Tag Archives: writing

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The Hobbit movie

I went to the Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies with my family today. In spite of all of the bad things I heard about it, the largest complaint being the 40+ minute battle of 5 armies, I enjoyed it. In fact, I think that the battle was done really pretty well, considering more than half the movie was centered around that one event. The question, I suppose, is what did I like about it? First off, I’m looking at the movie as a story in the same way I think about a novel. What I liked was that the action was broken up by other less intense events, yes some of that was contrived and thoroughly unnecessary from the standpoint of plot (Every scene containing Alfred the assistant to the master of Lake Town could have been removed with no impact to the story), however those breaks in the action were essential for the story-telling part. They kept the intensity in check to prevent the viewer from getting burned out on all the action. (This seems to have been Alfred’s sole purpose in the movie)

I am a firm believer that if you’ve got a long action sequence in any story there needs to be a break from whatever that action was – really this applies to any sort of intense situation in a story. Your characters, and reader,, need a bit of a breather. A moment where things aren’t really okay, but everyone can stop and take a breath before the action/intensity begins to rise again. I’ve read some books where this is not done well (in my opinion) and I found them difficult to enjoy. It seems to me that some critics might bang-on about those breaks in the action as unnecessary diversions, however you’ve got to keep the audience from becoming burned out. The audience is, after all, a huge part of the story-telling experience. The barrel escape scene from the last hobbit movie is a great example of action that hasn’t been broken well enough. I think it really mucked-up the story-telling. It was long, and didn’t contain any breaks from the action. The director’s attempt to do this was though humor, and that can work, but it felt out of place in the context. By the end of that barrel scene, I had become soured story overall because the scene had just seemed to become absurd after a while. If it had been shorter, or at least broken up better, I likely wouldn’t have had formed that opinion.

I feel like the book that sticks out in my mind as having tackled this nearly perfectly was Jurassic Park. There were parts so intense that I had to put the book down for a few minutes, but the next chapter almost always started with a minute to catch your breath before the action began intensifying again. It made the book gripping to the end without burning me out, as so often happens for me when the characters can’t stop long enough to take a breath.

I think my point here is that if you break up your intense action properly, you really can get away with a lot, and I think make your action much more intense, without experiencing audience burnout. Anyhow, this is how I prefer to read, and that’s my two cents.

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Daydreaming in the dark

A big part of my creative writing process involves my hour-long commute. It’s long, totally dark for half the year, and very quiet. I neither live or work in a place where transit is an option, and so those hours hours are spent behind the wheel. Over the past couple of years I have not had to go in as often, and so it’s just down to a few days a week. Sometimes I listen to audio books, other times I spend the time in quiet. (Unless it’s one of those white-knuckle driving days).

In those quiet times, on the road in the dark, is when I’ve dreamed up some of the most important elements of my story. Even this morning, I was thinking about the piece I’m working through now. All of the questions about it running through my head – Is the action plausible? Interesting? Is the magic consistent? If it went this way instead of that, what would happen? Do I like it better that way? What would the woman say? Would there be any enemy creatures? and so on… I can’t say I came to any sort of conclusions today, but I think I’m a lot closer than I was. Sometimes that hour of quiet really can be more productive than an entire day at a coffee shop (my go-to writing place).

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What is writing for an aspiring writer?

Is writing an obsession? Is it a hobby? is it a job? (As I’m not paid, it’s certainly not a job) Is it all three, none of the above? I don’t know, I was just sort of thinking about it. What I do know is that it’s not something I really have the luxury of spending 10 hours a day working on. Even then, there are days where I can’t think of doing anything else. If it hadn’t been for exploding a bag of tasty bites in the microwave, today would have been that day. Nothing done but daydreaming at the laptop. I suppose in the end I managed to strike a fair balance. The microwave is clean, the floors swept and mopped, laundry done, bathrooms cleaned, and the kids will have all had their baths in the next hour. Plus, I managed to draft about half a chapter. I wish all days could be quite so productive.