Drawing from the Well
Scenes Arranged: 0
Total Scenes: 166
I ALMOST made it. Too much to do yesterday. Scenes WILL happen today.
Filling the Well
That Hideous Strength: 54%
Elegy: Page 15 of 89
Jessica Jones: S2E10 of 13
I read a few pages of Elegy last night. They’re deceptively long pages for a novella. It also doesn’t help that it’s a .pdf and not a .mobi so all Kindle can do is show me the whole page instead of adjusting it for the screen on which I’m watching. Details.
Polishing the Well
Yesterday, my wife completed Wedding 22 (this picture was not it; this is stock internet footage) – and I helped! It was also Wedding 2 for Year 2 of her business. I’m so proud of her for chasing and catching her dream.
Well Chat
Ripping off the masters the right way
Yesterday I touched on a subject that I want to explore deeper today: using the “masters” as inspiration. If you’re a writer, you’re a reader. It’s source material (even when it serves as a non-example for what and how you want to write). If you’re not reading, you should be. I’m not always good about it, but I recognize its importance. So how do you toe the line between inspiration and outright copycatting?
The first step is to acknowledge that you COULD fabricate your story by ripping off someone else’s. It’s simultaneously easier and harder than you think. One of the times I vacillated back to my writing was because I was playing World of Warcraft and thought “I could do this better.” Excusing the immense hubris in that statement, it inspired me. Now, I did not go on to write World of Poorcraft or the like, but I was inspired to write by something else.
The next step is to determine what in your inspiration material you like and do not like. This has to be done at the base level. To go back to my Lord of the Rings example from yesterday, you can say “I like Frodo” but you can’t stop there. What do you like about him? His innocence? His determination? His bond with his friends? His accent? What is it? Those QUALITIES are things you can carry forward into a character of your own. The same is true of settings nad storylines. What do you like best about the Lord of the Rings arc? The journey? The fight against evil? The MANY competing factions and nations? Identify that and you’re on your way.
The last step is to start pouring your figurative blood into your work. If you like a young innocent hero with no magic but a big heart going against a super powerful demigod with a tiny token of that power, great! Now make it yours. Why is the hero innocent? Why does the Big Bad want the token? What MAKES him seemingly omnipotent? start pouring your originality and creativity into the mold you’ve built from various inspirational sources and color it to make it yours. This works especially well if you take pieces of inspiration from various sources, especially various AUTHORS, and cobble together a mold that in itself is approaching uniqueness. By the time you pour your “color” into it, it will be unrecognizable from anything else on the market.
One of my favorite cartoons as a kid was Beast Wars. It was a new take on Transformers set in the future (sort of). My favorite moment in the show…wait…
SPOILERS
But it’s been around for 25 years so if you haven’t seen it by now, well, go watch it, but here it comes.
My all-time favorite moment from the show is the final face-off between Megatron and Dinobot. The two have been circling each other for a few years now on opposite ends of an ideology about power. While Megatron has evolved in his methods, Dinobot has evolved in his mythos and become more of a hero than when he began. Because of this, Dinobot has remained physically the same while Megatron has been augmented by events. In their final one-on-one battle, Megatron beats the paint off of Dinobot. Literally. Dinobot’s systems warn him that he is in great danger of actual death (death is at times a bit fluid on the show, but this is threatening permanence which is exceedingly rare). He pushes through because of his desire to save proto-humanity (I told you the timing was weird). The two of them get to a point where Dinobot has no power left to fight through his mechanical body while Megatron stands over him without a scratch. At that moment, Dinobot grabs a nearby tree branch and starts beating Megatron with it. Megatron is taken aback by the assault, but quickly recovers and knocks Dinobot to the ground. Among Dinobot’s many great lines in this episode, this is the best. Megatron says to Dinobot, “Really? A stick? Against a transmetal? Oh, please. Face it, Dinobot: you’re old technology, obsolete. What can you possibly do?” In desperation, Dinobot looks to his side and sees a rock in the ground. He growls, “Improvise.” then smashes the stick onto the rock, creating a hatchet or hammer of sorts. He charges Megatron, strikes him across the chest, both knocking him away and knocking the golden disc loose. This is an item that gives Megatron immense power for reasons I’m not going to detail here. Dinobot catches the disc and uses ALL of his remaining power to destroy it. He then falls amongst the raining glittering golden shards and expires. He gave EVERYTHING to defeat Megatron in that moment and he succeeded.
I have always wanted to create a moment like that but haven’t had the chance yet. It will come and it will be glorious, but I can’t rip it off wholesale, so I have to bide my time and let that moment kick around in my brain until the right moment to strike.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG