Tag: writing about writing

Penny Dreadful’s Dreadful Ending

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We watched Penny Dreadful recently, a show that finished its run on Showtime a year or so ago and then washed up on the shores of Netflix. Of course, we began watching the series before reading the spoilers and reviews which suggested that the third (final) season was terrible and disappointing, but it starts off pretty gangbusters. Victorian heroes and heroines? Gothic stories, wicked violence, thrilling adventure? The perfect summer guilty pleasure, and so it was — we gobbled up two seasons in the space of about a week at the end of the summer.

Then we got about three episodes into season three and … just stopped. Partly because we ran out of time — when the summer goes for a family of educators, so goes the free time for binge-watching — and partly because the show lost its sense of what it was.

Here’s the part where I warn you that there are spoilers ahead for this show that’s over a year in the can, if spoilers are a thing you care about.

The first season was basically like the Avengers meets the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen meets all those dusty old novels you’ve thought about reading but never quite got around to: it mashes up Frankenstein, Dracula, Jekyll & Hyde and Dorian Gray, and turns them loose on the seedy, foggy streets of London. We end up with werewolves and gunslingers and vampires and witches stalking each other through back alleys and holy sharknado, is it a wild, dark, sexy ride.

The second season takes those heroes and fixes them firmly in orbit around the only female hero in the bunch, one Vanessa Ives. She’s a badass witch, and we learn just how she became so badass, and the perils of becoming so badass — she’s sought after by basically all the forces of darkness. More adventures. Frankenstein re-animates a woman for his monster and falls in love with her himself, but hey, whoops, turns out she won’t be owned, and she wreaks absolute hell in the streets of London herself.

That’s what made the show so satisfying: it was a bloodbath every episode, with a ragtag group of mercenaries fighting for their lives against the ultimate darkness, and the strongest, most fearsome, and most interesting characters in the series were the women.

Until season three. Wherein Vanessa, the most fearsome witch in the land, goes into a dark, existential struggle and gives in to become the bride of Dracula, and the aforementioned bride of Frankenstein falls into orbit with and becomes the diversion of Dorian Gray.

And it just becomes so … boring.

Well, we hate to leave a thing unfinished, and having sunk in the time to watch two seasons of what was once a pretty good show, we felt compelled to commit the time to finish the series out, to see if it turned itself around.

And it did … kind of.

There’s a sort of lovely duality to the final two episodes. The two women — Ives and the Bride — are both kept women, slaves to the men who have tamed them, bested them. But they respond differently: Vanessa gives up, stops fighting, and accepts that she can no longer fight against the forces that pursue her, even though she’s free to leave at any time, while the Bride fights with every breath, though she’s literally chained in a dungeon. Too much of it has escaped from memory, because I waited too long to put down these thoughts about it, but it’s all actually very poetic and sharp.

Except — and here’s the big spoiler — Vanessa kills herself at the end.

Which, I dunno, is a thing that makes sense, given the world that’s been built up around her. She has, after all, been pursued by the devil himself, and then by Dracula, and, due to the events of season three, been left by herself to stand against these advances. She sees no way out. She succumbs, and death and destruction ensue as the world’s most powerful witch and the father of vampires open the gates of hell.

But she kills herself. Or rather, she asks the man who loved her to kill her, and he does. And … that’s it. This woman who has been built up as the baddest, most indomitable spirit between heaven or hell? She sees no way out, gives up, and doesn’t even do it herself; she asks a man to kill her.

Horribly anticlimactic and disappointing.

Now, the Bride — she uses her cunning, plays upon her captor’s heartstrings, and escapes into the wild again. That’s an ending we can get behind. But the show isn’t about the Bride, not really. She’s a side-plot. If the show’s about anybody, it’s about Vanessa, and at the end, she gives up. And it’s hard to get behind that.

Not because she dies; a character choosing death can be valiant, if it’s for the right cause. And the argument can be made that Vanessa’s cause is valiant — the union between her and Dracula is literal poison for London, and eventually, for the world.

But she goes out weak. And I was led to believe, by everything that the show showed us up until the moment of her death, that this character was anything but weak.

That, I think, is why the show’s final season got panned. But it’s not like Showtime hasn’t seen horrible finales before — this is the network, after all, that turned one of the most compelling anti-heroes in recent memory into a reclusive lumberjack in his series finale. (Oh Dexter, we hardly knew ye.)

Tonight’s viewing? The first episode of Westworld. And initial impressions are double plus good.

Wrestling with Character

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My current work-in-progress is a superhero story about a guy who hates superheroes and therefore becomes a villain. And I just today wrote the start of a scene that kind of shocked me.

Without spoilerating my own story, this guy has a hostage problem to solve with no easy way out. (Which is exactly the sort of problem a good novel needs, right?) And in flinging myself against this problem, a solution occurred to my protagonist and myself simultaneously. Usually solutions for writers are good things, but this one is a little bit mixed.

It fits the character perfectly. It fits the narrative perfectly. But it makes me uncomfortable, because it’s a little rape-y. Not in the sexual assault way (it’s not that kind of book), but in the willful taking-by-force of a thing from a more or less helpless victim. A victim who was once something like a friend. And this taking … well, it’s pretty much going to color the relationship between these two forever, assuming I leave it in (and I don’t see how I can leave it out, at this point). It’s forceful. It’s traumatic. It has left me feeling a little bit icky after the words came out.

So, it makes me seriously uneasy, but it also really gets me fired up about the story, because it fits so well. And it hit me — this is the sort of thing that’s been missing from this story all along. My protagonist, much as I have been thinking of him as a villain, hasn’t done much that’s outright villainous; so for him to finally break bad like this feels a little shocking. Then again, at the same time, it feels long overdue, coming in the final third of the book.

But now I’m all conflicted. This isn’t the sort of thing I envisioned my protagonist doing, but now that the moment has presented itself, it’s hard for me to imagine him acting any differently. It’s not the act itself that has me vexed, though. The real quandary that’s sticking in my craw is that I don’t know if this guy (or this girl, for that matter) can come back from this. I don’t know if a choice like this can be redeemed, and that could be a problem in future installments of this story.

So many questions. Is this scene right? Is it happening at the right moment in the story, or should it happen sooner (establishing him as a real rotten dude right from the go would clear up some of the waffling he’s done thus far … then again, if this moment comes late, it feels more like a final step on a terrible path)? Can a character come back from something like this? And, for that matter, should he?

On the plus side, the last couple days’ writing has poured out of me like from a ruptured water main, so that, at least, makes me feel like I’m on the right track.

The Weekly Re-Motivator: Shooting into the Dark

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I wrote a few weeks back about how I’m teaching improv in my classes, and drew some comparisons between that practice and writing. Well, I’m teaching it again (different levels and all), so it’s front of mind again.

Writing — drafting, at least — is like improv. Virtually just like improv, as it turns out. The blank page is like the first moments stepping out onto the blank stage, not knowing what you’re going to do or how it’s going to go over.

Then, you just start shooting into the dark. I mean, you know there are targets out there: good ideas tucked in the rubbery folds of your brain, lines and ideas and expectations that might resonate with an audience. But from where you stand at the start, you can’t see sharknado. You just fire away and hope you hit something.

And maybe you hit something right away. If so, great, awesome, train on that spot and keep shooting. If not (which is almost laughably more likely), well, what? Give up? Slink off the stage and give up? Hell,no. You aim elsewhere in the dark, reload, and let loose again.

See, improv teaches us not just to allow mistakes — improv encourages mistakes. The mistakes are where the learning happens. And if you aren’t drawing a few sideways glances or jolting some uncomfortable hiccups of laughter from the crowd, well, you’re not doing it right. If you’re not drawing reactions, you’re playing it safe, and playing it safe in improv is the equivalent of skydiving from the second floor: it can be done, but really, what’s the point?

And so it is with writing. Sure, you can play it safe. But what’s the point? Much better to see if you can surprise your audience — which, in the drafting stage, is only yourself — than to sit there boring yourself to death, playing it safe and staying in your tiny little circle of torchlight.

Screw that.

When I teach improv, I tell my students to think of it like a flowchart. You try a thing. Does it work? Does it feel good? Does it excite you? If so, continue down that path. Does it bore you? Does it feel “dead”? Does your partner look lost? If so, abandon that path and try something totally different. Then do it again. Does this work, or does this suck? Readjust, and press on. Readjust, and press on.

Reload, and shoot into the dark again.

The blank page is no different. If anything, it’s easier: you have the infinite safety net of as many drafts as you need to get it right. The absolute worst thing you can do in an improv is to give up and stop trying, and so it is with writing. And yet, that’s exactly what too many would-be writers do. It’s what I did for the past decade: sat back thinking how much I’d like to be a writer, but lived in fear of actually doing it.

Again, screw that.

Load up your word-cannon and shoot into the dark.

Worst that can happen is you miss. (Actually the worst that can happen is you hit a bystander, but y’know — if that happens, just aim away from the screams and try again.)

But as long as you keep shooting, you can’t miss forever.

This weekly remotivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every weekend, I use Linda G. Hill’s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results.

No Excuses

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Why in the heck did I stop listening to the “Writing Excuses” podcast? (Stylistic note: I know the punctuation rules for plays, books, movies, and songs … what’s the rule for podcasts? Italics? Quotation marks? Bracketed with cats?)

For a guy in as much doubt as I am about my current novel (or, okay, novelS — I’ve still got that time-travel story locked in a drawer, just waiting on me to finish this superhero thing so that I can do some much-needed editing), it seems foolish to ignore tips and advice that are just floating out there in the open air. I’ve literally had episodes downloaded on my phone for months that I’ve not listened to, and I have no idea why.

This morning, for whatever reason, I turned it on.

<Writing Excuses> is awesome, it really is. If you are a writer like me (that is to say, a writer who maybe doesn’t fully, 100% consider himself a real writer because he has not as yet received any payment for anything he’s written; or perhaps a writer who doesn’t consider himself a real writer because he can’t shake the notion that he doesn’t know what he’s doing), you owe it to yourself to give it a listen. Their most recent spate of episodes (they’re in season 11 now) deals with this thing they’re calling “elemental genres”, which is a different way of thinking about stories. In short, and to sum up episode 1, elemental genre is not your bookshelf genre: horror, sci-fi, mystery, romance. Elemental genre is the thing that drives the story itself: heist, discovery, love story, quest.

For example, Die Hard is an action movie, but it’s really about a man trying to reconnect with his wife. Star Wars: TFA is a sci-fi space opera, but it’s really about a girl trying to find out just who the hell she is. The Hunger Games is a dystopian action story, but it’s really a story about political issues surrounding the balance of power.

In other words, genre as we typically think about genre is just the trappings of the story: the costume, the setting, the recognizable figures and signposts dotting the landscape. Sci-fi stories feature futurism or far-off planets or silvery bodysuits or aliens. Fantasy is gonna have knights and dragons and magic and names with lots of apo’str’ophes. (If I ever write a character with an apostrophe in their name, you can shoot me. Preferably with a word-gun loaded with exploding apostrophe bullets that explode and attack my face like a swarm of angry be’es.) But that’s just form.

When it comes to function, there is a world of possibilities lurking under the shape of the form. I listened to that, and realizations started crashing down around me like anvils in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I’ve been writing my stories as genre pieces without thinking too hard about what’s driving them. Which is why I’m off the rails and stalling out.

My current superhero story? The protagonist wants it to be a coming-of-age story, but it’s really a heist novel, because there’s a thing that the hero needs, and it’s closely protected by the bad guys.

My sci-fi time-travel novel? The protagonist wants it to be an action story, but it’s really an identity crisis, because the girl knows who she’s supposed to be but she doesn’t know why.

My head is exploding.

I have to go write some things down.

And then I need to listen to more %Writing Excuses%.

Writing Journal: in which I ponder on stuff happening

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I’m having serious insecurities about my writing lately.

I mean, I guess that sentence could be true for any writer at any time, ever, but it feels more so now, and I can’t really say why. I feel like the narrative I’m crafting is boggy and mired, like it’s trying to slog through a swamp replete with swarming, biting mosquitoes, noxious muck that sucks at your shoes, and probably a bunch of gators lurking just below the surface, waiting for you to come close enough to take a chomp at.

It’s slow going, is what I’m trying to say. Not the writing — that’s moving along just fine — but the story itself. I constantly fear that it’s lurking dangerously on the precipice of going down forever in the mire. And I’m not 100% sure what to attribute this feeling to, this spider-sense that something’s wrong. The writing doesn’t feel so terribly dissimilar from the writing in my first novel, where I felt like things clipped along fairly well.

I think — and who the hell knows, certainly not me — that I’m doing too much explaining. What I mean is, I feel like the current story is more centered on a single character than my previous stories, and it’s particularly centered on the way this character sees the world. That viewpoint is pretty cynical (go figure) and a bit self-doubty (you don’t say) and ultimately a bit nihilistic (shocker). All of which is fine, maybe, but I feel like I’m spending entirely too much time in between things happening dealing with my character’s reactions to the events, with his thoughts and fears and plans for what’s coming next, rather than, you know, just getting to the next thing.

Then I go and watch, oh, I don’t know, any TV show ever and it’s nothing but things happening at breakneck pace. Tonight it’s Penny Dreadful, for example, and in one episode, a character tracks down his childhood home and throttles the current landlord; another pair of characters turns another character evil and then all three bathe in the blood of a previous antagonist; another character enters a hypnotic state wherein she learns of a previous involvement with another character that we never knew about, and yet another character goes on a murdering rampage with yet another character he just met while still another character chases him across the desert of the Wild West. I mean, holy sharknado. That’s all in just one hour.

Now, yeah, I know, that’s TV, which is not a novel. TV is a flash-flame, table-side grill, while a novel is a slow-cooker. But still. There’s hardly time to breathe in between all that stuff happening, let alone time to reflect, react, or plan for the future.

So, then, I take a page from that particular book and pursue tonight’s writing with a mind toward action, action, action, and bang out 850 words without breaking a sweat. And it’s great! But it leaves me wondering: am I writing this particular novel all wrong? Am I living too much in the character’s (and, by extension, my own) head, at the expense of actually letting the story happen? Maybe the story needs more passages like the one tonight, more swathes of stuff happening with less thinking about the stuff on the part of one character or another.

But then, (dammit,) I circle back around, because aren’t the protagonist’s internal struggles just as important as the external ones that manifest as he’s robbing banks to equip his newfound secret lair with the help of his newly reprogrammed robot companion? (Oh, yeah, spoiler alert, I guess, kinda.) I mean, the current novel is sort of an anti-superhero story, so it needs a fair bit of rock ’em sock ’em action, but without that introspection weaved throughout, won’t it ring hollow?

Just another missive from I-have-no-idea-what-I’m-doing-island.

*ponders*

*steams*

*hops back on the hamster wheel*