Adam Martin's Blog - Posts Tagged "atari"
WRITING LIST-O-METER
Things that you think you're the only one doing, when in fact everyone else is from the reader's perspective...
Your story is littered with characters who look at each other with puppy dog eyes, forlorn expressions, and tearful gazes. What is this? A black velvet dog painting from Tijuana? Visual aid included:
What is it with people who think every movie they see is "really good"? You may have just had a brush with a philisophical zombie, someone who walks and talks like a real person, and even suffers, but exists and reacts by rote.
You see an author online who has won an award, like a Hugo, or something with lots of graphic garlands. You click the link to see the actual award, followed by another nebulous link, and another, and another, until you find yourself at some online storefront, like IKEA, or CVS. The strategy, I think, is that you'll begin to tire of clicking the clickbait, but not before crossing over links to the author's other novels that won other fake or dubious awards, that you can never really locate, or never heard of, except for the guy who invented them, which was probably the author.
You didn't write a novel, you wrote a tour of one, and the irony is unintentional. The characters don't seem to be compelled, propelled, motivated, or conflicted by the story or the sets. It feels as if their walking through a museum of the story and chatting about the artifacts from room to room, but nothing much else happens.
You know how to write a plot, but the levels are flat. Darth Vader must kill Luke Skywalker in chapter 15, but so what? It could have been John Wilkes Booth assassinating Abe Lincoln, for all we care. Try this: have John Wilkes Booth assassinate Luke Skywalker, or vice versa, and see if that makes things interesting.
You wrote a LEGO plot. The characters and scenes can be rearranged in any sequence and it doesn't matter to the story. Darth Vader can kill Luke Skywalker in chapter 1, 7, or 12, but because the plot is so thin, it doesn't matter.
Chapter 23 comes after chapter 22 because you wrote it in that order, and you stayed up 'til four in the morning to finish your story, neatly cementing your delusional train of thought in place.
"Yeah" not "yea". Stop saying "yea" when you mean "yeah". “Yea” is an old-fashioned formal way of saying “yes,” used mainly in voting and is spoken as "yay". When someone asks you if you enjoyed the movie, or a meal, and you say "yea", we're not asking for your vote. It's not a filibuster for godsake. A simple "yeah" "yes" or "no" will do. If you write a children's story and your characters keep saying "yea", are you doing this on purpose? What exactly are they voting on?
Personal Plot Rule: If you cant make it funny make it shorter, if you can't make it shorter don't do it. If you have two movies that are equally as boring, where one is 2 hours and the other is 1 1/2 hours, the shorter movie doesn't feel as boring, and the audience will hate you less for forcing them to sit through it. It's a reductive/brevity strategy and it works. Students love teachers who get to the point so they don't have to fight falling asleep in class and waking in drool.
When I took a painting class, someone once asked me "Have you sold a painting?" My silent reaction was why would that matter? My goal is to retain the rights to the original work, and the right to distribute digital copies to multiple individuals for fun, profit, good publicity, or bad publicity (a.k.a Dennis Hopper publicity). If I sold a painting, all the buyer would do is hang it in the guest bedroom, forever obscured from the general public, and only witnessed by those who want something to look at while they're brushing their teeth. What's the point?
I get tired of hearing about characters that aren't likeable. Disgusting characters? That depends. A lot of authors write disgusting characters for the same reasons people tell gross-out jokes: they're not funny or interesting otherwise.
Gimmick porn: You thought of a cool gimmick. Instead of doing Pride and Prejudice with zombies, you're version is going to be all Filipino, or take place in the Matrix, or set on Monster Island to Toho studio monsters (Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, you know... those guys). That's it. There's nothing beyond the gimmick, and then you go on to write a story that butchers the original source material so badly, all you end up doing is driving others to read the original novel.
You wrote a video game story but the plot is nothing more than defeating the next pit boss. The inner Tron game engine ennui is accidental, and everyone has the personality of the block-shaped cowboys in the 1978 Atari Gunslinger game.
It takes you 10 pages to get there, but it only takes the reader 5. Kind of like when you know what someone is going to say next and you find yourself mouthing the words coming out of their mouth because you're 3 milliseconds ahead of their thought process.
Poptart Parents: Your character has parents simply because it would look odd if they didn't. They're a little bit egg-and-sperm donor and a little less rock and roll. They 1) pop in from time to time and 2) they're a little tart, in order to offset the sweet nature of your characters. Other than that, they're boring dads lost in pipe smoke and doting mothers spraying houseplants, gingerly doling out reproductive advice that anyone could tell themselves.
You take advice from gurus that try to cajole you into thinking you're delusional, only to find after reading their own self-published works, they're more delusional than you are.
Your story is littered with characters who look at each other with puppy dog eyes, forlorn expressions, and tearful gazes. What is this? A black velvet dog painting from Tijuana? Visual aid included:
What is it with people who think every movie they see is "really good"? You may have just had a brush with a philisophical zombie, someone who walks and talks like a real person, and even suffers, but exists and reacts by rote.
You see an author online who has won an award, like a Hugo, or something with lots of graphic garlands. You click the link to see the actual award, followed by another nebulous link, and another, and another, until you find yourself at some online storefront, like IKEA, or CVS. The strategy, I think, is that you'll begin to tire of clicking the clickbait, but not before crossing over links to the author's other novels that won other fake or dubious awards, that you can never really locate, or never heard of, except for the guy who invented them, which was probably the author.
You didn't write a novel, you wrote a tour of one, and the irony is unintentional. The characters don't seem to be compelled, propelled, motivated, or conflicted by the story or the sets. It feels as if their walking through a museum of the story and chatting about the artifacts from room to room, but nothing much else happens.
You know how to write a plot, but the levels are flat. Darth Vader must kill Luke Skywalker in chapter 15, but so what? It could have been John Wilkes Booth assassinating Abe Lincoln, for all we care. Try this: have John Wilkes Booth assassinate Luke Skywalker, or vice versa, and see if that makes things interesting.
You wrote a LEGO plot. The characters and scenes can be rearranged in any sequence and it doesn't matter to the story. Darth Vader can kill Luke Skywalker in chapter 1, 7, or 12, but because the plot is so thin, it doesn't matter.
Chapter 23 comes after chapter 22 because you wrote it in that order, and you stayed up 'til four in the morning to finish your story, neatly cementing your delusional train of thought in place.
"Yeah" not "yea". Stop saying "yea" when you mean "yeah". “Yea” is an old-fashioned formal way of saying “yes,” used mainly in voting and is spoken as "yay". When someone asks you if you enjoyed the movie, or a meal, and you say "yea", we're not asking for your vote. It's not a filibuster for godsake. A simple "yeah" "yes" or "no" will do. If you write a children's story and your characters keep saying "yea", are you doing this on purpose? What exactly are they voting on?
Personal Plot Rule: If you cant make it funny make it shorter, if you can't make it shorter don't do it. If you have two movies that are equally as boring, where one is 2 hours and the other is 1 1/2 hours, the shorter movie doesn't feel as boring, and the audience will hate you less for forcing them to sit through it. It's a reductive/brevity strategy and it works. Students love teachers who get to the point so they don't have to fight falling asleep in class and waking in drool.
When I took a painting class, someone once asked me "Have you sold a painting?" My silent reaction was why would that matter? My goal is to retain the rights to the original work, and the right to distribute digital copies to multiple individuals for fun, profit, good publicity, or bad publicity (a.k.a Dennis Hopper publicity). If I sold a painting, all the buyer would do is hang it in the guest bedroom, forever obscured from the general public, and only witnessed by those who want something to look at while they're brushing their teeth. What's the point?
I get tired of hearing about characters that aren't likeable. Disgusting characters? That depends. A lot of authors write disgusting characters for the same reasons people tell gross-out jokes: they're not funny or interesting otherwise.
Gimmick porn: You thought of a cool gimmick. Instead of doing Pride and Prejudice with zombies, you're version is going to be all Filipino, or take place in the Matrix, or set on Monster Island to Toho studio monsters (Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, you know... those guys). That's it. There's nothing beyond the gimmick, and then you go on to write a story that butchers the original source material so badly, all you end up doing is driving others to read the original novel.
You wrote a video game story but the plot is nothing more than defeating the next pit boss. The inner Tron game engine ennui is accidental, and everyone has the personality of the block-shaped cowboys in the 1978 Atari Gunslinger game.
It takes you 10 pages to get there, but it only takes the reader 5. Kind of like when you know what someone is going to say next and you find yourself mouthing the words coming out of their mouth because you're 3 milliseconds ahead of their thought process.
Poptart Parents: Your character has parents simply because it would look odd if they didn't. They're a little bit egg-and-sperm donor and a little less rock and roll. They 1) pop in from time to time and 2) they're a little tart, in order to offset the sweet nature of your characters. Other than that, they're boring dads lost in pipe smoke and doting mothers spraying houseplants, gingerly doling out reproductive advice that anyone could tell themselves.
You take advice from gurus that try to cajole you into thinking you're delusional, only to find after reading their own self-published works, they're more delusional than you are.
