My Goat

Much of the humour in the comic strip "Dilbert" is based on one of the characters demonstrating ignorance without being aware of their ignorance. This behaviour has a name, The Dunning–Kruger Effect, and in real life it makes my blood boil.

What is The Dunning–Kruger Effect?

"... ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" - Charles Darwin

The Dunning–Kruger Effect is what is known as a cognitive bias. A cognitive bias is where our minds take a short cut which results in an illogical decision. Wikipedia lists 167 different cognitive biases. 

The Dunning–Kruger Effect states that when people who lack knowledge or skill in an area, they tend to be over confident in their abilities, don't recognize real ability in other people and are unaware of their lack of knowledge.

"If you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent. […] the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is. - David Dunning

Dunning and Kruger say that education and training can correct this bias in people.

The Other Side of The Dunning–Kruger Effect

As the Charles Darwin quote above suggests, people who are skilled and knowledgeable, tend to be less confident. In my case I find that the more I know about a topic, the more aware I become of how things can go wrong. I come to believe that there are important aspects of the topic that I am still unaware of. This knowledge and belief make it hard for me to act with confidence.

Nate Silver's "prediction paradox" supports this view. He points out that less confident someone is in their prediction, the more likely they are to be right. Unfortunately, most people will trust some who appears confident over someone who is not.

Why The Dunning–Kruger Effect Gets Me Angry

Several times over my life I have gone through some very unpleasant experiences where The Dunning–Kruger Effect played a big role. These were situations where I was knowledgeable about an issue to a much greater degree than others who then ignored my opinions, which lead to bad decisions. Bad decisions that I then had to try to work around.

These situations often created a great deal of anger within myself. I was angry at the less knowledgeable people because they didn't take my opinions seriously. In my mind I would scream, "Why can't you see that you fool!" That isn't a diplomatically effective way to talk and I was usually able to keep my mouth shut. I suspect they got the message anyway.

Part of my anger was with myself, but, as with others, my behaviour reflected my own cognitive biases.

• Since I was aware of the danger that I might be the one who suffered from The Dunning–Kruger Effect, I was hesitant to speak out forcefully, since it could be me that was in the wrong. When I did speak out, I came across as tentative and unsure. That made it easy for others to ignore or discount my opinions.

• I also suffered from The Curse of Knowledge. That is a cognitive bias where you assume that if you know something, then others know it as well. In retrospect I realized that because I assumed too much about the other's level of knowledge before I talked to them, I wasn't in a position to explain the knowledge effectively when I became aware of their ignorance.

People will develop their positions quickly after they begin to consider an issue and then stick to it. If you are to have a real effect on their views, it is important to convey information before they have begun to form their opinion.

How Can I Use The Dunning–Kruger Effect In A Story?

In my better films, like "Line of Taxis", I have taken emotions I have experienced and placed them in a different context. I have never done this consciously with the anger I felt because of The Dunning–Kruger Effect. Maybe my feelings are still too raw to use.

I think that The Dunning–Kruger Effect and other cognitive biases can provide a basis for more complex character and motivations. They allow a way for a "bad guy" to behave badly, when they are not really a bad person; just flawed in their thinking.

Off hand, I don't see cognitive biases as a basis for a story, but they can certainly add complexity to a conflict situation.

In "The Barrier" I can see some aspects of The Dunning–Kruger Effect. Both the protagonist, Arthur Macdonald, and his boss, Brandon Baker, struggle against it. Since I didn't try to include it deliberately, I didn't develop it fully. When it comes time to revise the movie, there may be some opportunity to exploit cognitive biases much more.

For More Information

If you want to know more about The Dunning–Kruger Effect and cognitive bias, Wikipedia has several articles you can read.

·         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

·         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

·         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

·         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

You can watch the movies I mention in this blog on these pages:

·         "The Barrier" - http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/the-barrier/

·         "Line of Taxis" - http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/line-of-taxis

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

I find it difficult to get started on my rewrite of my science fiction story "Felix". Once I get started, I am sure it will go OK, but I haven't got started yet.

I feel frustrated at my lack of progress. Part of the problem I think is that the rewrite is daunting. There seems like so much that I need to do. Somewhere I read that the way to rewrite is to rewrite several times. Each time you focus on a different aspect. I think I will try that approach.

My first rewrite will be to make structural changes to the story. This isn't too big an issue, but I think it will help me get started. I want to move some sections around. What I have now is strictly chronological and I think parts of the story should be told as flash backs. There are also some parts where I want to cut material out. I have some long sections of detailed description that I want to be just suggested.

