To be a screenwriter is to deal with an ongoing tug of war between breathtaking megalomania and insecurity so deep it takes years of therapy just to be able to say “I’m a writer” out loud. ~ Blake Snyder
Thursday Writing Quote ~ Snyder
To be a screenwriter is to deal with an ongoing tug of war between breathtaking megalomania and insecurity so deep it takes years of therapy just to be able to say “I’m a writer” out loud. ~ Blake Snyder
Tuesday Teaser/Opening ~ The Harrowing
It's that time of year--the run up to Halloween--when my thoughts turn to horror. I'm rather picky with horror, so I'm mostly rereading some of my favorite scary reads. I'm especially fond of ghost stories, so that's likely to dominate my reading for the coming weeks.
I'm starting with The Harrowing byAlexandra Sokoloff. It's got a creepy eerie vibe through most of the book. I recall being less enthusiastic about the ending that I was about the rest of the book, but it has a lovely creepy vibe through most of it, and the ending wasn't all that bad (as I recall). Horror is perhaps the hardest genre to get the ending right, so I'm willing to revisit this because I really liked the eerie sensation that present through most of the book.
Blurb:
Baird College's Mendenhall echoes with the footsteps of the last home-bound students heading off for Thanksgiving break, and Robin Stone swears she can feel the creepy, hundred-year-old residence hall breathe a sigh of relief for its long-awaited solitude. Or perhaps it's only gathering itself for the coming weekend.
As a massive storm dumps rain on the isolated campus, four other lonely students reveal themselves: Patrick, a handsome jock; Lisa, a manipulative tease; Cain, a brooding musician; and finally Martin, a scholarly eccentric. Each has forsaken a long weekend at home for their own secret reasons.
The five unlikely companions establish a tentative rapport, but they soon become aware of a sixth presence disturbing the ominous silence that pervades the building. Are they the victims of a simple college prank taken way too far, or is the unusual energy evidence of something genuine---and intent on using the five students for its own terrifying ends? It's only Thursday afternoon, and they have three long days and dark nights before the rest of the world returns to find out what's become of them. But for now it's just the darkness keeping company with five students nobody wants and no one will miss.
---- Nominated for the Bram Stoker and Anthony Award for Best First Novel ----
Opening:
It had been raining since possibly the beginning of time.
In the top tier of the cavernous psychology hall Robin Stone had long since given up on the lecture. She sat hunched in her seat, staring out arched windows at the downpour, feeling dreamily disconnected from the elemental violence outside, despite the fact that every few minutes the wind shook the building hard enough to rattle the glass of the windowpanes.
Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea
I'm starting with The Harrowing byAlexandra Sokoloff. It's got a creepy eerie vibe through most of the book. I recall being less enthusiastic about the ending that I was about the rest of the book, but it has a lovely creepy vibe through most of it, and the ending wasn't all that bad (as I recall). Horror is perhaps the hardest genre to get the ending right, so I'm willing to revisit this because I really liked the eerie sensation that present through most of the book.
Blurb:Baird College's Mendenhall echoes with the footsteps of the last home-bound students heading off for Thanksgiving break, and Robin Stone swears she can feel the creepy, hundred-year-old residence hall breathe a sigh of relief for its long-awaited solitude. Or perhaps it's only gathering itself for the coming weekend.
As a massive storm dumps rain on the isolated campus, four other lonely students reveal themselves: Patrick, a handsome jock; Lisa, a manipulative tease; Cain, a brooding musician; and finally Martin, a scholarly eccentric. Each has forsaken a long weekend at home for their own secret reasons.
The five unlikely companions establish a tentative rapport, but they soon become aware of a sixth presence disturbing the ominous silence that pervades the building. Are they the victims of a simple college prank taken way too far, or is the unusual energy evidence of something genuine---and intent on using the five students for its own terrifying ends? It's only Thursday afternoon, and they have three long days and dark nights before the rest of the world returns to find out what's become of them. But for now it's just the darkness keeping company with five students nobody wants and no one will miss.
---- Nominated for the Bram Stoker and Anthony Award for Best First Novel ----
Opening:
It had been raining since possibly the beginning of time.
In the top tier of the cavernous psychology hall Robin Stone had long since given up on the lecture. She sat hunched in her seat, staring out arched windows at the downpour, feeling dreamily disconnected from the elemental violence outside, despite the fact that every few minutes the wind shook the building hard enough to rattle the glass of the windowpanes.
Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea
Real-Life Plot Holes and Fake Narrative
I have a policy that my politics and religious beliefs should not be part of my platform as a writer, but with the fuss Donald Trump's comments on immigration created when he first threw his hat in the ring, it got me thinking about the issue of illegal immigration again. I've always felt there was something a little dicey about the entire issue, but this time, I must have had my writer's hat on because I realized that there's a plot hole in the narrative.
So before I really dig into this, let me make a couple of things clear. I am by training, a cynic. (Thanks, Mom and Dad, for making me a critical thinker.) I don't trust either political party. I don't trust individual politician. Too often, they say one thing in public but their votes say something else. The Democratic party gets heat from me because for most of the last sixty years or so, they've been the dominant party in congress and the country is a mess. The Republican party gets heat from me because, when they do come to power, they mill around like idiots who never expected to win and have no game plan, and then when they do settle in, they're no better at solving problems than the democrats. At the voting booth, it makes me feel as though I'm picking between Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.
I'm also a contrarian, which means I tend to lean away from popular explanations.
So don't think I'm coming down on the Democrats here because of party affiliation. I'm coming down on them because they've had the power to fix this problem (hey, they passed the Affordable Health Care Act [aka Obamacare] without a single Republican vote). So why couldn't they fix the immigration problem? The obvious answer is: they didn't want to.
So how does this become a plot hole?
Well, that boils down to the word "illegal."
What makes something illegal? That's simple. It's against the law. Who makes the laws? Congress.
For as long as this has been an issue, I've heard a number of argument for these people being here. The big one seems to be that they do work Americans won't. That farmers need the migrant workers to pick their crops. There are probably others, but I stopped listening to them ages ago. I'm not going to argue whether the reasons are legitimate because it's a complex issue and it has nothing to do with plot holes. But my logic says if Congress believes there are good reasons to allow these people into the country, they should hammer out an immigration policy that allows them to come here LEGALLY. (Remember, they're the ones who have the power of defining what's legal and what isn't.)
So the second question becomes WHY haven't they?
Again, the obvious answer is: because they don't want to.
So Congress wants the people here, and they want them here as illegals.
If I read that in a book, their motives would be suspect.
Here's another plot hole.
I recently read The Demon You Know: A Demon Hunting Soccer Mom Short Story (Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom)
by Julie Kenner
. Here's a summary of the book:
The Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom series features Kate Connor, a retired demon hunter and mom of two forced back into business when a demon crashes through her kitchen window.
Now Mom has been retired for several years and is out of practice, so she signs up for a self-defense course to sharpen her skills. She also signs up her fourteen year old daughter, but it's almost an afterthought. Really? This is a woman who knows there are demons out there and didn't put her daughter in some kind of self-defense course long ago?
Now there aren't demons in our world, but according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 23% of women who have "experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, first experienced some form of partner violence between 11 and 17 years of age." (http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/intimatepartnerviolence/teen_dating_violence.html) And that's statistic doesn't even count violence from a stranger.
And yet girls aren't routinely taught self defense.
What does that tell us about how deeply we as a society really believe "our children are our future."
Lip service is what I call it.
It would be so easy to integrate self defense into PE classes and it would certainly be more useful than playing girls' basketball which is what I remember from eight grade PE.
Trust me. The youngest generation in my immediate family is going to be better prepared. I've already looked into it and you can enroll four year olds in Tai Kwan Do.
Which brings up what our farce of a justice system does with offenders.
I have a friend in Washington whose second husband molested her eleven year old daughter. Bless her, the moment my friend found out, she booted him. And then she pressed charges. His sentence? Probation. And he was told to stay away from minors. Yeah, that should teach him. But then he started dating a woman with a young daughter. They did catch him and haul him back to court, but all they did was scold him. Yes, our children are our future. And if you believe that, I have a lovely bridge in Brooklyn you can buy cheap.
So before I really dig into this, let me make a couple of things clear. I am by training, a cynic. (Thanks, Mom and Dad, for making me a critical thinker.) I don't trust either political party. I don't trust individual politician. Too often, they say one thing in public but their votes say something else. The Democratic party gets heat from me because for most of the last sixty years or so, they've been the dominant party in congress and the country is a mess. The Republican party gets heat from me because, when they do come to power, they mill around like idiots who never expected to win and have no game plan, and then when they do settle in, they're no better at solving problems than the democrats. At the voting booth, it makes me feel as though I'm picking between Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.
I'm also a contrarian, which means I tend to lean away from popular explanations.
So don't think I'm coming down on the Democrats here because of party affiliation. I'm coming down on them because they've had the power to fix this problem (hey, they passed the Affordable Health Care Act [aka Obamacare] without a single Republican vote). So why couldn't they fix the immigration problem? The obvious answer is: they didn't want to.
So how does this become a plot hole?
Well, that boils down to the word "illegal."
What makes something illegal? That's simple. It's against the law. Who makes the laws? Congress.
For as long as this has been an issue, I've heard a number of argument for these people being here. The big one seems to be that they do work Americans won't. That farmers need the migrant workers to pick their crops. There are probably others, but I stopped listening to them ages ago. I'm not going to argue whether the reasons are legitimate because it's a complex issue and it has nothing to do with plot holes. But my logic says if Congress believes there are good reasons to allow these people into the country, they should hammer out an immigration policy that allows them to come here LEGALLY. (Remember, they're the ones who have the power of defining what's legal and what isn't.)
So the second question becomes WHY haven't they?
Again, the obvious answer is: because they don't want to.
So Congress wants the people here, and they want them here as illegals.
If I read that in a book, their motives would be suspect.
Here's another plot hole.
I recently read The Demon You Know: A Demon Hunting Soccer Mom Short Story (Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom)by Julie Kenner
. Here's a summary of the book:The Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom series features Kate Connor, a retired demon hunter and mom of two forced back into business when a demon crashes through her kitchen window.
Now Mom has been retired for several years and is out of practice, so she signs up for a self-defense course to sharpen her skills. She also signs up her fourteen year old daughter, but it's almost an afterthought. Really? This is a woman who knows there are demons out there and didn't put her daughter in some kind of self-defense course long ago?
Now there aren't demons in our world, but according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 23% of women who have "experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, first experienced some form of partner violence between 11 and 17 years of age." (http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/intimatepartnerviolence/teen_dating_violence.html) And that's statistic doesn't even count violence from a stranger.
And yet girls aren't routinely taught self defense.
What does that tell us about how deeply we as a society really believe "our children are our future."
Lip service is what I call it.
It would be so easy to integrate self defense into PE classes and it would certainly be more useful than playing girls' basketball which is what I remember from eight grade PE.
Trust me. The youngest generation in my immediate family is going to be better prepared. I've already looked into it and you can enroll four year olds in Tai Kwan Do.
Which brings up what our farce of a justice system does with offenders.
I have a friend in Washington whose second husband molested her eleven year old daughter. Bless her, the moment my friend found out, she booted him. And then she pressed charges. His sentence? Probation. And he was told to stay away from minors. Yeah, that should teach him. But then he started dating a woman with a young daughter. They did catch him and haul him back to court, but all they did was scold him. Yes, our children are our future. And if you believe that, I have a lovely bridge in Brooklyn you can buy cheap.
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