Not because the idea of establishing a theme for the novel is disinteresting to me, no. I just didn’t want to define a theme and then get preachy about it. I don’t want this to be the kind of story where I decide my theme is “man’s inability to coexist with nature in his quest for lucrative resources” and have the bad guys blast giant trees to bits while sipping coffee and contemplating “shock and awe.”
Okay, all right, enough ragging on Avatar, it was a good movie that is undercut by some crappy story choices and it really isn’t relevant to what I now find myself needing to do.
You see, if someone were to ask me what ‘Citizen in the Wilds’ is about, I’d be at a loss. My impulse would be to launch into a plot synopsis, and that’d bore a potential reader or, worse, potential agent to tears. I certainly don’t want to do that at the upcoming Writer’s Conference in Philly when I’m asked what I’m furiously trying to finish. So let’s see if we can’t nail down a theme, an answer to the question.
The question, as referenced, is “What’s this about?” The question is not, “Who is this about?” I have a protagonist and he’s following an arc that, one or two elements aside, is a pretty archetypal one. I don’t own a copy of “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” even though I probably should, but I’ve read and seen enough of these journeys to know what makes a good one and a bad one. Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, Alex Rogan, John McClaine and Marty McFly instantly come to mind.
So, just like a plot synopsis, describing how my protagonist starts out, how his circumstances change, when he hits his lowest point and how he manages to overcome the odds is kind of dull in the overarching sense. Besides, as much as I’m trying craft strong, deep characters, the story can’t just be about them. If it were, I’d be guilty of the problem that affects some of BioWare’s games – great characters existing in a lackluster story.
Peter Parker goes through a bit of a hero’s journey in his origin story, and learns the lesson “With great power comes great responsibility.” I like that lesson, and it certainly applies as a theme to the project at hand. However, is the story really about that? Sure, a lot of the conflict comes from the grand high poobahs of one of the races not using their power & influence responsibly, but that feels more like an impetus for the story to move forward and have tension, rather than what the story is ultimately about. However, I might be on to something with the web-head, here.
Peter has to grow up.
Part of that whole using superpowers responsibly thing involves moving upward from the childlike awe of getting those powers in the first place to realizing how those powers should be used. It’s a lesson that my protagonist learns in a very jarring way, as the use of his magic in the beginning of the story would be a quick way to get himself killed, but as the story goes on and more facts come to light about where he came from, he realizes that his people need to learn a bit about responsibility themselves. The wide-eyed and naive apprentice becomes a dedicated and seasoned teacher. But are people going to be willing to listen to him? How badly have their previous lessons changed their perspective so that any facts he brings to light seem like lies?
Allegories, metaphors and soapbox moments aside, I think I’ve found my theme.
What’s it about?
This is about people learning to use their abilities responsibly, and what happens when they refuse to learn that lesson.
Right. Back to writing about dwarven caverns, forbidden knowledge and turning giant cave-spiders into shishkabobs with stalagmites or melting them with the sudden appearance of magma.
I really like the work of JJ Abrams. I’ve seen bits and pieces of his TV show LOST and I’ve liked what I’ve seen. I like that it makes people think, posits difficult questions to both its characters and the audience, and has a bit of an old-fashioned serial feel to it. I dig all of that.
The show ended last night, and people for the most part like how it ended. They like that it still provoked thought at the end. And they laugh at people who are pissed off because it’s over but it’s still making people’s brains hurt when they try to use them. I dig that, too.
But everywhere I turn, people are blathering on about LOST, and it’s kind of pissing me off.
My wife’s never seen it. I missed the first year or two. So, we’ll be going back and starting from the beginning. That means I’d like to avoid spoilers. Which, in turn, means I need to avoid 90% of the blogs, feeds and Facepages I tend to visit. It’s also irritating because there are interesting conversations going on in which I can’t participate because I have no frame of reference. And by the time I am up to speed, none of my points will be particularly relevant.
I know, that’s pretty much true of any damn review I do on this blog, but I’m still miffed about this, dammit.
It could just be residual anger over the issues I’m having trying to get World of Warcraft working on my Linux laptop. Just because you can install Linux on just about anything doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll work. It’s so close, I’m either going to sort out this last little bug or I’ll have to break down and find a way to install a stable copy of Windows on a different partition through a USB key.
Oh, and there’s still unpacking to do in the new flat, at least one load of laundry needs to get done so there are clean teatowels to tackle the ever-growing stack of dishes in the sink, and my older sister’s wall map and an old monitor linger at the old place.
And that’s not even touching my dayjob workload or my desire to finish the novel in the next couple of weeks or so.
There have been some interesting reactions to yesterday’s ICFN entry, which I may address later. For now, I’m trying to get the laptop’s graphics up to Azerothian snuff, and in the course of doing so, I’ve seen the word ‘prototype’ flash once or twice. That got me thinking.
A lot of a writer’s drafts could be considered prototypes, the embryonic form of a new work. Even works themselves can be prototypes for something better. At least, that’s been my experience.
The novel I wrote in high school was the prototype for the Lighthouse project that I’ve dropped in the shadows somewhere since everybody’s doing modern supernatural covert stuff. A short story I jotted down a few years ago was the prototype for various attempts to tell the story I’m now working on as my current long-form project. Even some of my character back-stories have gone through prototypical phases. As much as I loved playing Gothmatum as a dark elf necromancer back in EverQuest, his story wasn’t quite as good as the one that informed his creation as a blood elf warlock in World of Warcraft.
Have other writers found themselves in a similar line of thought? Let me know into your thought processes, other writers. Where have your efforts come from? What shattered literary eggshells have given birth to what’s been picked up by agents or become available on pre-order on Amazon or earned you a bunch of cash from people in some other means?
Seriously, I’m curious about this. I hold on to all of my old works because, crap as most of it is, there’s some diamonds in there somewhere and I don’t want to toss them out with the pulpy bathwater.
Some of the best stories out there are simple stories that are well-told. A straightforward plot doesn’t necessarily make for a bad escapist experience, if there are elements of that plot that transcend its simplicity. Take District 9, for example. Aliens come to Earth in bad shape and they’re exploited by corporate douchebags. Simple, right? Yet that story is so well told, expertly executed and subtle in its soapbox moments that the simplicity of the story can be completely ignored. How about Daybreakers? Alternative energy sources are good things, we get that, but the point is made without distracting from the fact that the lack of energy in that film’s characters causes them to bite people’s throats open, and getting Willem Dafoe in a 1978 Firebird Trans Am with an arsenal of crossbows to go after cannibalistic bat-monsters is so cool I don’t care what soapbox he’s standing on.
Avatar is no District 9. Avater is no Daybreakers. Without its stunning visuals, embarrassingly good hero cast and the word of mouth given by legions of fans whose eyes were short-circuited thanks to the insidiousness of 3-D, this film wouldn’t have a blue spindly leg to stand on.
Avatar introduces us to Jake Sully, the reluctant brother of a scientist who was gunned down in a back alley mugging. Jake’s brother, a twin, was part of the research team interested in making contact and establishing relations with the native population of Pandora, a moon 6 or so light-years from Earth. Earth has become something of a strip-mined deforested smog-covered pipe-dream-of-the-military-industrial-complex wasteland, and humanity is hungry for more resources. Luckily, Pandora is home not only to a thriving, vibrant, nature-conscious sentient race of ten-foot-tall aboriginal blue feline humanoids called the Na’vi but also a universal powers-anything totally-not-an-allegory-for-oil mineral called Unobtainium. In order to mine their MacGuffinium, the corporation in charge needs to move the Na’vi off of rich deposits. Jake’s brother was part of the Avatar program, designed to reach a diplomatic solution. Right behind them, though, are butch manly gun-happy violence-for-pleasure-seeking beer-swilling cigar-chomping Americans. Okay, they’re probably not ALL Americans, but I think you can see where I’m going with this.
Anyway, Jake’s a paraplegic and he’s told that if he helps get the Na’vi to abandon their homes that sit on top of the Plotdevicium, they’ll pay for the spinal operation to restore function to his legs. Unfortunately, somebody’s been looking at way too much shiny Plotconveniencium because they didn’t realize that an avatar, a genetically grown artificial body composed of both human and Na’vi DNA, not only gives Jake his legs but also enhanced senses, a USB interface with the world’s wildlife and, oh yeah, makes him a ten foot tall warrior crystal dragon Jesus. Nice work there, guys.
“Sam, go over there and emote. I’ll stay back here and think about how much money this movie’s gonna make me.”
Before I get to what bugs me about the film, let’s talk about what works in it. The visuals, as I’ve said, are jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The eco-system of Pandora is designed to take one’s breath away, and it certainly does do that job. There’s an organic feeling to everything that belongs on Pandora. By the same token, the sense one gets from the human contraptions, from the modular buildings to the badass fighting mechs, is that these were welded or hammered together by human hands, not assembled in a graphics program on $300 million’s worth of computers.
The other really good thing about Avatar is the cast. I’m not just talking about Sam Worthington, who’s quickly becoming someone I really enjoy seeing on screen but needs to stop attempting an American accent, or Sigorney Weaver, who’s right at home being in a film like this. (Oh, and side note, thank you James Cameron for putting Michelle Rodriguez in Na’vi war paint. Rawr.) No, the Na’vi themselves are rendered beautifully. Now, I know they were pretty much designed to be appealing to a human audience in an aesthetic, emotional and sexual way, but that doesn’t stop the end result from being impressive. I think it was pretty clear from the outset that if the Na’vi and their world didn’t truly come to life, even on the flat screen upon which I saw it to say nothing of 3-D, the whole opera’d fall apart. Thankfully, Pandora and it’s flora and fauna do pull you in, and the scenes in the lush, luminous forests are some of the most immersive I’ve seen in quite some time.
This guy’s evil. You can tell because he drinks coffee while burning down trees.
But just like the fist of an angry corporate-funded gung-ho jarhead trying to punch his way to a deposit of Bullshitium, the illusion of Pandora’s perfection is shattered by so many bad story elements it’s difficult to say where one should begin. There is no way in hell this operation should run the way it does. Too many military and money-grubbing types are at the top while the scientists who might actually have a clue as to what humanity has stumbled across are treated like a nuisance rather than an asset. If it weren’t for the fact that these bozos exist for the same reason Adhominemium does, it’d be completely incomprehensible how these clowns even got off of Earth, let alone ended up in nominal control of Pandora. But James Cameron has a point to make here, and as much as he spared no expense bringing his vision to life, he pulls no punches in letting us know exactly what he’s trying to say, about whom and why it’s bad. Those bombs in the back of the shuttle in the film’s climax might as well be goddamn anvils.
The villains’ aren’t just evil for evil’s sake. Oh, no. They’re evil for America’s sake. Beyond the obvious “respect for nature” message and other aspects of the story discussed to death elsewhere in other reviews, parodies, tired internet memes and episodes of South Park, Avatar does everything within its power to underscore the major flaws in the neo-conservative movement. The villains see the worlds before them in black and white, foster a strong “us versus them” mentality, disregard a multilateral approach to solving their problems and opt instead for military intervention in the extreme. I’d say that the corporate stooges were Germans and the Na’vi Polish Jews, if it weren’t clear Cameron were going after Bush-era Americans instead of Nazis. Hell, at one point, Colonel George Herbert Walker Whatever-The-Hell-His-Name-Is uses the words “shock and awe” when discussing his pre-emptive war. It’s clear that James Cameron is underscoring the evils of deforestation and corporate greed. But hey, these are Americans we’re talking about, and they on the whole really don’t give a shit. Deforestation is only something that happens in other countries that didn’t have the good fortune to be America, and Americans love themselves some corporate greed. Just look at how our banks and real estate markets are set up.
“So wait, there’s no civilian oversight and your career military men are basically mercenaries? Come here, let me teach you the Na’vi word for ‘Bullshit’.”
The interplanetary love story is a bit trite, but it works because it’s well-acted. We do feel something is at stake during the action sequences and they’re not confusing at all, being well-shot and choreographed, but the messages that drive the action are so obvious and ham-handed you can hear the bacon sizzling when the Hometree burns. All in all, there’s stuff to like in Avatar and it’s worth seeing for the visuals and sweeping sci-fi/fantasy warfare that honestly rivals some of the set pieces in Lord of the Rings. So put it on your Netflix queue.
Oh, and don’t worry about not seeing it in 3-D. Let’s face it, 3-D’s a fad. It was a fad back in the 50s and it’s a fad right now, people are just a bit thicker than they were back then so it’ll take somewhat longer for the fad to go away this time. I mean, look at the way some people reacted to Avatar. Other than the immediate declaration that it is THE BEST MOVIE EVER and dumping piles of money and adoration on James Cameron, who probably can’t get it up unless he’s contemplating how fucking brilliant he is, some people actually fell into suicidal depression when they beheld the landscape of Pandora and had to be told it’s not real. I was personally reminded of some of the vistas from games like Aion and World of Warcraft, which makes me a pretty massive nerd in case that wasn’t clearly obvious. While I could see a lot of the flaws in this movie – I didn’t even mention the weird application of physics on Pandora, what with floating mountains and “low gravity” that operates just like Earth’s gravity – I still enjoyed it, which I guess means I’m powered by just as much Retardium as anybody else.
Spotting the flaws, though, and calling them out without mentioning all of the other films Avatar plundered like Doctor Frankenstein in a graveyard looking for fresh parts, probably means my internal derp furnace is running a bit low.
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.
Say you have a story you want to tell. For argument’s sake, let’s further posit that this story doesn’t take place on Earth in the year 2010. It takes place in 2055, or on some other planet, or back in the Renaissance. Provided you’ve done your research or laid a good foundation in terms of notes, sketches or perhaps audio logs some post-apocalyptic adventurer will stumble across when our oil runs out, you know who’s who in the world in which your story takes place.
The reader, unfortunately, is likely not as acquainted with the setting as you are, especially if you made the world yourself. If that’s the case, nobody should know the world better than you. Until they start writing fanfiction – and if they do, my friend, then you’re doing just fine.
What I’m getting at is that sooner or later, you’ll need to introduce the settings, concepts and ‘rules’ of the realm in which your tale takes place. That means exposition. Expository writing isn’t really all that hard, as it’s mostly rattling off things already rattling around in your head. However, to the reader, the things you find so fascinating about the distant lands of Yourworldia can be downright boring if you don’t do it right.
I’m a big fan of Tolkien. I’ve talked before about how his descriptions can be a bit dry. The Silmarillion, something of a history of Middle-Earth, is basically a collection of his notes on the subject of how the world came to be and some of the myths and legends that propel the characters of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It’s about as fascinating as it is dry and difficult to read. The point is that it’s a novel-length exercise in expository writing.
Good exposition, in my experience, is woven into the plot, not set aside and served up as a very dry appetizer to the main course. It detracts from the flow of the plot and bores the reader.
