You need it to ride a bike. It’s required for things like yoga, martial arts, arcobatics and parkour. Heck, without adequate balance you’ll struggle to walk in a straight line. It’s important.
This morning Chuck suggested folks interested in freelance writing punch themselves in the face instead. To an extent, I agree. Chasing down work constantly, uncertain of the time money will be coming your way, unable to leave your flat for fear of getting struck by a car or some masonry or the Ebola virus when you don’t have health insurance – I can sympathize with those fears. Freelance work of any kind carries that palpable constant dread, that doing something you love can combat effectively if you keep your nose down on that grindstone.
On the other hand, participating in a day job that isn’t in that field of interest carries a different burden. I’m quick to bemoan the nature of the work, the shenanigans inherent with any office environment, the hours and necessity of commuting – you name it, I can bitch about it. But the paycheck is nice, the work is not all that unreasonable and I’m fairly competent at what I do. I think.
The key, for me, was striking a balance between doing what pays and doing what I love. One day the twain might meet, but for now, I do what I must to pay the bills and fill in what spare time I can with writing, or edits, or spinning new ideas. It’s not a perfect system, not by a long shot. But the aspirations to get a finished work on shelves gives me something to reach for when the job is disappointing, and the job keeps the lights on and computers running at home, as well as keeping the cats and my very patient wife fed.
You need to strike a balance in your writing, too.
Most lives are not defined by one emotion. Moments of levity have their place in drama, and comedy can be used as a conduit to guide an audience to a serious matter. When the balance is out of whack, you can come across a drama too camp to take seriously or the Very Special Episode of a sitcom. I don’t necessarily like beating the same drums over and over, but Inception uses some clever writing to slip humor into an otherwise highly cerebral thriller while Scott Pilgrim similarly slips insightful and poignant observations on maturity and relationships into the boss battles and indie rock.
Give me more examples of balance. Show me your signposts. Let’s see if we’re heading in the same direction.
More often than not, characters are what will carry your story. It’s rare, however, for a character to be exactly the same at the end of a story as they are at the beginning. Just as carefully as you plot out the course of the story, you need to tend the growth of your characters. There’s a difference, you see, between growth, change and total derailment.
Growth is the most natural and gradual progression of a character. It’s the basis of a coming of age story. Luke Skywalker wouldn’t be anywhere near as memorable or effective as the hero of an epic trilogy of space operas if he didn’t start out as a whiny farmboy kicking sand as he dreams of life among the stars. In the new Star Trek movie, Jim Kirk militantly avoids any sort of real responsibility until he’s prompted to join Starfleet Academy, and from there he begins to grow. Scott Pilgrim may have remained an immature self-centered jerk leaning dangerously towards hipster territory if he hadn’t fallen for Ramona. Marty McFly, John McClaine, Tony Stark, Peter Parker… I could go on.
Change happens more often to supporting characters. To see the difference, take a look at what TV Tropes likes to call the Heel Face Turn. A good example is Captain Renault from Casablanca. A flattering French police captain who ‘goes with the wind’ and tries to make the Nazis comfortable so they don’t kill everybody, towards the end of the film he realizes the folly in working with Vichy and moves towards Free France. Likewise, the Operative at the end of Serenity is helped to realize what the Alliance is really all about. The difference between characters growing and changing is that growth is gradual, while change is more sudden and sometimes less than adequately explained.
Derailment is what happens when you don’t plan a character’s arc or give no basis or foundation for their change. There’s an establishing moment in Star Wars for example, when Han shoots first. If you don’t remember that, maybe you’ve only seen the “Special Edition” released in 1997 where a quick edit turns Han Solo from a cool, skilled gunslinger who gets the drop on an overconfident blabbermouth to a guy who got extremely lucky. Take a look at characters in MacGuyver, 24 and Bones to see how writers take one aspect of a reasonably well-rounded character – Mac’s inventiveness, Jack’s badassery, Booth’s boisterous tongue-in-cheek nature – and blows it way out of proportion for one reason or another, sacrificing real growth in favor of a disproportionate caricature. Maid Marian in Costner’s Robin Hood is shown to be more than capable of taking care of herself, provided it’s not the Sheriff on top of her – then all she can do is call for Robin. The first Alien depicted the xenomorph as a dark and mysterious creature with frightening intelligence and perhaps even odd fetishes. Every subsequent film has dialed down the mystique and sexual undertones to the point of showing them as generic alien baddies to be chewed up by automatic weapons fire. The number of examples of character derailment that exist show that for every good decision made by writers concerning the growth of a character, there are at least five bad ones.
When you’re getting ready to get a character started in your story, it pays off to take a bit of time to figure out where they’re going. Even if the tracks are invisible to the reader – and sometimes this is even preferable – lay them out and make sure they’re solid before you begin. Because something coming off the rails usually ends in a nasty mess.
When you write, having other people look over your work is critical. Provided you have some desire to get your work published, it’s important to know how it’ll be perceived by minds other than your own. It’s important to keep a bit of distance between yourself and the work at this point in the process, because some of the questions and comments made might seem harsh. However, they’re ultimately going to make the work better.
Case in point.
My wife was reading something I wrote last night. She commented on some of the things she liked, but one question she asked caught me off-guard: “Why is this in here?” She was referring to a particular character, and what I noticed more than the question was my response. It took me a long time to formulate one. A long time. Like, a minute or two.
And even as I was telling her my rather weak justification, I realized what she had found.
A darling.
Now, I didn’t Mozambique Drill the thing right away. So I have a darling here, I told myself. What do I do with it? How can I take something that goes against the impetus I had for writing what I wrote in the first place, and mold it into something better? It’s something I’m still chewing on. But I wouldn’t have noticed it without the critique.
Entertain those questions you’re asked by your readers, don’t dismiss them out of hand. Think about what your writing, especially after you’ve written it. The end result of the work will be much more favorable.
Once again a discussion on the Escapist has caused me to pit two films against one another in my metaphorical cage. Considering both are capers with teams of experts, I’ve had to weld extra grates onto the cage to contain all of the action. However, as I was hosing down the alien bits stuck to the cage from the last match, it was pointed out to me that picking the criteria myself waters down the credibility of the match. I know who I’d like to win, so objectivity is colored by choosing points of comparison where I know one film may be superior to the other. With that in mind, I turned to the Escapist and Twitter to help pick out the sticks I’ll be using to measure, and perhaps beat, these two films.
There was a time when it seemed implausible that superheroes that didn’t already exist in the general public’s somewhat limited imagination could succeed as motion pictures. People remembered Christopher Reeve as Superman and Batman had a TV show in the 60s that Tim Burton and Michael Keaton could use as a springboard for their darker, edgier take. But Iron Man? Thor? Captain America? A decade ago these costumed crusaders wouldn’t have had much of a chance. A lot of people at the time would have pointed to 2003’s Daredevil as an example of why the lesser-known names can’t make it at the box office. This is perplexing to me, because despite some of its shortcomings, Daredevil most decidedly does not suck.
By day, Matthew Murdock is an attorney working a variety of pro-bono and low-rate cases in Hell’s Kitchen. He and his partner Foggy Nelson fight for the underdogs who wouldn’t have a chance otherwise. By night, Murdock prowls the streets as Daredevil, an acrobatic vigilante who is said to be absolutely fearless. The catch is, Murdock is blind. The accident that robbed him of his sight as a child hyper-sensitized his other senses, giving him a type of echolocation and the sort of reflexes that lead him to train as a martial artist. His goal is to topple the enigmatic Kingpin slowly consuming the criminal underworld in New York, but his encounter with a young woman named Elektra who matches his martial skills changes his life and may cause him to hang up his cowl forever.
Daredevil features characterization as its most prominent success. There is some definite chemistry between Matt & Elektra. Winston Fisk, the aforementioned Kingpin, has the sort of intimidating physical presence that, to quote Roger Ebert, “makes the camera want to take a step back and protect its groin.” I’m a fan of Michael Clarke Duncan and this is very good work on his part. Kingpin’s specialized hitman, Bullseye, seems possessed with a manic magnetism that has the audience watching his every move just to see what crazy thing he does next. Even minor characters’ little nuances come through in the writing and acting, from Foggy’s quirky sense of humor to reporter Ben Urich’s dedication to unmasking Daredevil.
“Your Honor, I submit this work for the pleasure of the court and ask that Armageddon be stricken from the record. And my memory.”
The biggest question hanging over this production is if Ben Affleck was right in the leading role. The best answer I can offer is Marvel could have done much, much worse. Despite criticism that’s been leveled at Affleck in the past, he portrays Murdock with honest charm, real humanity, and a haunted vulnerability. One of the best ways to show your audience that your hero is not invincible and a relatable character is to hurt him, and Ben’s pretty good at conveying pain. It’d be nice if he didn’t narrate so much in the beginning, though. He’s not terribly good at delivering one-liners, either.
Daredevil does suffer from its share of flaws. The pace of the movie is somewhat schizophrenic, never seeming to strike just the right balance between having fun and being dramatic. Superhero stories do tend to be melodramatic, what with their hyper-realized heroes going through emotional changes before our eyes on big screens with bombastic surround sound, but this one goes a bit too far in places. Finally the action is undercut rather than underscored by the hit-and-miss soundtrack, which includes that one song Nickelback does.
“Bullseye. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” “I dunno, boss… Guinness, football and hookers?”
Still, director and co-writer Mark Steven Johnson shoots clean, crisp scenes and makes the most of the characters he introduces. This is especially true in the Director’s Cut. A lot of the problems of pace I mentioned are solved when the romance is cut back, the duality of Matt’s life is increased and the reality of the situation is driven home in the expansion of the fights. This version of the film is rated R, while the theatrical release skated by with a PG-13 rating. I suspect that in order to appeal to kids, especially everybody who was really into Evanescence at the time, the romance was amped up and the “boring” courtroom stuff cut back. Which is a shame, because seeing the way Matt and Foggy work a courtroom and the things their client says on the stand are a real joy.
This movie, like its namesake, dwells in darkness. It’s a brooding, driven piece of work. Even in its’ director’s incarnation, it’s flawed. However, the shortcomings I’ve mentioned never quite overshadow the good things in it, the hallmarks of a genre shaking off the dark and gritty late 90s that gave us hard-edged anti-heroes like Spawn. Daredevil is edgy, but that edge is tempered with bits of humor and humanity that elevate it just above the surface of the dark and swampy waters of your typical Hollywood fare. I’d recommend it.
One thing of note to conclude: the superior Director’s Cut is not available on Netflix. I watched it through Amazon’s On Demand service. But the standard edition isn’t bad, and you can add that to your Netflix queue if you’re it sounds like this is the sort of superhero movie you’re looking for. I do try to be honest in what I do, but I established the title of this series quite some time ago. I can’t exactly change it every week to say “It came from Amazon”, or “It came from my basement”, or “It came from the side of the road”, or “It came from my friend Ben’s house.”
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.
