And the new year is here!  I hope everyone is doing well.  Busy as always and back to work on Monday.

So beyond the Magic Power Generator which got delayed because of sudden inspiration (hey, I get some good stuff that way), I’m considering one or two more “minor” generators but want to get back to the idea of a Plot Twist Generator.  Warning on that – I’m probably going to need some suggestions because I’m not sure where to start.

I think there’s an odd division among generators.  Most are things that are easy to do because I “get” them – because they have enough of a focus I can analyze their subject matter.  Things like the Writing Prompt Generator don’t lend themselves easily to breakdown or analysis because there’s a far, far more personal level to them – they have to speak to the user in a far different way.  I can find patterns in, say, magical items or technobabble as they have comparatively tight linguistic bounds, so it’s easy to find what’ll trigger the imagination.  A writing prompt or a plot twist has more complex patterns, less bounds, and there’s a certain quality of “connectedness” I’m still figuring out.

It’s a daunting task, but it is one of my goals for the new year.  I’ve also got a few more ideas, but don’t plan to try anything new-new until at least Q2.

How’s your new year?
Respectfully,

– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/.

He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.

It’s a brand new year.  Studios are announcing blockbusters.  Both Marvel Studios and Warner Bros. have a slate of superhero adaptation coming up, theatrical and televised.  Sequels and adaptations are going to dominate the multiplexes.  But people have been predicting a collapse for the past few years, people like Steven Spielberg.  Collapses have happened before.  In 1980, Heaven’s Gate was, if not the catalyst, the nail in the coffin of unfettered directors, free from studio control.  The high budget coupled with poor performance in theatres killed United Artists, leading to its sale to MGM.  While the film has redeemed itself over time, allowing the audience to see the movie without the raw knowledge of the behind the scenes history, the four hour epic originally fared poorly.

Studios have not been known for being risk takers.  They exist to make money through movies.  A film that doesn’t recoup its budget at the box office is considered a failure, though the advent of merchandising and, later, the purchase of personal copies on first video tape and later DVD can help offset that loss.  As the cost of making movies have gone up, studios have gone from risk-adverse to risk-phobic.  Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace had, in 1999, a budget of $115 million.  In comparison, the 2013 film, The Hangover Part III had a budget of $103 million, with far less of its budget allocated for special effects than The Phantom Menace did.  Blockbusters are now regularly reaching $200 million budgets.  While one flop won’t destroy a studio, a string of failures will.

There are two ways for a studio to control risk.  The first is adapting a popular work.  Lost in Translation has been reviewing movie adaptations for over two and a half years.  It’s not a new approach, as an upcoming series here will show.  The difference now is that the original works aren’t the high-brow sources as in the past.  From the 20s through to the 60s, adaptations were taken from literature, from the Bible, from theatrical plays.  Adaptations of family fare came from children’s books or fairy tales.  The adaptations of today are more low-brow, coming from popular works – book series, comics, cartoons, video games, and toys, all the purview of the masses.  This difference leads to the perception that studios are in the middle of an adaptation boom, where original works fall aside.  However, Alfred Hitchcock adapted several works into movies, including To Catch a Thief, from the novel of the same name by David F. Dodge, and Psycho, from the novel by Robert Bloch.  The upcoming series will go into more details, but the perception that all that studios produce comes from two decades where original works were the norm in popularity lists.

The second way studios use to control risk is the Save the Cat formula.  Save the Cat, by Blake Snyder, goes through the steps of screenwriting, placing the story beats, fifteen key events in a movie, down page by page.  Snyder called his work a structure, but studios latched on to the method as a formula after the book’s publication in 2005, leading to movies feeling the same, no matter who starred, who directed, what genre the film was, or even the budget.  With all films following the formula, one variable is nailed down if a film fails.  It can’t be from the script; it followed the structure.  Sometimes, though, that structure harms the movie.  Battleship was blatant about the check boxes.  With studios risk-phobic, though, don’t expect a change in how a script is written.

Studios are relying more on blockbusters.  With the success of Marvel’s The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy, studios will stay on the blockbuster bandwagon.  With the auteur period, massive box office flops, like the aforementioned Heaven’s Gate, sent studios into minimizing risks.  With studios managing risk, it is unlikely that a number of blockbusters will fail.  The failures of The Lone Ranger and R.I.P.D., both adaptations*, provided different lessons.  With The Lone Ranger, the lesson was that an older property that hasn’t been seen in at least a generation may not have the best way to attract an audience.  The failure of R.I.P.D. showed that studios can’t adapt just any comic.

With franchises becoming the core of studio income, can studios survive an implosion?  Universal Studios’ 2014 lineup had no blockbusters, yet the studio had a record profit.  The linked article goes into greater detail, but the vast majority of Universal’s releases were made for under $40 million.  Universal’s franchise films, Fast and Furious 7, Minions, and Jurassic World should appear in 2015.  There were only two adaptations, Ouija, a horror movie based around the Ouija board, and Dracula Unbound, featruring Bram Stoker’s vampire.  The result – Universal didn’t lose as much money on failures and made amazing profit on unexpected hits, all from keeping budgets down.  It is possible for a studio to thrive without a tentpole blockbuster.

The year ahead won’t see a collapse, not right away.  Individual big-budget blockbusters might fail, which will get insiders talking about an impending collapse, but no one studio will see a string of failures.  Universal’s lesson won’t be learned right away, but will be around.  An underperforming franchise may be an indication that it’s time to let the franchise lay fallow for a few years, giving fans time to miss the series and demand a new film.  Studios will make excuses for the failure of a tentpole blockbuster, blaming factors beyond just yet another formulaic movie.  It will only be when a number of big-budget films underperform that studios will panic.

* The Lone Ranger was originally a radio series before being adapted for television and film.  R.I.P.D. was based on the comic, Rest in Peace Department.

(Way With Worlds is a weekly column on the art of worldbuilding published at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)

Having explored the psychology of conflict and the way that conflicts can go from simple disagreements to smashing galaxies with a Dimension Cannon, let’s take a look at some of the more personal elements of conflict. It’s a bit of a break from the galaxy-smashing thing, but the potential is there of course.

Let’s talk biases and bigotry, those steps that often let us climb the ladder to conflict.  Or descend into the pit of conflict, whatever, pick your metaphor.

We’ve all encountered biases and bigotry in real life and been driven crazy by them. We know people affected by them. In our historical readings we’ve seen cases where biases and bigotry have led to atrocities with depressing regularity.  Bias and bigotry is everywhere.

Which means that as world builders and creators, we need to think about these horrible things because they’re probably part of our worlds.

Worldbuilding isn’t for people afraid to get their brains messy. So since you have to write the biases and bigotries in your world, and the results of their existence, let’s talk about them.

But first . . . (more…)

The one thing that 2016 is guaranteed to have is more adaptations.  The current cycle may be reaching a peak, but there are a number of adaptations in the pipelines still to be released.  But if the peak is near, the two things that will mark getting past the apex is quality and audience reception.

Quality is tough to quantify, but, overall, adaptations today are far more faithful now than ever before.  Studios have learned that the in-name-only adaptation is doomed to failure from the outset.  Word of mouth is far faster today thanks to social media.  Audiences can warn others about a movie’s flaws during a screening.  At the same time, a movie that hits the heart of a work will also get audiences telling others about it.  Social media is a double-edged sword for studios.

Audience reception is easier to measure.  Box office returns, while not the best method, is still what studios look at as a measure of a film’s success.  The dollar amount isn’t the only part looked at; the amount brought in compared to a film’s budget is key.  An expensive film that brings in over a billion dollars, such as Jurassic World and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, isn’t the only success; a lower budget movie that still brings in ten times what it was made is also successful.  As long as audiences keep going to adaptations, they will be made.  One flop isn’t going to kill the current trend.  It will take a number of failures over a short period to convince a studio to try something different.  Thus, Universal’s failure with Jem and the Holograms isn’t going to dissuade the studio from continuing with the Fifty Shades of Grey series*.

Adaptations have always been a part of Hollywood.  The coming year is will be no different.  A backlash against the number of adaptations may be beginning, but it’ll take a few years before it gets felt.  Studios have adaptations in various stages of production; cancelling will cost money, and there’s no indication now that audiences will stay away in droves in the hope for something original.  Even then, the superhero movie is becoming a mainstay.  Where the Western and the rogue cop films have far too much baggage to them to be regular features, the superhero can take the appeal of the other two genres without their drawbacks.

Even television isn’t immune to adaptations.  Many series, including The Librarians, The Expanse, Dark Matter, and The Last Ship, are all adapted from other works.  Expect more works to be adapted as television series; the format allows for a greater depth at the expense of the fickleness of ratings.  Even the fickleness can be avoided; the 500-channel universe means that a work will find its audience.  A Game of Thrones has proven to be a hit for HBO, bringing in subscribers tuning in for that one series.

As mentioned above, quality is the key.  If the adaptation makes an effort to be faithful to the original work, audiences will watch.  Studios are learning this; the failure of Jem and the Holograms is noteworthy because it failed to meet fan expectations.  Fifty Shades of Grey met fan expectations, despite the casting choices.  The lesson is there to be learned.

* Issues between director and author might cause delays, though.