In my second rewrite, I plan to replace several sections of the story. This is primarily because I have changed my mind about what should happen. In some cases the sections are too short and not in enough detail. In others I have the plot develop too fast. In both cases the changes are drastic enough that I think it is better to start over from scratch. I expect this rewrite will take up most of my time.

I plan to do several rewrites that focus on just one character at a time. I want to ensure that each character is consistent in how they talk and behave. I have 4 main characters, so that means 4 rewrites.

In my final rewrite I want to focus on the details of the writing. That will include grammar, spelling and sentence structure.  At the same time I plan to work on what I call word-smithing, where I revise the writing for clarity and flow.

Hopefully, this will greatly improve the story. Then I can start to ask people to read it.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

First Sequence Done on Transportation Movie

I made more progress on my transportation movie this week. I did four scenes this week and edited them together with the two scenes I did last week. It came in at just under 10 minutes.

I finished the scene I gave up on last week. It is the scene where the boss, Brandon, assigns the hero, Arthur Macdonald, to do a development impact study. Most of it came from a scene in “The Glencoe Project”. It turned out to be trickier than I expected to combine it with the previous scene.

Two of the new scenes are directly from “The Glencoe Project”. In the first scene, Arthur asks the model guy, Dennis, for help. In the second, Dennis gives his advice. I did have to change the location of one scene so I wouldn’t need to buy another set. I also added some material to the dialogue. I’ll need to add some more, because when I watched the compilation, I realized that Ralph asks for something in one scene, but in the next, Dennis doesn’t answer the original question.

I added the last scene to provide a break between the two scenes with Dennis. In it, Arthur talks to his mentor, Ling. I used some dialogue that I had to cut out of an earlier scene because I had eliminated one of the characters. That didn’t make for much of a scene, so I added some more material that tells us more about Ling.

I changed my mind about the voices I wanted to use for the characters. I gave the boss, Brandon, the voice I’d originally used for Arthur because it seemed too authoritative for Arthur  I gave Arthur a meeker voice, which I hadn’t used before. I didn’t like the voice I gave Brandon originally. I found it hard to understand.

Finally, I used Premiere Pro to combine all six scenes together in a sequence. Most of the scenes run about a minute and a half, although one dies run over two minutes. Altogether the sequence runs for just under 10 minutes. I watched it through several times. I thought it went fairly well. I am too close to it to really judge it. I worry that other people will find it boring. I did notice some continuity errors I need to fix.

I had a nice transition between the first and second scenes that can symbolize one of the main conflicts in the story. It wasn’t something I had planned in advance. Now that I see how it works, I can go back and enhance the effect.

Over the next week I plan to work on the next sequence. I think the bulk of that sequence will be taken up by a single scene. I find that scenes of one and a half to two minutes are easier to do than the longer scenes. I may want to find a way to break up the scene. In this sequence, Ralph has a major set back, but then an opportunity opens up for him.

As I do each scene, I find I have started to develop better ways to create a scene. Initially I did the dialogue, camera setups, movements, and gestures as I went along. Now I start with just the dialogue, with a single camera set up that shows all the action. Most of my scenes start with some character movement, so I usually do that at the same time. Once I am happy with the dialogue, I go back and do the camera setups. I find the camera setups very frustrating to do. I add the gestures last. Of course, once I have the whole scene done, I go back and tweak it, again and again and again.

So far I have just called it my transportation movie. Initially I planned to call it “The Gladstone Barrier”. Since I used that title for one of my short stories, I wanted something different for the movie. My current inclination is to call it “The Barrier”. I think it give a broader interpretation of the story, since there is both a real barrier and a metaphorical barrier in the story.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Transportation Movie on Xtranormal Started

I started to develop a new video on Xtranormal this week. I would like to end up with a feature length movie, but we’ll see how it develops.

I planned to cannibalize my two stories “The Gladstone Barrier” and “The Glencoe Project” for the project. I’ve only taken some of the ideas from the stories so far. I haven’t used any material directly. Partly because I have some characters in different roles in each story, so I have to do some mixing and matching to make them work together.

The approach I’ve taken is to put together individual scenes, then later combine them into the whole movie. I’ve worked on three scenes so far, and I consider one of them finished. It is a new scene that has no counterpart in either of the stories. It does set up some new conflicts for the rest of the movie.

I’m mostly done the second, but think I can develop it a bit more. It replaces a scene in the original story that I couldn’t do in Xtranormal. Instead of showing the action, I have the characters talk about it. It isn’t as good that way, but I have to work with the limitations of the program.

The third is a continuation of the second scene, except that I bring in a new character and one of the others leaves. I haven’t been very successful with that one. I’ve scrapped what I’ve done so far and will start over. It is one of the scenes where I needed to change one of characters from the story. I can use most of the material from the story for this scene. 

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

How to Listen - Part 2

I first began to be more aware of listening as a skill when I learned about a technique known as Active Listening. I have found this technique useful, but it does have its dangers.

Over the years, many people have developed techniques to help them listen better. One technique I learned at work is Active Listening. For me it was a revelation, since I’d never thought of listening as a skill before. Active Listening is intended for situations where another person comes to you with a problem. It may not be appropriate in other situations

The Technique of Active Listening

Active listening involves three stages.

·         The first step is to hear what the other person says. In this stage, you need to pay attention to what the person says. In addition, it is important to be aware of the way it is said and non-verbal clues that add to the meaning of what is said. While the objective is to understand what they have said, it is not necessary at this stage to fully accomplish that.

·         The second is to interpret and understand what they said. In this stage you take what you learned from what they said and in your own mind determine what is the message they want you to hear. That message may not be direct or clear. It may not be what the speaker consciously means to say. Again, it is not necessary at this stage to completely understand what the person says.

·         The third, and most important, step is to respond to what the person said. The purpose of your response is two fold. First, you want to confirm that you understand what the other person said. You do this by repeating what they said in your own words and asking them is that is what they meant. This reinforces your understanding and helps you remember what they said. The second purpose is to demonstrate to the other person that you heard what they said and that you understand it. This will make them more comfortable and thus more open in what they say.

Dangers of Active Listening

Active listening is a skill and you must practice it to do it well. Done improperly, it can hamper rather than aid communication.

One fault I had was to slip into a formulaic response. It is an easy mistake to make. In my experience, a formulaic response can turn people off. It can make the other person suspect that you are not paying attention. They may shut down and withdraw.

Another mistake is to express your response as advice or your opinion. It may be that the person wants your advice or opinion. The danger is that if you fail to listen you will give the wrong advice because you don’t understand the question well enough. Premature advice may also discourage the speaker from talking.

Don’t be too quick to decide what the problem is. It is not unusual for people avoid asking directly about their problem. They may want to get advice without admitting they have a problem. They may not be clear in their own minds what their problem is.

Another danger of premature advice is that many times people want a sympathetic ear rather than advice.

If you have an opinion about what the person says, there is a danger that your response can become judgemental. When you listen, your objective is to understand what the other person has to say. To do so, you must avoid any judgement of what they say. This is not the same as agreeing to what they say. You can express your disagreement later.

Since you often restate what the speaker said, there is a danger that they can take what you said as agreement or support. When they find out later that you don’t agree they may feel betrayed.

Active Listening in Stories

I built my story The Crying Woman around a conversation where one of the characters uses active listening. One of the reasons I wrote the story was to take advantage of my experience with the technique. I don’t consider it a complete success. I haven’t needed to use it much lately and my skills got rusty.

To add some conflict, I had the listener make some mistakes, which he then had to correct. In part that was because he has something he wants to talk about too. He tries to practice the adage of listen first, and then talk. That proves to be difficult for him to do.

Active listening would not be appropriate for every story. One character must have a problem and feel that the other character will help. The other character must be willing to listen and if need be, help.

The technique could be useful in exposition. The danger of exposition is a dialogue is to bore people with a long character monologue, or a “As you know Bob …” speech.

In one of the stories I have in the works, I have a character named Bob, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to have another character start a conversation with “As you know Bob …”.

With a technique like active listening, the monologue can be broken out into a dialogue where an active listener draws out the exposition from a reluctant speaker. The revelation can become a small story in itself.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

How to Listen - Part 1

Listening is just as important as talking in a conversation. I believe listening is much more difficult than many of us think. In this post, I want to explore the challenges of listening. My goal is to better understand how people listen, so I can incorporate that into my own writing.

Why Listen?

I’ve worked on several projects where the bulk of the story is a conversation. The best example is my short story “The Crying Woman”. In that story, a woman talks with a man about her problems. While the focus is, of course, on the woman, the role the man plays is also important. We need to understand why he listens.

When others come to ask us for help, we want to help them and listening is where that starts. Every one knows how to listen, but not everyone is a good listener. Few of us give much thought to how we listen, but we can become better listeners.

Barriers to Listening

Many things can make listening difficult.

Our ability to hear clearly.

Other noises and problems with our hearing can severely limit our ability to understand what people say to us. If the place where you talk is noisy, it is easy to miss the nuances of what the other person says. If the location is noisy, a move to somewhere quiet will help.

Many people, myself included, have some hearing loss. I don’t believe that is as important as most may think, but as a listener, you need to be aware of your limitations and act to minimise the handicap.

Our own inattention.

If we have other thoughts in our mind or don’t care about the other person and their problems, we can’t really listen to them. We all have our own problems and interests. These can divert our attention away from what other say to us. It will take significant mental effort to put away your own thoughts. It is much harder if you don’t care about the other person.

Emotional reaction.

What the other person has to say may strike a chord within us. It could be that we have strong feelings about what they have to say. These emotions can blind us to what they say. We may be tempted to “egg them on” when we need to calm them down. We may need to distance ourselves from the problem. In a way, we need to “not care”.

The problem solver reaction.

Often the mistake a listener makes is to tell the talker how to solve their problem. I know I’ve had this problem. This can fail for a couple of reasons. First, the talker may want emotional support rather a “solution” to their problem. Most people already know the solution to their problem when they ask for advice. If you start to tell them what to do, you do not give them what they want.

Second, when you give a solution too quickly, you tend to trivialize their problem. In both cases you shut down communication. It is not unusual for people avoid asking directly about their problem. They may want to get advice without admitting they have a problem. They may not be clear in their own minds what their problem is.

Judgemental reaction.

We can disapprove of what a person says. If they have a problem that they created themselves, we will tend to blame them. While it may be a true assessment of their culpability, it can quickly close off communication. You must avoid any judgement of what they say. This is not the same as agreeing to what they say. You can express your disagreement later.

How do these barriers play out in a story?

The tendency I’ve had is to write conversations where both people are articulate and perfectly understand what the other says. In my experience, this is not the case. When I listen to someone, I usually find that I wonder how to respond. Have I understood what they’ve said? Do I understand what they want? What can I say that will help them?

Conflict is the basis of any story. The barriers to listening can form the basis of internal and interpersonal conflict. In a story, communication between people is essential and the struggle to understand each other is an important source of conflict.

In a conversation, the talker struggles to express what they need to say. The same is true of the listener. When you tell the story, you need to show the listener’s struggle to understand. The listener may have to conquer some or all of the barriers to listening. This will make for a more dramatic conversation.

In subsequent posts on this topic, I will explore some techniques people use to improve heir listening.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Some Thoughts on Villains

A good story needs a good villain, or is that a bad villain? From time to time, I think about how to create villains for my stories. A while back, I wrote an article on how to create heroes. Many of the same ideas apply to villains.

Recently I had the thought that the antagonist, or villain, in a story must see himself as the protagonist, or hero, and see the protagonist as the antagonist. This seems obvious once I thought of it. I’m surprised I hadn’t come across it somewhere in my reading. Many people must have had that thought before. I must just be ignorant. Maybe you can point me to something on this.

The main question writers must consider about the antagonist is why he, or she, is so evil. No real person wants to be evil, so it must be that the antagonist must see what he or she does as good. They only seem evil from the perspective of the protagonist, and, we hope, the reader.

In a more general sense, we can see the two opposing characters have goals that are in conflict. The writer must choose one of the two to be the hero, and write the story from his perspective.

This view does create some interesting possibilities for conflict. Would a story work if the reader does not side with either character? Could we have stories where the reader identifies with both characters?

One possible story structure is to have the protagonist and antagonist change places throughout the course of the story. I’m not aware of any stories like this. However, at the moment, I am reading the book “Edgar Rice Burroughs” by Erling B. Holtsmark. In it, he mentions a case in the Martian books where, over the course of two books, one of his villains, Ras Thavas, turns into a good person.

Many writers and stories have some moral ambiguity in the characters, with the bad guy not all bad, and the good guy not all good. These stories do provide more depth and interest.

I’d like to write stories where the two sides have legitimate “good” goals, which just happen to be in conflict. Neither side is truly “bad”. The resolution would come from the realization on the part of both characters that the other has a valid goal. They must each overcome the natural tendency to see anyone that opposes them as evil.

I believe this is a more accurate description of reality. I feel somewhat egotistical when I say this, but I want to provide stories that will help readers as they make their way through their lives. A good story does more than just entertain.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

2013 goals

In my New Years Day post, I looked back at what I did in 2012. In this post, I lay out my 2013 goals. That is goals for 2013, not 2013 goals.

Some Days . . .

I finished this film last year and submitted it to the Hundred Dollar Film Festival. If it is accepted, I do have a little work to prepare it for screening. Not a big part of the work for this year, but something I’ll need to do.

My Most Difficult Case

I’ve let this project drag on far too long. It has been a difficult project for me to do. In many ways, the delay in this project has stopped me from moving forward. I really need to get this film behind me.

Xtranormal Film/Video

I want to make a long video with Xtranormal. What I really want to do is to make a feature film, but I don’t feel that I am ready. I have written some longer short stories and scripts, but I feel I need to do a film or video to really learn how to make a more substantial film.

In 2012, I made Make 'em Squirm: The Sharkbiter Way, which, at a little over 9 minutes, is one of my longer projects. I want to continue my exploration of the capabilities of Xtranormal in 2013. I feel that Xtranormal might be a good way to write a script.

I have had several ideas for what to make. At one time or another, I’ve considered adaptations of several of my stories; Hello, My Name is Bob, The Crying Woman, The Gladstone Barrier, or The Glencoe Project. I’ve also thought I should create a new story.

I need to pick one of these options and move forward.

Stories

I still want to write more stories. If Pete’s Plan sells, then I may start to write more short science fiction stories along the same lines.

I have several longer stories in development that I would like to complete. My aim is to have each of them finished at novelette length.

Felix is another science fiction story. I based it on a H. P. Lovecraft story. This one looks like it will end up shorter than my target; unless I add in more twists and turns. On the other hand, maybe I need to explore the characters more. I have about half of the first draft done.

Heat Wave is also a science fiction story. I find that I have drawn a lot on my personal experiences in this one. Like Line of Taxis, it allows me to explore personal issues at some distance from myself. Like Felix, I am not yet finished the first draft.

Bright Freedom is a story I converted from a feature script I wrote. I have a first draft done. I’ve done some notes for changes to the first draft, but I want to leave the rewrite until I have some of my other projects out of the way.

I want to combine and rewrite my two transportation planning stories, The Gladstone Barrier, and The Glencoe Project, into a longer story. Maybe even a novel. Of course, I want to make them into movies too. I shouldn’t try to do both.

Work Habits

I had a commenter on my look back at 2012 post who suggested that I would be more productive if I set deadlines for my projects. I actually did set some deadlines for 2012, but I didn’t find that they really helped me.

Deadlines have their place, but I don’t like deadlines because I find they stifle my creativity. Most of my better ideas come to me when I was doing nothing and had nothing to do. Deadline change the nature of what I create in ways I don’t like.

Never the less, I recognize that I can be more productive than I am. I believe that the approach I need to do is adopt better work habits. Most of what I’ve read about writing suggests that good writers set aside a certain time every day to write. I don’t think it needs to be a lot of time, but it does need to be consistent.

It is not easy to establish new habits, or drop old habits. I can’t allow myself to give up, but I should accept that I might slip from time to time.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

A Look Back at 2012

At the start of 2012, I did a post about My Goals for 2012. Before I do the same for 2013, I wanted to look at how I did last year.

Make Better Use of My Time

Well, I don’t think I did very well with this. I got some projects done, but I didn’t get as much done as I could have. I have an excuse for the first couple of months: I slipped on some ice and cracked a bone in my arm and a rib. That slowed me down for a while.

I said I would set deadlines, but didn’t. I did shift my focus from short quick projects to longer projects. I got several started, but some of them are not finished yet, so I look less productive than I was.

I read more this year. Forty-four books in total. That took up my time, but Pierre Berton’s advice is “read, read, read, write, write, write, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite”, so it wasn’t time wasted.

Contingency

I completed Contingency and got it into the Hundred Dollar Film Festival. It won the best of Alberta award. That was very gratifying.

Somedays . . .

I wasn’t happy with the version I finished earlier in the year, so I pulled it out of the Hundred Dollar Film Festival. I reshot it later in the year. The new version was much better, so, if it gets accepted, it will be ready for next years festival.

My Most Difficult Case

I set a deadline of April 1 for this project. I didn’t do anything on in 2012. Next year. For sure. Really. I mean it this time.

The Crying Lady

I planned to use Xtranormal to turn the short story into a film. I never started on it, but I did use Xtranormal to make Make ’ em Squirm: The Sharkbiter Way. I found that a valuable step toward a longer project.

Transportation Planning Story (Novelette)

I wanted to write a novelette based on one or another of my transportation stories. I made some more notes about ideas and developed the story a bit, but didn’t get to any actual writing.

I did start three stories I hope will develop into novelettes. I based Bright Freedom on one of the feature scripts I wrote in 2011. I got a first draft done, which was mostly a direct conversion of the script into prose form. I cut out some material and added some as well. I restructured it a bit. I left it for a while to work on other projects before I did a second draft. It is still on hold. The first draft came in at 17,400 words.

I worked on two other novelettes. Both were science fiction stories. Felix is about an expedition to Mars to search for a lost robot rover. The idea came from an H. P. Lovecraft story. I have about half of the first draft done. It looks like done the first draft will be less than 8,000 words.

Heat Wave is the story of a scientist who runs into resistance to his research. I met a researcher several years ago who told me about their experiences, which gave me the idea for the story. The story also incorporates some of my own experiences. It looks like it will end up about 10,000 words.

I did some research into the market for science fiction stories. It looks like there are quite a large number of magazines that publish science fiction. Some don’t pay very much.

One magazine has a long list of clichéd stories they won’t publish. Unfortunately, Heat Wave is similar to one they list. I could fix that with a different ending, but the ending was the point of the story. I plan to finish the story the way I planned, and then see how people react to it.

I wrote a shorter science fiction story, Pete’s Plan, which I submitted to a couple of the magazines. Both rejected it, but there are many more to try yet. I rewrote it after the first rejection, and I plan another rewrite before I resubmit it to another magazine.

The Unexpected

Several of my projects this year were not planned. That included Make ’ em Squirm: The Sharkbiter Way, as well as the short stories and novelettes I worked on.

Blog

My 2012 goal was to post at least one blog post a week. I did 58 posts. I did miss a couple weeks because of my accident. I didn’t had as many visits to my blog in 2012, but that may be partly due to changes in the way visits were counted.

My Goals for 2012

Next week, after New Years Day, I’ll do a new set of goals for 2013.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Update on Three Science Fiction Stories

Pete’s Plan

I got some comments back from some people on this story. I rewrote it based on their comments. I incorporated some new ideas I had as I read it over. It is a bit longer at over 1,000 words now. I think it is better too.

I’ll read it over again next week, and submit it to another magazine. One magazine I came across wouldn’t consider a story under 1,000 words, so I can submit to them now.

Felix

Felix is a reimagining of a H. P. Lovecraft story set on Mars. I made some good progress and still have ideas popping up in my mind. It looks like it will turn out shorter than I thought it would though.

The final story won’t be anything like the story I based it on. I’m not 100 per cent sure if that is a good thing or not.

Heat Wave

I am about half way through the first draft. I haven’t worked on it for a while now. I’d like to blame it on the other projects I worked on, but there is another reason. I started with the ending and worked backward, and now the ending looks a little lame compared to the rest of the story. Maybe I’m overly concerned about that. I should finish it and get some one else’s opinion.

I do still have ideas for this story pop up periodically. Mostly it’s because I see parallels between the character’s situation and some of the experiences I had. Like many other people, I always think of good responses to what people say to me after it is too late. I think I can use those “I wish I’d said” moments to say what I wanted to. That would give me a quantum of solace.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Rejection, But Not Dejection

I submitted my short story Pete’s Plan to Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine a few weeks ago. This week they sent me a note to say, “it does not suit the needs of the magazine at this time”. I was disappointed, but people were supportive.

The magazine encouraged me to submit the story elsewhere. I plan to do that, but I am in procrastination mode. They didn't really say why they rejected it, so I wonder if I should try to rewrite it before I do. On the other hand, I don’t really know why they didn’t want it.

If you would like to give the story a read over and let me know what you think, I would appreciate it.

I think it is a good little story. Before I submitted it, I read some stories from a Best SF of the year anthology from a couple of years back. I found some good ones, but many of them were disappointing, so I felt mine would be acceptable. I wonder if it is too political for them.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Conversation Stories 2012 February 20

My story The Crying Woman is what I call a “conversation story”. I plan to do what I’ve done with my transportation planning stories and write a series of articles and blog posts to explore that concept more thoroughly.

Other than write The Crying Woman and set up the conversation stories webpage, I haven’t produced much. However, I have given it a lot of thought. I have an article partly drafted, but it may be a while before I publish it yet. With my film Contingency still not quite ready, I can put too much time into anything else. At least not for a few weeks yet.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

My Goals for 2012

Last week I went over what I did last year. Now it is time to look at what I’ll try to do in 2012.

Make Better Use of My Time

Time and again I find myself with too many projects on the go, and I can’t make headway on any of them. This year I will try to keep my focus on one major project at a time.

Last year I had a bunch of goals for the year, but that leads me to try to do them all at the same time. This year I will try to set deadlines for each of the major projects I want to do. That way, I can space them out over the year.

Another way to focus is to stick to longer projects. When I do short small projects, I tend to want to just get them done and work on the next one. With a longer project I don’t think there would be the same pressure and I will create something that will catch people’s fancy.

Somedays . . . and Contingency

I need to have final versions of these films ready in time for the $100 Film Festival. The festival starts the first week of March. That pretty much sets the deadline for me.

My Most Difficult Case

This film has been on my back for far too long. I don’t think I really have all that much more I need to do before I have it done. I want to leave it until after I’m done with Somedays … and Contingency. I think I can safely set a deadline of April 1 for this project.

The Crying Lady

I did three feature scripts in 2010, but right now, none of them really seems to get people excited. The idea I feel best about now is The Crying Lady. I did it as a short story in 2011, but didn’t get much feedback on it. I think that the idea has potential and I want to do more work on it.

One way to get more feedback is to do a video based on the story. The website Xtranormal allows you to easily create animated videos. I believe I can use it to make an animated storyboard from my story. That will give me, and others, a better idea how the story would translate into a film. I will shoot for completion my mid May.

The story is still too short for a feature film, so I want to expand it somewhat. To do that I plan to do some blog posts and maybe short articles about the themes and details of the story. I did something like that for my transportation planning stories. This would help build and audience in addition to help build up the story. I won’t set any specific deadline for these, just let them happen as I develop the ideas.

Transportation Planning Story

I would like to develop one of my transportation planning stories into a longer form. The two stories I did last year run about 6,000 words. I’d like to build that up to at least 20,000 words. I have some ideas about how to do that and have several pages of notes.

Given my other priorities, I don’t think I can get to it until May. I’d like to set a deadline of July 1, although, that leaves me about six weeks and it took me that long to write the 6,000-word version. I’ll revisit this goal in April.

Small Projects

I have a bunch of ideas for small projects, but as I noted before I don’t want them to be a big part of my goals this year.

I have several ideas for short stories and articles lying about. I would like to get some of the short stories done. Articles, except those related to my major projects, are not a priority for me. I do make some money from them on Triond, but it isn’t so much money that I would lose out if I didn’t do any. Half the money I get comes from one article I wrote three years ago.

I enjoyed making the two shorts for the $100 Film Festival, so I’d like to do some more along those lines.

I won’t set any deadlines for this kind of project.

The Unexpected

My experience has convinced me that ideas can just pop up at any time. I’ll keep that in mind and try to stay flexible in my plans. If something catches on fire, I will want to run with it

I plan to do a review of my progress several times throughout the year: April 1, July 1 and October 1. That will help keep me on track.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

A Look Back at 2011

At the start of 2011 I did a post about My Goals for 2011. Before I do the same for 2012, I wanted to look at how I did last year.

Feature Scripts

A year ago I decided that one goal in 2011 I would rewrite the three scripts I did in 2010 and write two new scripts. I didn’t do that. Early on I decided that I would write some “longer” short stories to practice writing for a longer format. I did start to convert a couple of my short stories, The Abattoir Project and The Crying Woman, into scripts.

My First Feature

I didn’t set a goal to start a feature this year and I didn’t make one.

Short Films

I set a goal to complete a short film in 2011. I did better with this goal. I completed two shorts for the $100 Film Festival. It is the 20th annual festival and the organizer asked me if I could do a film. I shot both on 16mm. I still need to do a little more work on them before they are ready to screen. The festival runs in early March, so need to get that done early in the year.

I wanted to finish My Most Difficult Case and submit it for distribution. At first I made progress, but then a person I hired to help took my money and didn’t do the work. I sued him in small claims court. I got some of the money back, but all distracted me from the film. Patrick Aull gave me some good advice that will help me get it done.

I did a sound track for Extra Special Care and put it on my website.

Short Stories

My goal for 2011 was to complete three short stories I had started in 2010, and if that turned out well, I would try to do enough to publish another book. I published five stories:

The Abattoir Project: A Ken Walker Adventure,

The Glencoe Project,

The Gladstone Barrier,

The Crying Woman and

Book Review: Sharkbiter - The Secret to Success.

The Glencoe Project and The Gladstone Barrier were part of a larger project idea to do a book or movie about transportation planning. I hoped that it would be easier because I had 30 years experience in the field. It proved to be more of a challenge than I expected. I’ve put it on hold for a short time so I could work on other projects.

I stopped posting my short stories on Triond and Wikinut. I decided that in the long run I would be better off with them on my own site.

Articles

I published 13 articles this year on Triond, 11 articles on Bukisa and 8 articles on Wikinut. That is more than I planned to do. Actually, I didn’t plan to write any. I didn’t make much money. I did better early in the year, but then views dropped off later.

Part way through the year I decided not to post to Wikinut anymore. I get a lot of people who read my posts there, but it doesn’t pay very well. I feel that posting there just undercuts views on my other pages. I haven’t posted much to Bukisa recently. I intended to report reworked versions of some of my blog posts, but never got around to it.

