So a lot’s going on, and here’s what’s up!  But first an update – I won’t be speaking at Kraken-Con.  Space is a bit limited –  this September they actually landed Zach Callison.  Yes, Steven Universe. So as a fellow Steven I understand it’s limited -but it’s also a con well worth going to!

Plot Twist Generator

Now let’s talk the Plot Twist Generator which is now in early Beta.  OK, I’m not entirely sure what early Alpha and early Beta are in reality since most people have broad ideas, but my take is “it’s now vaguely kind of useful”

I’ve managed to do enough research and get enough feedback that I have a lot of ideas to put in – and once I get there it’ll be close to done.  You folks have been invaluable and it’s a much better generator for it.

Really, this one is far, far harder than I expected.  Twists can be general or specific, tropes or unique, simple or complex.  I figured there’d be some archetypes and patterns to mess with, dump a bunch of data on it, and it’d work – but instead there’s a lot more complexity and potential complexity.  So, lesson learned.

I will probably need a break after the next update in a week or so, then see about getting it done end of month/early October.

I do have a few fun generators planned, and I’m considering a really neat idea – documenting one of them as I do it.

Way With Worlds

Almost done with my latest editing sweep.  I’m doing one more in September, then it goes to my pre-readers for awhile.  I can say there’s a lot of good advice, but damn did some of it need a rewrite.  There’s also things I added or expanded on.

The format looks good, and I plan to send out  a sneak peak with my newsletter in the near future.  Don’t forget to sign up – plus beyond the free updates, you get my LinkedIn Guide.

I already have the sequels planned, as mentioned.  Let’s just say they’ll be different, they’ll be fun, and they’ll be helpful in a different way.
Respectfully,

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

Big budget blockbusters. Tentpole pictures tested and refined. Studios so risk adverse they run a lunch order past a test audience before committing. Save the cat!

The desire and need for studios to turn a profit leaves little room for new cult classics. Granted, a cult classic is a film that gained a small, dedicated audience instead of having a greater mainstream appeal. Cult classics stumble at the box office but have longevity; The Rocky Horror Picture Show is one of the top grossing film of the Seventies as a result. Today, movies need to be hit over the opening weekend or they’re considered failures. Studios compete for opening days. The result – movies either soar or they’re bland; crashing and burning is rare.

The problem coming up is a lack of innovation. Avatar showed that 3-D could be used to create an immersive experience, but few films used the film technique for anything beyond cheap scares and roller coaster rides. James Cameron took the risk, but he had a number of successes, including Titanic, to persuade the studio that he could succeed. Avatar had people returning to theatres for second and third viewings. The lesson the other studios learned? People will go to 3-D movies. Not, “People will go out for immersive experiences,” or, “People appreciate innovative work when done well.”

The lack of innovation, especially when married to the Save the Cat approach to scripts, means that, after a while, all movies start looking the same. Does “Washed out hero is forced to work with others to save the world,” sound like Guardians of the Galaxy or Battleship? The difference is often just execution. Granted, this sort of thing comes in waves. The Seventies had disaster movies*; the Eighties had science fiction and sequels. The Western was a staple until Heaven’s Gate and still appears from time to time. Superhero movies aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. The Eighties, though, show more variety even with the sequels. Not every movie succeeded, but there was room for other movies outside the Star Wars sequels and Indiana Jones films, from Short Circuit to The Breakfast Club to UHF to Weekend at Bernie’s to Alien From L.A. Not every film succeeded at the theatres, but there was variety.

The core issue is money. Studios don’t want to lose $200 million on a bad movie. At the same time, studios don’t see a problem in investing $200 million in a movie that follows a checklist. Battleship wears the checklist on its sleeve. Even comedies are getting into increased budgets. The Hangover 3 had a budget in the same neighbourhood as Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. On the flip side, Johnny Mnemonic (1995) was first developed for a $3 million budget and the studio turned the idea down, but then accepted it when the budget was upped to $30 million.

This isn’t to say that cult classics don’t happen. They’re rare. Few people set out to create one, and deliberate attempts to be a cult classic tend to fail. Today, though, the elements that turn a movie into a cult hit get weeded out during the checklist and further removed with all the audience testing that happens. A movie that fails at the box office isn’t necessarily bad; it’s just bland. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li suffered this fate. Names could have been changed with no effect on the film. The earilier Street Fighter: The Movie may have been cheesy, but it was a better adaptation and it is more fun to watch**. Same goes with Flash Gordon; it was a fine cheddar, but the supporting cast and the soundtrack transform the film into the classic it is.

Today, the only way either Street Fighter or Flash Gordon could be made they way they were is if there was a big star attached. Granted, that is how Street Fighter was made, with Jean-Claude van Damme and Raul Julia. Today, much of the humour would be toned down or removed, turning the action-comedy to either pure action or an action-drama. The heart would be gone.

All of the above ignores television. The SyFy channel is the new home for B-movies, with such luminaries as Sharktopus, Lavalatula, and the Sharknado trilogy. Low budget monster movies with cheap CGI effects with an audience that wants to see that type of movie. It’s not the same; SyFy’s B-movies follow their own formula, mostly combining an animal with something else, either another animal or a natural disaster. Again, it comes down to execution and, for these movies, chutzpah.

Will the cheese return to the big screen? Eventually. Universal Studios managed to have a profitable summer without a non-franchise blockbuster. Outside Jurassic World and Fast and Furious 7, Universal’s line up has been of reasonable budgets, allowing for fewer losses on a movie that falls flat and huge profits for their successes, including Fifty Shades of Grey***. If other studios follow Universal’s lead, and give that a few years, the lower budgets means there’s room to experiment and try something different. An unsuccessful experiment won’t cost as much, especially if it does well on DVD. A successful one means that a larger budget can be assigned for similar in the future.
* Until Airplane! skewered the airplane crash genre so thoroughly.
** Raul Julia alone is worth seeing in the film. Having Adrian Cronauer as the Armed Forces Radio announcer was genius.
*** $40 million budget, over $560 million in box office take globally.  That sort of success allows Universal to try another $40 million movie and not worry about failure.

Apologies to all. I had a post needing some finishing, but a hardware failure prevented me from getting to the file. There will be a post this weekend, barring a second laptop death.

Again, apologies. I did not want to have an off week so soon here.

Way With Worlds

This week I finish my current editing sweep – and then the next one begins.  In that one I plan to read the sections backwards – which helps me get a fresh view on the things I was editing when I was tired of it, and catch continuity errors between sections.  We’re definitely on schedule to get it to pre-readers in October.

Plot Twist Generator and Other Generators

The plot twist generator didn’t get an update this weekend, but I hope to do one soon.  I think it’s time to just sit down and do a serious push on it to take it to beta.  Fortunately everyone’s given me great feedback.

I also may need to take a small break from it after I get it to beta, and write something fun and simple.

Respectfully,

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

Hello gang, and here’s what’s been up!

Plot Twist Generator – The latest version is here.  I’m collecting feedback from people and reading up on plot twists, and it’s finally getting into shape.  Still a good month or so before I think it’s ready, but I now feel some hope I can get it into shape.  Still, I think like the Writing Prompt Generator it’ll really be more a case of “good enough” as opposed to perfect.

Way With Worlds – I expect to finish up my big editing round this month.  Then one more round next month before the pre-readers.  Some of the edits are simple – but some are pretty extensive, verging on rewrites – so expect it to be different enough from the original columns and the rewrites. There’s also a sort of sequel type thing in the work, but one that will be quite different . . . and it may give you out there ideas for your own inspirational works.

Other Generators – After the Plot Twist Generator I’m going to do some more fun generators, so stay tuned . . .

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

Works adapted for television produce a new set of concerns.  With movies, one of the big limitations is time; commercial film releases run anywhere between ninety minutes to two hours, with rare releases reaching the three-hour mark.  A television series, however, has far more running time available to it than a feature film.  Even accounting for commercials, there’s still twenty-two to forty-five minutes of show each episode.  Long-running series may run out of original material before ending and will need to create new content*.  With novels, especially those in a series, it’s possible to keep using existing content in a TV show.  HBO’s A Game of Thrones is an exemplar of this sort of planning.  Adapting a movie as a TV series, though, means that the show’s writers will be adding material.  Today’s review looks at that situation.

In 1999, George Lucas released the first of the prequel movies, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.  In the gap between that film and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, released in 1983, numerous tie-in novels, comics, games, and toys were produced, creating the Star Wars Expanded Universe, or EU.  The EU added more characters and settings to Star Wars.  With the prequel movies filling out more of the history of the Rebellion, more EU products were created to fill in details not covered by the movies.

Such is the case with the CG-animated series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  Set between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, the series covered the Clone Wars at several levels, from the clones on the front to the politics of the Senate to the Jedi Council.  The Clone Wars ran for six seasons, from 2008 until 2014, before ending.  During its run, familiar characters mingled with new ones, showing the toll of the wars on all levels of Republic and Separatist society.

The Clone Wars started with a feature movie, with Jedi Knights Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi and a number of clone troopers defending Christophis against the Separatist droid army.  Young Ahsoka Tano is introduced as Anakin’s padawan, an attempt by the Jedi Council to try to teach Skywalker the dangers of his inability to let go of those he holds dear.  Once the battle is won, Anakin and Ahsoka are assigned the task to retrieve Jabba the Hutt’s son, who has been kidnapped, to get the gang boss’s favour.  The search leads to Teth, where the Separatists are holding the Huttlet.  Anakin leads a force of clone troopers against the droids’ base, leading to a showdown against the assassin, Asajj Ventress, a protege of Count Dooku.  Senator Padmé Amadala of Naboo finds out about Anakin’s mission and tracks down Ziro the Hutt on Coruscant, but discovers that he is part of the conspiracy against Jabba and the Jedi.  With the help of C3PO, Padmé escapes and Ziro is arrested.  On Tatooine, Anakin deals with Count Dooku long enough for Ahsoka to return the Huttlet.

The first season continues in a similar vein, at least to begin with.  “Ambush”, the first regular episode, features Yoda and several clones on a mission to meet with the king of Toydaria.  The episode sets the tone, showing that the clones, even though they look alike, are individuals, and Yoda treats them as such.  As the seasons progress, the stories become darker, with the Jedi forced into becoming what they are not and Darth Sidious’ manipulations starting to pay off.  That’s not to say that the first season was all light-hearted.  Clones and Jedi died on-screen, and one Jedi fell to the Dark Side before being killed by General Grievous.  The first season also showed why the Republic was fighting; the episodes “Storm over Ryloth”, “Innocents of Ryloth”, and “Liberty on Ryloth” depict what the droid army did with the Twi’leks and the liberation of their homeworld.

Being placed between the second and third prequel places a few limitations on the series.  First, several characters had script immunity due to appearances in Revenge of the Sith.  That’s not to say that the couldn’t inflict non-permanent injuries and psychological issues on existing characters.  Second, new characters had to be written out in a way that their absence in Sith made sense.  In particular here, Ahsoka could not be Anakin’s padawan by the end of the series.  Likewise, Venrtess could not remain Dooku’s apprentice.

As mentioned at the beginning, adapting movies for television may mean adding new material.  The Clone Wars did just that, but in a way that added to the original.  New characters, like the aforementioned Ahsoka and Ventress, clone troopers Waxer, Boil, and Fives, and bounty hunter Cad Bane had their own stories that intersected with the lives of the original cast.  In addition, minor characters like General Grievous had their roles expanded.  Grievous, first seen in Sith primarily escaping before being defeated by Obi-Wan, is shown to be far more dangerous and far more callous, killing several Jedi and targeting medical frigates.

The series delved into other parts of the Galaxy Far Far Away.  Seasons three and four showcased the Nightsisters, a sect of the Witches of Dathomir, and Asajj Ventress.  Mandalore, the home of some famed armour, also had several episodes focused on it and its internal politics.  The Galaxy felt larger as a result, away from Tatooine and Coruscant.  At the same time, classic equipment seen in the original Star Wars began appearing, from the Y-Wings to the evolution of the clone trooper armour to look more and more like that used by stormtroopers.

The Clone Wars also managed to make Revenge of the Sith a stronger movie.  Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side is shown throughout the series, as Palpatine introduces doubt that worms through his mind.  The deaths of the Jedi as a result of Order 66 hit harder.  No longer are they nameless characters in a montage but Plo Koon, Kit Fisto, and Aayla Secura, Jedi who have appeared and were developed as full characters in their own right.

As an animated adaptation, The Clone Wars took characters that were larger than life in movies and brought them in a new form on television.  The animation evolved over the run of the series, noticeable even in the first season, and evolved to handle more difficult challenges.  There were times when certain elements, such as the clone troopers, the battle droids, and General Grievous, were indistinguishable from what appeared on screen in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.  The eye to detail and the desire to respect the films came through.  While it is true that Lucasfilm was still the studio behind The Clone Wars, not all of the studio’s releases matched the quality and care shown in the animated series.**  The Clone Wars is well worth studying as a successful adaptation.

* I’m ignoring filler episodes here.  Filler is more commonly seen in anime based on manga, where the series has to wait for new content to be created.
** The Star Wars Holiday Special stands out as a prime example here.

 We return this week with, well, a few more magic systems. And to round them out, here’s a link to an old story of mine, which is as much overview of a magic system as it is creation myth: A Legend of Creation.

1. The Multitudinous Way

The financial astrologers are not the only power in their world. In some opposition to them (not so much morally but ideologically, for their respective magics depend on wildly variant world-views) are those that consider themselves Icewalkers, or Driven, or Joktanists, or the followers of Ishmael’s Way, or nomad-princes.

There are three tools through which a Joktanist wields zir magic: wine, bowl, and dust. No cup will do to hold the wine, which may be of any quality, nor a deep plate, but only a bowl. The dust is tossed in (the more you put in, the more you get out) to fuel the spell, and once the bowl is struck or swirled to achieve movement the dust dissolves and the spell takes effect through the medium of the wine.

What exactly is done depends upon what kind of dust is used. Salt, for example, will imbue the wine with protective properties. It shields against harm such that, if placed on the doors of a house, it will make the building impregnable for a time. Ash-charged wine will ignite. Common earth will heal or repair.

Just as the financial astrologers lose something in return for their powers, though, so too do the Driven. Each of the nomad-princes has become what ze is because ze wanted freedom and wonder. In a dream ze pursued zir quarry— deer, man, RC car, or something else entirely— until it was caught and revealed itself to be the Dream of Kings (no accidental switching of order there) and granted zem power. As consequence, however, the Joktanists can never rest their heads in the same place more than once. No bed, cot, or sleeping bag can serve the same man again, nor building, lest the offender suffer nightmares all through zir sleep, and when ze stays in the same city for a full lunar month zir powers— but not the required nomadism— are lost until ze moves again.

Generally, financial astrologers want bigger cities and Icewalkers want smaller ones. Larger cities lend themselves to easier manipulation through ley lines, while smaller cities make things more flexible for the Icewalkers. Nevertheless, it is not unheard of for a financial astrologer to hire an Icewalker for some task.

2. Stars and Sun

There are those who have sought out the power of the stars and made bargains with them upon the mountain-tops. To each of them a star comes. They speak, and deal one with another, and make their contract. To one that has made a stellar-pact there is given a small power. Through one star may be granted the power to relieve exhaustion, through another the power to turn steel back to untreated iron, and through a third the power to speak with mice. The number of powers and stellar-pacts to be had is as great as the stars themselves, for no star will refuse to come down and deal with the children of men.

But there is one cost that is ever the same, no matter the terms of the pact. The usage of this magic hollows out memories, emotions, and other aspects of the mind, leaving space for them to be infested with parasites of a spiritual nature. These parasites, perhaps proto-stars, are not malevolent, but neither are they benign; by natural consequence of their presence they warp their habitation, altering the mind of their host in ways that are small at first but grow greater in the course of time.

The sun, chief emperor among the stars, does not take part in these pacts, and neither have the stars ever been permitted to remain in the land except for the space of a few minutes. But there are those whose blood goes back to those times when the sun itself came down and tarried long, making merry with the sons of men, and the daughters of men. It bore children to the sons of men, and begot children by the daughters of men, and some of these lines have continued true to this day.

The power of these bloodlines is tied to the sun, coming with its rise and departing with its setting. Because of the rising and setting of their forebear they have internal clocks precise to a thousandth of a second, being able to tell time by the waxing or waning of their power. When the sun is risen they have not so much great strength as they do the ability to make other things weak, and simply by so choosing they can interact with matter as though it were warm butter, no matter whether it is granite, flesh, or steel. This power is theirs from birth but it does not affect others with the same heritage.

3. Morospicy

This magic is as simply as it is horrific: the murder of a human being, under the right conditions, can give the killer a glimpse of another point in time and space. The more removed this point is in either time or space, the more deaths that are required, and changing both has a disproportionate effect. Viewing another location in the present is about as easy as viewing one’s present location in the past, though just a handful of deaths are necessary to glimpse a few minutes of one’s present location ten years hence.

It is possible, in theory, to glimpse everything, past, present and future. The number of deaths that would be required is unknown, but must surely be immense. It is possible that the population is not even large enough to accommodate make it possible yet. It is just as possible that a group of morospexes are patiently waiting through the centuries for the time when their order may make the necessary sacrifice or, if life extension is possible in the setting, that a single long-lived morospex has been killing through the centuries and saving zir charges in preparation for the day of revelation.

Each morospex has zir own necessary conditions, which can be anything from intoning a certain chant or to using a weapon inscribed with the right runes. These conditions can be discovered either by accident or by the intervention of another morospex using zir own conditions to view the future and see under what conditions someone is practicing morospicy.

R. Donald James Gauvreau works an assortment of odd jobs, most involving batteries. He has recently finished a guide to comparative mythology for worldbuilders, available herefor free. He also maintains a blog at White Marble Block, where he regularly posts story ideas and free fiction, and writes The Culture Column, an RPG.net column with cultures ready for you to drop into your setting. 

Hello one and all – and here’s the latest updates!

First, I’ve revamped some of Informotron, my press site, and want to invite you to get my LinkedIn Guide and newsletter!  You get my checklist for using Linked In, updates on my various projects, and of course some extras now and then.  It’s also been great for me – I already got another pre-reader for Way With Worlds!

Next up, is the Plot Twist Generator which is  . . . creaking it’s way forward.  The feedback provided has been invaluable, but this is also a lot harder than I expected.  The challenge is that plot twists often run into tropes, and some are so common they stand out even when you try to vary them.  It’s also hard to find good documentation on plot twists.  So this one is gonna be challenging, and I’ve already got some fun generator ideas queued up as this one is a pain . . .

Way With Worlds the book is in another editing phase, a sort-of-second read through.  When I finish that I’ll do one more read through and get it to pre-readers.  That should be about October.

Speaking of october – and on speaking, I’m going to be presenting at PMI Silicon Valley 2015 Symposium on the role of creativity in the Project/Program Management.  You better believe the Sanctum is going to get mentioned.

That’s it for me.  How are you doing?
Respectfully,

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

Something that came to mind while working on the last entry for the history of adaptations is how publishing and, indeed, writing, has changed over time.  While series have been around for some time in several genres, from mysteries to westerns to science fiction and fantasy*, Over time, though, the length of novels has been growing, not just in page count but in story.

A few examples before continuing.  Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë and released in 1847, has anywhere between 350 to 500 pages, depending on edition, and covers the title character’s life from childhood to adulthood in detail.  Eyre was also originally published in three novels, not one.  A Study in Scarlet, the first novel-length Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is slightly over 100 pages.  A Princess of Mars, the first of the John Carter of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is 186 pages.  Daybreakers, part of the Sackett family saga by Louis L’Amour, is 240 pages.  Casino Royale, the first 007 novel by Ian Fleming, clocks in at over 210 pages.  Jumping ahead, Firefox, by Craig Thomas, is over 380 pages and A Game of Thrones, the first of the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George RR Martin, is over 835 pages.

If the above paragraph made your eyes glaze over, longer novels gave way to shorter ones which then were muscled away with longer novels once again.  Casino Royale was fully adapted as a movie.  Firefox was adapted in full, but details were lost along the way to keep to the core of the book.  Comparing the two original novels, there was far more happening at different levels in Firefox, from Gant’s infiltration of the Soviet Union to the monitoring of the mission by the head of MI-6.  Casino Royale kept the focus on Bond and his investigations.  The two stories fall into the Cold War-era espionage genre, but Firefox gets into greater detail.

In the fantasy genre, doorstoppers are de rigeur today.  Earlier works, like Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian series and Burrough’s John Carter and Tarzan series, were of a length that allowed entire books to be fully adapted.  A Game of Thrones, however, required a TV series to do the novel justice.  Martin has a large cast, with each character having his or her own plotline.  There is no way that a movie could hope to encompass everything happening.  The game changer in the fantasy genre was JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.  When it gained in popularity in the Sixties, a number of future writers became inspired by the scale of the story.

What does the expansion mean for adaptations?  First, the best format for the adaptation may no longer be a feature film.  While movies still have the cachet of being the premier form of entertainment, they have a time limit.  Few movies lasst longer than three hours, and most are two hours or shorter.  Casts of characters have also grown, which leads to either having a large number of actors or rolling several characters into one.  Both have pitfalls.  A large cast means that a favourite character might get only a few minutes on screen.  Combining several minor characters into one conglomerate means a new character appears.

Adding to the complexity is that, while series seem to be on the wane in science fiction and fantasy**, multi-book epics are the norm.  Stories like JK Rowling’s Harry Potter, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy, and Martin’s unfinished A Song of Ice and Fire all provide a challenge to complete.  The Harry Potter movies dropped several elements just to get as much in as possible.  This task had added difficult as the successive books in the series got longer and more detailed and intricate.  Both Harry Potter and The Hunger Games needed to split the last novel into two movies to wrap up the story properly.

The expansion of stories may be one of the reasons why comic books are a popular source today.  Comics have had ongoing plots mixed in with one-issue stories in the past, and today’s focus on writing for the trades still allows for an arc to be easily adapted.  Even if a story needs to be compressed, it is still possible to get a popular story filmed with minimal loss of detail.

Peter Jackson’s recent film treatment of The Hobbit may be the vanguard of a new approach to adapting novels.  Provided that the book is popular, adaptations may no longer be kept to just one movie but as many as needed.  Again, there is a risk.  If the first movie doesn’t perform to expectations, the rest of the film series may never be made.  The Mortal Instruments fell to this fate, with just one movie, City of Bones released to a lukewarm reception.

In short, adapting novels to movie form, a tough task of balancing audience expectations with practical and budgetary demands to begin with, now has added problems in terms of including the full story.  There is no simple solution.  The best that can be done is to see what works and what doesn’t.

* Including planetary romance, which includes the John Carter of Mars novels.
** Excluding tie-in novels and urban fantasy.  Tie-in novels exist to take advantage of an existing property, acting as an extension.  Urban fantasy appears to be taking its cue from both fantasy and from mysteries, where there are single plot arc series leading to a pre-planned ending and series that return to see how characters are faring.

Episode #9 is up.  The Crossroads Alpha crew (which includes yours truly) discusses why we do what we do on the web with writing, generators, and more.

Get the latest podcast here.

Follow the podcast feed here.

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