Archive for March, 2007

Speaking of “Paradise Lost”

Constance Ash March 4th, 2007

As we were, tangentally at least, down below in “Creating the Worlds in Which We Want to Live,” here’s an interesting article from today’s NY Times’s art section about the attempts to produce a film made from Milton’s epic.

Pulled from the 3rd screen:

[ Mr. Semenza pointed out that many films have been influenced by the epic, some obviously (Taylor Hackford’s “Devil’s Advocate,� in which Al Pacino’s Satan character is named John Milton), others less so (the light sabers in� Star Wars,� some contend, must have been inspired by Milton’s angels’ “flaming swords�). ]

Love, C.

Where’s the Latrine?

Madeleine Robins March 1st, 2007

I’m doing research for the next project. The next project (hereafter NP) is set around 1050 CE in coastal Italy, which is not easy to research (there’s a difference between hard-to-research and not-easy). When I’m researching a period I know very little about there are specific things I need to know–many of which will never appear on my page. What are the names and sizes of the local currency? Styles of address? What’s the prevailing religious belief system? What is the legal system, and does it affect everyone equally? How do they handle human waste? This last is particularly important–you could be a peasant who never saw a piece of money, you could be an agnostic paying lipservice to the accepted religious system…but, to paraphrase Sesame Street, everybody poops. And I’m not just interested in the specific details of latrines and chamberpots, but about things like smell. Was a slight septic smell just a fact of life? Was the waste used to fertilize the fields? Was that likely to cause health problems? Were there people whose livelihood depended on waste-management? The thing is, I’m unlikely to dwell on this kind of stuff in NP, but I need to know it, so that I have a sense of the texture of the place and how daily life was managed.

At the same time that I’m doing this research, I’m reading a book set in a non-specific Fantasy When-n-Where. And what this book sorely needs is latrines. Not literally, exactly; there are occasional shots of men relieving themselves in the streets (intended to demonstrate what a sordid, nasty place this is) and mention is made of sewers (intended to establish a stench, thus demonstrating what a sordid, nasty place this is). None of this gives the reader a hand figuring out what the technological level of the place is, which would be one reason to mention waste-management. The book is set in a city, where waste-management would be very different from the countryside, but I have no idea in what way different. What the author has done is to neglect local texture and the sense that his characters have a life beyond the pages of the book, that everyone has household chores and needs to pee on occasion, not because it’s nasty but because they’re human.

The thing about world-building is that everything is connected to everything else. When you’re working to build a believable fantasy or science-fictional world, the agriculture connects to diet connects to waste connects to technology and who-knows-what-all. Very little of this should show up on the page, but you have to know about the latrines.

Effects

Laura J. Mixon March 1st, 2007

I’ve been thinking about special effects, in part because they are making a movie of my husband, Steve Gould’s, book JUMPER. They made some significant changes to the story, as Hollywood is wont to do. And frankly, I ain’t complaining, because they paid enough to do so to take a lot of financial pressure off Steve and me. Some of the changes they’ve made appear to me to have been chosen specifically to make the work have lots of visual appeal. Iow, for the sake of cool special effects. Again, I ain’t complaining; I love cool special effects.

However, the changes have had this sort of ripple effect that I’ve watched Steve wrestle with (successfully, fortunately) in the prequel he has written. One of Steve’s great strengths as a writer is that he really thinks through the logical consequences of everything in his books. Every single thing that happens, every piece of technology, every character’s motivations and actions, Steve has examined all these story elements from every angle, and fitted neatly together into these tightly plotted, cleanly written tales whose characters feel so real, you really care about them. Watching how he has managed to turn what were, imo, things thrown in just for visual effect, and making them make sense — making them “real” in that way that good stories feel real — has been interesting to watch. He is truly an masterful craftsman, in addition to a great storyteller. I’ve learned a lot as a writer, just watching him work.

And one thing Steve never, ever does, is put things into his stories that don’t strictly serve the needs of the story. Doesn’t matter how cool the special effect is. Doesn’t matter how much he’d love to throw in bells and whistles and kitchen sinks. If it doesn’t serve the story, no matter how much he may want it to be there for other reasons, it’s out. (He does like explosions; I’ll give him that. But in that case, he finds a way to make it have meaning.) He has tremendous self-discipline.

I have a very different process than Steve’s. One of my biggest challenges as a writer is that one of the things that keeps me writing is the cool ideas and stuff. So I have this impulse to keep throwing more stuff in: more plot twists, more weird tech, more character interactions, more world building. By the time I am 100 pages in, I am staggering under the burden of all the stuff I’ve given myself — and the reader — to carry.

I don’t think I’ll ever be as pared down as a writer as Steve is. But with this current book, I’ve decided to clear through some of the brush — sacrifice some of the coolth, for the sake of making what remains more “real.”

I think I’ll put a big sign on the wall above my monitor: “Does it serve the story?” If no, out it goes.

Thanks, Stevie.

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