Blog

My 2011 goal was the same as 2010, to post at least one blog a week. This will be blog post number 78. I would like to have more people read my blog.

Writing Skills

Several people had suggested that I work on my characterisation and dialogue, so I made that a goal for 2011. I did some reading on the subject and did some exercises. I think I improved my dialog a bit.

Website and Promotion

I’ve done made some changes to my website. I enjoy the work on my website, but I don’t think it helps draw people to the site.

My Goals for 2012

Next week, after New Years Day, I’ll do a new set of goals for 2012. The results this year were mixed, but I still felt it was worthwhile to set the goals.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Where Do My Story Ideas Come From?

I did an article a while ago about how I developed my film Line of Taxis. That film grew out of plan to develop my skills as a filmmaker in combination with a desire to express some feelings I struggled with at the time. The article was a useful exercise for me since it helped me understand how I created a story.

However, on other projects I used different approaches. One approach I found useful was to build stories from things that captivated my imagination. In some cases these were other stories and in others they were events in the real world.

Normally when I read a story, watch a TV show or watch a movie, I don’t question the decisions the creator made. From time to time, I did find myself thinking: “If they had done … it would have been better.” I couldn’t change what they had done, so it was just idle speculation. Later I took some of these ideas and used them in my own stories.

An example of this is my story A Homicide Detective's Rude Awakening. I got the inspiration for that story from an episode of Law and Order. In the final scene of the episode, Lenny Briscoe arrives at his daughter’s murder scene. He arrives at the scene already knowing that his daughter was the victim. I thought it would be more powerful if he didn’t know. The emotional distance from the victim that he had careful constructed would be destroyed when he recognized his daughter.

Sometimes I draw ideas from real events. An example of this is my story A Woman Alone in a Cruel World. I saw a documentary about a woman who became a rebel leader in China. When she was a young girl, her family had given to a troupe of performers. I wondered if, when she became famous, her mother knew she was her daughter. Did they ever reunite? How would they feel if they did?

In a biography of John Lennon I read that his mother had three children, all girls, after John was born. She put the first girl up for adoption because she wasn’t married at the time. I find it intriguing that out there somewhere is a woman who is John Lennon’s sister, but doesn’t know she is. She would have been of an age where she would likely have been a Beatles fan, so she would know a great deal about him. How would she feel if she found out? I haven’t developed this idea into a story yet.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

The Seven Character Theory of TV Shows

Many years ago, long before I got serious about writing, I came up with what I called “The Seven Character Theory of TV Shows.” It came from my observation of the TV program Gilligan’s Island. What I noticed was that there were seven regular characters on the program and I wondered why.

My explanation was that the number was a compromise between two forces. The lower limit is set by need to provide a variety of possible relationships between characters, since stories are about relationships. If you had too few, the number of stories would be limited. The upper end is set by the number of characters that people can recognize. If you had too many, then it would become harder to differentiate them.

I read someplace that people’s minds have a limit of seven pieces of information that they can actively consider at any one time. Since this fit my observation that there were seven characters on Gilligan’s Island, I concluded that this was the ideal number.

Of course, once I started to look at other TV shows, the theory started to fall apart. While there are many shows that did have seven regular characters, there were many that did not. As a recall Batman had six and Get Smart had four or five. Mostly shows had fewer characters. I tried to rescue the theory by assuming that the shows with fewer regular characters relied on more guest stars, which brought the effective number up to seven. This didn’t even convince me.

I hadn’t thought much about the theory for a long time, but recently I’ve given it some more thought. My original theory is much too rigid. Basing it on Gilligan’s Island may not add much weight either.

However, I do think there is some merit to my idea. There is a need to provide more characters to bring variety to the stories, and there is a limit to the number of characters you can have without confusing the audience.

In the stories I’ve done of late, I have sort of followed this rule. In The Glencoe Project and The Gladstone Barrier I have 8 or 9 characters, although a few of them are minor. For The Crying Woman I only have two. I do have a couple of other characters that interact with the characters, but these are minor. Even so, that only leaves me with four characters.

One of the comments I had about The Glencoe Project and The Gladstone Project was that they were a little too complicated. That may be related to the number of characters in the story. I felt that one of the problems with The Doorman’s Sacrifice was that I had far too many characters.

I guess that in the end, you do need to carefully consider the number of characters when you create a story. If you find that you need too many, that might be an indication of a problem with the story. I am not sure just how many is too many. Maybe it is less than seven.

I also wonder: do you need an odd number, or can you use an even number?

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog