I know a few people who don’t agree with Confused Matthew‘s opinions on movies, even if he has good points to make. But one thing that took me aback was how much I appreciated him pointing out that 2001: A Space Odyssey didn’t really do much in a narrative sense. Oh, it was masterfully shot and the attention to detail is peerless. This is Kubrick we’re talking about, after all. But the first ten minutes of the film have been described by Matthew as the following:
“…Landscape.”
He shows a shot from the film and says that no less than a dozen times. Kubrick is describing the Dawn of Man, but he goes to laborious lengths doing so. It’s a good way to illustrate how not to over-illustrate, especially when it comes to words. But can you get away with telling a story that has no description whatsoever?
Let’s find out.
Don’t Describe
J.R.R. Tolkien is a legendary author for a good reason. He practically defined the high fantasy genre as we know it. And he did so with rather large novels. Most of his books are spent describing the people, places and events of Middle-Earth, and a lot of that description is drier than a Jacob’s Creme cracker in the middle of Death Valley. He got away with it because he was pretty much the first in his field.
Your story needs to move. Your characters need to speak, act, shoot bullets from their guns and knock boots. Events need to change history, shape nations and alter landscapes. How are these things going to happen if you stop to describe something? That’s right, they won’t.
It’s like one of those big, nasty sharks that prowl the deep waters. If the story stops moving, it’ll suffocate. It won’t happen quickly, either. It’ll creep up on you. Stop to describe someone or something, even for a moment, and the next thing you know the story’s belly-up. Dead in the water.
Don’t Not Describe
Let’s talk about another relatively well-known author: Orson Scott Card. He doesn’t describe shit. His writing moves right along from one point to the next without stopping to even flesh out his characters in words other than the occasional mention of an ethnicity.
Can you get away with this? Maybe, if you’re dealing with a mainstream or even slightly known genre. If you’re trying to pioneer a concept, get something new off of the ground, chances are you’re going to be inventing something. And your readers won’t know what this invention is unless you describe it.
If you must describe something, be sparing in your description. Get the basics down and move on. Like everything else you write, the less you linger on something the better. You don’t want conversations or chase scenes or lovemaking to bang on and on for page after page. The same goes for your descriptions. Remember that whole “story belly-up in the water” image I conjured a couple paragraphs ago? Keep that in mind.
Description or Lack Thereof is Irrelevant
Remember that a good story is about something. You probably have a theme or purpose in mind for it. If you don’t, you probably should. Once you do there needs to be one cardinal question asked, not just about descriptions but also about dialog, action, even jokes. How does it serve the story as a whole?
Sure, your house made out of bread might be awesome. But what does it matter in the grand scheme of your tale? Why should the reader care? If they shouldn’t, leave it out. But if you want to try something new, and a reader may not have a frame of reference, use a sparing description. Illustrate the basics with a few choice words and then get the hell on with the good stuff.
The more focused you are on the important things in your narrative, the more focused your reader will be. And everybody will be happier as a result.
Well, everybody’s doing it, it seems. No, not that, that’s dirty. I’m talking about this whole “Ten Rules For Writing Fiction” thing. This article got writers thinking about it, and some others – most notably the Magic Talking Beardhead – have taken it upon themselves to write up their own. Which leaves me feeling compelled to put up my own.
See this bandwagon? I’m jumping on.
Well, why the hell not? I pretend to know what I’m doing half of the time, might as well go all the way. There’s no point in putting your hand up a girl’s shirt if you’re not going to try & unfasten her bra too. Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, writing rules. Like all rules, they’re made to be broken, or even ignored. But, by and large, especially when it comes to The Project, here’s the few semi-strict guidelines I find myself following.
The only way to write is to start, and once you start you need to finish.
If something feels boring or dry for you to write, it’ll be boring or dry to read.
Don’t be afraid to hurt your characters. It creates drama and helps them grow. They’ll thank you when they’re done cursing you out.
Kill your characters only when absolutely necessary. Much more conflict is generated by mercy than by murder.
Keep descriptions to a minimum. Painting with words is fine in poetry, not so much in prose. Set the scene and move on.
Time is precious for both you and your reader. Don’t waste it.
Your theme might grow from your characters or your characters from the theme, but either way, your story needs to be about something other than itself.
A little subtlety goes a long way. Let conversations and narratives build towards greater things later in the tale.
Have resources on which to fall back if you get stuck. Story & Character Bibles, friends, beloved novels, a bottle of whiskey, whatever.
Don’t stop writing ’til the writing’s done. Or you pass out. Even then, when you come to, start writing again.
There you have it. Now you can have at it, if you so desire. That’s what the comments section is for, after all. Well, that, and helping me pretend people are interested in what I write.
I originally had a post here that wasn’t written very well and was full of failure, so until I can properly articulate my feelings on first person shooters in general and Halo in particular, here’s a picture of my cat looking at some snow.
“Somewhere… beyond the sea, somewhere… waiting for me…”
I mentioned in my review of the first BioShock that Rapture is a living, breathing entity. One of the biggest impressions made by its sequel is that the underwater city didn’t just up and disappear after the conclusion of the first game. Rapture marched on without us, and when we return to it, the city is both instantly recognizable and possessed with the feeling that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
…Okay, Rapture wasn’t that great a place to live to begin with, at least when we’re first introduced to it. But whereas in the first game the Splicers felt like a disorganized and individualistic mob of gibbering pseudo-zombies driven mad by their psychic powers, here they have been given purpose, direction and even promises of redemption. There are still forces struggling to control Rapture and maintain the flow of the precious material known as ADAM that functions as the life-blood of the city.
Into this volatile mix of elements comes Subject Delta, a prototype Big Daddy awakened from hibernation. Unlike the other not-so-gentle giants, Delta can use plasmids and shares a bond with a particular Little Sister. Like Jack, the protagonist of the first game, we as Delta are presented with both overarching obstacles to overcome and the means, through our choices and actions (or inactions), to change Rapture forever.
Since the introduction of Something in the Sea, I was looking forward to this release. The first game did a fantastic job building atmosphere, telling a story and actually having underlying themes and concepts that extended the game beyond yet another exercise in shooting bullets at things until they fall down. So how did the sequel fare?
Stuff I Didn’t Like
“What’s that? There’s a lack of innovation? NOOOOOOOO!“
BioShock, for all of its echoes of, callbacks to and inspiration from System Shock 2, broke new ground in the realm of console shooters. Its narrative complexity, philosophical grounding and unique aesthetic set it head and shoulders above others in the genre, most of whom are trying to capture the money-making magic of Halo. BioShock 2 feels much less innovative. While there isn’t anything wrong with taking what worked in a successful title and attempting to improve it, the feeling that we’ve been here before can water the enthusiasm of the player somewhat. The first half of the game, beyond the novelty of Delta’s abilities as a Big Daddy, feel awfully similar to most of the preceding title. There’s something about the story’s structure and pacing that feels somewhat “safe”, at least at first. It’s difficult for me to fully articulate why this bothered me. Reinventing the wheel isn’t necessary when making a sequel, after all.
Anyway, the only thing persistent from the first game that really continued to bug me as I played was the knowledge that what Yahtzee calls “that side-tracking shit” was going to get pulled on me any time the objective at hand seemed simple to complete. In fact, my wife and I both quoted the Zero Punctuation review of BioShock many, many times as I played through. The main antagonist in BioShock 2 is female which makes it feel even more like she’s SHODAN with skin on. Again, this is a minor complaint, and to be honest it’s really the only complaint I can make.
Stuff About Which I’m Ambivalent
A new section in my reviews. Shocking, no?
So I dove into the multiplayer that I spent some time saying we didn’t need and I’m ambivalent about it. I don’t love it but I’m also a bit surprised in that I don’t loathe it. As much as I appreciate its attempt to mix up the online shooter formula with trials, unlockable loadouts & items and something that vaguely resembles a story available through your apartments’ radio announcements and audio logs, it’s still an online shooter. There’s some fun to be had as you combine plasmids with firearms and especially when you stumble across a Big Daddy suit, but I stand by my initial feeling that it’s a little tacked on.
Stuff I Liked
Gives new meaning to the phrase “Drill, baby, drill.”
First of all, you’re a Big Daddy. You’re a towering, ponderous, super-strong giant in an armored diving suit and your melee weapon of choice is a huge drill. There’s nothing about this concept I don’t like. Now, if you’ll recall, in the first BioShock Big Daddies can be taken down by either our silent protagonist or a mob of Splicers. What differentiates you from those other unfortunate Big Daddies is the fact you have (at least I’m hoping) a functional frontal lobe. Tactics actually come into play in this game beyond “chase down the bad guys and set them on fire”, which is something I’ll discuss in the next section.
The slight changes to the weapons loadout work well. Having the drill & rivet gun definitely add to the “You’re a Big Daddy now” feeling, and wielding a double-barreled shotgun made me wonder how Bruce Campbell would fare in this situation. A chainsaw isn’t that far removed from a drill, after all. Anyway, there’s also the fact that you can use your plasmids at the same time as your other weapons, which not only saves time in switching from one to the other but also allows for some of that creative thinking stuff. The game actually rewards you for being creative and switching things up with the research bonuses.
While the voice-acting isn’t quite as immersive as that of the first BioShock, it’s still quite good, especially when it comes to the characters of Eleanor and Alex. I’ll stop my train of thought at that station because I don’t want to spoil it for you. Finally, the plumbing system from the first game is replaced with a much more straightforward mini-game for hacking. Unlike the replacement systems for decryption and bypasses in Mass Effect 2, it’s far less tedious and a bit more challenging to hack something, and it’s quite rewarding when you pull a hack off while under enemy fire.
Stuff I Loved
…Oh God.
“You might stop fearing death,” said a member of TV Tropes about the games Vita-Chambers, “but that doesn’t stop you from being afraid.” No character drives this point home more than the Big Sisters. Originally planned to be a single recurring villain, the Big Sister is an extremely elite sort of antagonistic creature that really, really doesn’t like you messing with her pint-sized dress-wearing barefoot counterparts. Unlike the huge and often passive Big Daddies, Big Sisters actively seek you out, chasing you through Rapture and using combinations of lithe acrobatics, highly evolved plasmids and a wicked sword-like ADAM extraction needle to encourage you to stop. The knowledge that you can pop out of a Vita-Chamber nearby after she hands you a severe ass-kicking never stops the blood-curdling screech they emit as they track you down from being terrifying.
The game tells you to “Prepare yourself” when the Big Sister is coming for you. Thankfully you can channel your fear into those preparations by laying traps, hacking security systems and loading up on more effective ammunition. BioShock 2 rewards creative thinking, as I’ve said, and this includes setting up some very nasty surprises for enemies coming your way. Both when dealing with a Big Sister and watching over an adopted Little Sister as she gathers ADAM from a corpse, the best way to ensure your survival and conserve your resources is to examine the area, plot out possible routes of approach and trap them accordingly. The dead strewn about Rapture lets you pick and choose where your gathering operations take place, and on more than one occasion I’d come into a room with a vent and smile, because I knew exactly where I’d be meeting the Big Sister. This didn’t make the experience of fighting them less harrowing, for me, and I played on Normal difficulty. I suspect future playthroughs will have me cursing more and voiding myself less when the screaming Big Sister comes at me out of a haze of fire and terror.
This brings me to the Little Sisters.
Maybe my paternal instincts kick in hardcore when I see one. Maybe the team at 2K have really made them more sympathetic over the years. Maybe I’m just a pussy. However, when the Little Sister looks up from the broken body of “Mr. Bubbles” only to smile brightly at you, and in some cases hop up and down excitedly (“Are we going to be together now, Daddy?”), there’s no way in hell I can bring myself to tear them apart for the sake of holding a flailing sea slug in my hand. And killing Little Sisters, besides guaranteeing one of the games ‘bad’ endings, would deprive you of some very funny and rather heartwarming lines of dialog.
For example, carry a Little Sister on your shoulders, then zap a Splicer with the Electro Bolt plasmid and/or pelt them with bullets from the machine gun. “Look, Daddy!” the Little Sister cries with glee. “He’s dancing!” And if you’re in the middle of a gathering operation, and one of the Splicers gets to your Little Sister, rush over with your drill in full spin. As you reduce the would-be pederast to little bloody chunks, the Little Sister proclaims “Nobody messes with my daddy!” Finally, there’s the “Daddy? You always save me from the monsters” line when you pick her up after a harrowing battle, and the very soft and heart-felt “Thank you” spoken to you after some of them crawl into their vents after being rescued.
Again, maybe it’s just me. Maybe you’ll go into this game with the intent to rip every single one of these toddling terrors to shreds. That’s your call. For me, protecting and rescuing the Little Sisters added depth to the game and really pulled me into the experience. We learn a lot more about them, what they go through in the rather horrific process that creates them and how they see Rapture. Especially after those experiences, harvesting them for their parasites rather than setting them free seems as cruel an act as anything perpetuated by the game’s villains.
BioShock 2 isn’t just BioShock with a fresh coat of paint and a few cool new weapons. It’s not entirely different, either, and if you haven’t played the first game you might feel a bit lost, confused or even disinterested. Fans of the first game are in for a treat, and while it doesn’t really push the envelope in any way, it does what the first game did very well and, in some cases, better. In a world where sequels are often an ever-extending litany of disappointments in light of the original title, BioShock 2 does what good sequels always should.
Bottom Line: You may want to play the first game before picking this one up. But even if you don’t, in my opinion, it’s worth your time, it’s fun to play and it still tells a good story that has something going on besides loud gunplay and teabagging. Buy it.
If some of the screenwriters and directors in Hollywood are to be believed, computers are magical devices. Hook yours up to a wall socket, type really fast, and hey presto, the Pentagon’s your bitch. Some hackers out there are so good they can do this while being held at gunpoint, or shall we say ‘pleasured’ by a hot blonde or even both. Of course, computer networks really don’t work like that, especially high-profile governmental and military targets. It takes quite a few elements to breach the security of even pedestrian marks such as banks and research labs, from tapping phone lines to bluffing your way past the front desk. For a great cinematic example of how this sort of thing really works, as well as one that ages well, look no further than a little 1996 film called Sneakers.
When he was in college, Martin Brice and his buddy Cosmo played digital Robin Hoods, hacking into the financial resources of prominent jerkass politicians to redistribute their wealth to people who need it – the National Organization to Legalize Marijuana, for example. One of their attempted hacks gets Cosmo caught while Martin was able to flee the country, due to a rather serendipitous pizza run. Years later, Martin’s operating (under a nom de plume) a small group of misfits called a ‘tiger team’ which basically puts security systems through acid tests. The team consists of an ex-CIA operative, a conspiracy theorist technical adept, a blind man who’s a consummate phreak due to great hearing and a juvenile delinquent genius. Everything is going swell until a couple of shady NSA agents contact Marty, call him by his old name and tell him that he needs to steal something for them if he wants to stay out of jail. …And that’s all I’m gonna tell you.
Michael Weston was taking notes from these guys.
There are some specific dates given over the course of the film that would normally cause it to feel too dated. However, the charisma of the team’s members, the whip-smart writing and the very nature of the capers helps the story not only age well but remain grounded and therefore more interesting to watch. The quasi-magical nature of computers in, say, Hackers is replaced with practical and mostly realistic things such as directional microphones, motion sensors sensative to body temperature and careful planning. When computers and encryption do get involved, the underlying math is not only explained but shown, giving the elements weight and helping them serve the story rather than dazzling us from seeing story weaknesses with flashy graphics and ludicrous jargon.
“Check it out, Marty, it’s the latest in ‘I don’t want to get my head blown off when the mooks find me here’ fashion.”
While there are some weaknesses in the story – the way in which things appear after they’ve been hacked, for instance – they’re not bad enough to break the film’s flow. Rather, they’re smoothed over by some great performances. Robert Redford is one of the consummate leading men of both my generation and that of my parents. Sydney Poitier’s stoic, cautious nature is played beautifully against the manic mind of Dan Akroyd. The late River Phoenix aquits himself very well as the youngest member of the team, while David Straithairn convincingly shows how a blind man would operate in these situations and how valuable he is in spite of his disability. Mary McDonnell is remarkable as Marty’s Girl Friday and Ben Kingsley pulls off being both charming and menacing with ease. And all of these front-line well-rounded actors work with a script that never seems to fall flat or even miss more than one or two steps.
Okay, the film is a little dated. That mainframe behind those two could probably fit on an iPhone now.
If I were asked to describe Sneakers in one word, I’d likely have the same reaction I do when I see someone slapping an aribtrary numerical score onto a review (which involves some very unpleasant indigestion) but the word I’d end up using after downing some Pepto-Bismol is “intelligent.” The film’s premise, mechanics, relationships and even humor never feel dumbed down or half-assed. It’s not the kind of movie that talks down to its audience, which can be rare given some of the pedantic fare running around the local cinema. Still, this braininess means that it’s focused more on character development and concept exploration than sex and violence, which means that some of the twitchy attention-deficit action junkies might consider this film too ‘boring’ and file it away with Empire Strikes Back or Gattaca while they clamour for the Avatar sequel. If you want to watch a caper film that’s every bit as funny as any of the recent Ocean’s Insert Incremental Number Here films while being at least a few notches smarter, Sneakers is waiting for you on the Netflix streaming service, and I’m pretty sure you’re going to enjoy it. Otherwise, Halo:Reach still isn’t due out until autumn. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, there.
Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.
