Tag: On Writing Fiction

It’s “Like”, You Know

Analogies. They’re like a plague upon the English language. See what I did there; I analogised analogies. That’s like sending coals to Manchester. Or tea to China. Taking the Piss out of Newcastle (points to the person who actually knows what that means)…

I could go on, but I’ll stop now.

Analogies are a plague in a lot of comtemporary writing. Our descriptive powers have seemingly waned over the last century. Whereupon we once described sunsets as a conflagration, a fire from the gods settling upon the far horizon yet burning away without damage we now say that a sunset is like a conflagration, a fire from the gods settling upon the far horizon yet burning away without damage.

Fiction rests upon analogy; genre fiction such as fantasy and science fiction live upon such literary comparisons. If you following the “genre as contemporary commentary” angle then analogies abound because the salient points of the novel, short story, film or episode are meant to be ported back to actuality. The zombies in Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” are analogous to seemingly brainless activities of shoppers in malls. The political machinations of the Clarke regime in “Babylon 5” were meant to be analogous to the USA historically, although it turns out that it was more in the line of prophecy than anything else. Thus, we can say, that analogies are an important aspect of genre writing.

However, not all analogies, however, are successful. Analogies should not be things that we hit readers over the head with. I’m really talking here about descriptive analogies such as “He was like a fish without a bicycle” or “Her hair was like a running stream of coal and tar.” Heavy duty, obvious analogies. Sentences with the word “like.” These are the blights upon our literary landscape. Such sentences fail to do real work; by making the analogy explicit, “X is like Y,” the sentence lets down the reader and belittles the writer. In part this is due to the easy, short-cutting nature, of analogies; “His face was like that of a Faustian devil.” Now, we all know (I presume) what a Faustian devil looks like; red-skinned, high-browed, pointed goatee and eye-brows that slant upwards. So, if this is the case, why not describe your character and let the reader, after they have processed the description, think for themselves “Aha, he looks like a Faustian devil.” Do not rob the reader of their intellectual satisfaction. Obvious analogies reduce the need for the audience to interact with the text. Interaction is good; this much, at least, was the worth of that whole ‘post-modern’ project.

(Here, if I was to be predictable, would be an analogy, and there would have been one if I was clever enough to think up of one…)

Attempted Murder, She Wrote

‘Murder, She Wrote’ was, for a time, a common subject for memes on the internet. Most of them revolved around the ‘Jessica Fletcher’ is a plague of death that descends upon towns and cities; an apt commentary on the subject, I might add. I’ve been rewatching a lot of the series over the last few weeks (God bless daytime TV). It’s not exactly dire; if you only ever watched one episode you would think it fun. Two episodes; okay entertainment. More than three in one week? Well, it’s a bit of a weird show, really.

Everyone makes fun of William Shatner’s shirt-ripping in ‘Star Trek;’ I say lets make fun of the fact that Angela Lansbury’s character must always end each show laughing or smiling, despite the death(s) of those around her. Without fail a silly joke will be made and people will break into large smiles, even if they were recently widowed or they have found out that their partner was a murdering bastard. It’s a sloppy conceit; an appropiate wisecrack every so often is a natural reaction to death but Jessica Fletcher just doesn’t seem fazed by death at all. She is the nice Miss Marple; so nice that the stain of death does not touch her. She never seems troubled by the fact that wherever she goes people die or that the friends she makes are often not only victims but purpatrators of terrible crimes.

Still, all of this is the symptons of a show that ran too long. ‘Murder, She Wrote’ only ever had one plot device; every episode someone must die and Jessica Fletcher (ignoring the season where she only guest-starred in here own show) must solve the crime. You can only do so much with murder and with no plot-arc or want to sustain a change in personality every episode must be treated as the first one an audience member might see. It is a show with limited value; decreasing returns to the viewer each and every episode.

Yet I keep on watching it.

Sad, really.

One Funny Line

I’m six pages in (at least ten minutes if performed) into my radio script and despite the fact that it is meant to be humourous it only has one funny line thus far, and it might be funny only because the rest of the script is rather dry and boring. If I said this was meant to be the case I wouldn’t be lying all that much. The show is a documentary of sorts; science of the future based upon philosophical solutions to issues we have now (and the consequences of these solutions). I’m trying to get the framework of the documentary format down and that means info splurge for the time being. I need to know what I should be making funny by taking it all rather, well, seriously.

Still, I just know that by the end of this process I will really wish I had decided to start with the much more viable ‘second idea.’ At least that one is likely to be looked at.

Late Night Rambling with the Ransome

Christopher Franke, one of the creative minds behind ‘Tangerine Dream’ and the composer for five years of ‘Babylon 5’ composed a suite called ‘Voices of Authority’ (a section of which was eventually used as the theme music to year five of ‘Babylon 5’). It is a stirring military piece that I like walking to. It makes me want to conquer the world and impose my own special tyranny on society. It also inspired me to try and write a short piece of fiction in the time it takes to play (eleven minutes, approximately). Here is the result.

(more…)

The Firefly Quandary

“So, did you see ‘Serenity?'”

“Oh yes. ‘I’m like a leaf in the wind…'”

“‘Splunk!’ Wasn’t it the greatest?”

“Pretty damn good. Actually much, much better than I thought it would be.”

“Come on, it’s Joss Whedon. The man’s a god. ‘Firefly’ is the best science fiction series of recent note!”

“Aah, I’m more of a ‘Farscape’ fan, myself.”

“Yeah, well, ‘Farscape’ had four seasons; ‘Firefly’ only had the thirteen episodes.”

“So?”

“Well, had ‘Firefly’ run as long as ‘Farscape’ it would have been the better series…”

You can see my quandary, readers. If ‘Firefly had run four years, then it would have been better than ‘Farscape.’ To evaluate such a claim you would need to look at what else Mr. Whedon has written and produced. (more…)

D’Argo, tell him who his daddy is!

Farscape

It took me several weeks (hurrah for illnesses that leave you unable to do anything particularly taxing) but I have now watched all four seasons of ‘Farscape’ plus the mini-series-cum-movie ‘The Peacekeeper Wars.’ My judgement; I can comfortable pronounce it to be good. Great even.

To broadly overgeneralise, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Babylon 5’ remapped American telefantasy. ‘Babylon 5’ introduced the ‘proper way of dealing with long term stories’ and ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ naturalised genre TV’s dialogue (which, since we are dealing with fiction, doesn’t mean ‘naturalised’ at all). Both of these shows have a very special place in my heart but both shows, because they rewrote so much of their respective landscapes, have flaws that really have only become apparent with their natural successors. For ‘Babylon 5’ its most fatal flaw is dialogue; whilst it has its share of great and motivational speeches some of the dialogue is incredibly samey. ‘Buffy,’ on the other hand, had hip and smart dialogue but its season-length plotting sometimes had a lot to answer for.

‘Farscape,’ for all its flaws, is the next-gen show. (more…)