“Enigma” Is Rewritten

Posted: February 3, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
Tags: , ,
0

And I think I’ve thought of a new title for it: “In The Lady Ogre’s Den”. Why I call it that, I can’t tell you. You’ll have to read the story to find out.

I like how this new version of the story turned out. Sure the ending might need a tweak or two, but I think this version is much better. Hopefully I can make it even better on the second draft. I’ll know once I start editing.

Unfortunately I had to take out the Navajo elements from the story. The black wolf character identifies itself as a death wolf, but that’s as close as it gets to the original Navajo themes. Also, I expanded the role of the main character Jason’s father, mostly because I thought that for this version his role needed to be expanded a little.

Anyway, I hope to have this particular short story edited and finished soon. Until then, I’ll just keep writing. I’ve got plenty of ideas, and they’re just screaming to be implemented and turned into short stories.

Hope for updates soon, so I’ll let you know.

My Style Is My Own Style

Posted: February 2, 2013 in Reflections, Writing
Tags:
0

I was talking to someone who lives on my floor today, and we started talking about our mutual interests in Stephen King and James Patterson. At some point during this conversation, he asked me if my style was very much like Stephen King’s. To which I replied, “My style is more like my style.”

I returned to this conversation just a moment ago, thinking about what goes into style. There’s word choice, tone, pacing, character archetypes, setting, conflicts, themes…all these and more go into style. But trying to categorize something like style in words never seems to do it justice. When we enjoy an author, we get a feel for their style, and that’s how we define style, by that feel we get. It makes us say, “This is definitely one of his/her books.”

And speaking of feel, I had a feeling that my friend was talking about my influences, so I told him I was very much influenced by King, Anne Rice, and Patterson, with a few others adding here and there. But it’s mostly those three, and they all have a very interesting style of their own: King has a rawness even after all these years. His plots are strange and convoluted, often veering to the science-fiction areas of fiction, especially in his recent work, and he’s not afraid to go to places most of us wouldn’t, be it a crass joke or a sex scene involving fifth graders.

Anne Rice is an aristocrat among writers. Her work is dark but deep, philosophical and full of supernatural mystery. There’s a sensual feel in her words, as if every gesture of her characters has a hidden flirtation in it, and the worlds she paints are rich and vivid, almost like a painting. But as her characters sometimes remark, no matter how pretty the painting, it’s always just a painting, and we are aware of the trappings we adore, and the things we possess, and we realize that they are all meaningless, that this entire world is meaningless if we detach from it, just like Rice’s characters are often detached from the world.

And James Patterson is fast-paced, full of emotive power and simple sentences that convey to us what is happening in the story. When we see into the minds of some of the characters, we can sense all their feelings, whether despairing, angry, or full of sick glee (especially true of the villains).

But my style? I’m probably not the best person to categorize it. It’s dark sure, and it does show that I’m not as experienced as others in my field. Occasionally you get a feel for the zany character that wrote my fiction (and don’t deny it, I’m plenty zany). But most of all, I think you can sense a yearning. Yes, yearning. I’m yearning, yearning to give the world fiction that people will like and that they’ll read and possibly review on Amazon and maybe talk about with others, whether to trash it or praise its merits. I’m yearning to give people that sort of work, and I think you can sense it when you read my creative work. Maybe that’ll go away as I gain more experience, but until then, it’s part of me and my writing.

In the meantime, I shall work on my stories, yearning or no yearning, and see if they can bring joy (or terror) to others. Wish me luck.

What’s your style like, if you have to define it? Who influenced you?

Another Shooting Happens, Yet Some Are Still Not Seeing The Point

Posted: February 1, 2013 in Politics and Leadership, Reflections
Tags: , , ,
2

Yesterday, a shooting occurred at a junior high school in Atlanta, Georgia. According to the news reports, the working theory is that two students got into some sort of fight, one pulled out a gun, and started shooting. The student who fired the gun is currently in custody, while one student who was shot in the neck survived, is in the hospital, and at last update, was in good condition, thank God. There were other minor injuries, but thank God no deaths. The school itself, as well as neighboring elementary and high schools were placed on lock down for two hours before students were released to their anxious, loving parents.

It seems President Obama was correct when he said we are suffering from an epidemic of violence. And speaking of the President, deliberations over gun control are still raging in Congress, where some still deny that we need stricter gun control. I mean come on! A kid nearly died of injuries because another student somehow got access to a gun and brought it to school with him! And yet there are people who use the craziest arguments to say that we need looser laws on guns. Let me repeat that: looser laws on gun control. And I italicize that for a reason: because it’s nuts, and it’s not a solution.

Now I know conservatives fear that stricter gun control laws will immediately lead to a dictatorship where guns are only held by the authroities and the people are powerless. This phobia of theirs is the basis of all their arguments. For this phobia, I recommend seeing a psychiatrist, because it’s just not going to happen. America is not going to turn into Nazi Germany, because Nazi Germany was the result of a madman taking advantage of a system with way more flaws than our system and a people who were unused to democracy and thought it was decadent. Does that sound like our system? Does that sound like our President?

Oh, and Mr. LaPierre, you said nearly fifteen years ago that you supported universal background checks (and so does a majority of the organization you head, by the way). What changed? All those checks from gun manufacturers go to your head? And to Ms. Treyor, the woman who told the thrilling story of a woman who used her legally-bought home weapon to defend herself against attackers, the woman in your story used a shotgun, not an assault rifle. The weapon in question would be allowed under an assault weapons ban. How can you not know this before you tell your story?

Honestly, I find the fact that I’m compelled to write these posts every now and again ludicrous. I mean seriously, we regulate driving and women’s uteruses more than we regulate guns! The last I checked, guns were killing more people than cars or uteruses! There needs to be some consistency here, folks! We need to stop this epidemic of violence.

And not only do we need stricter regulations on guns, we also need to do something for those with severe mental illnesses, especially those whose illnesses make them a danger either to themselves or others. Ever since deinstitutionalization in the fifties and sixties, there’s been no safety net for those with mental illnesses that aren’t helped by drugs. We need to reestablish a safety net, if only to see that these people can get the help they need. Sure it might cost us a little more in taxes, but it’s better than having another Sandy Hook, isn’t it?

So Congress, stop listening to the fear-mongering and the lobbyists with the checkbooks, and get to work doing your jobs, which is helping the American people. Because sitting around and quibbling over whether or not an imaginary dictatorship waiting to rise from Clint Eastwood’s friend the chair does not help us with our actual, not-imaginary problems.

To Write Means To Give Up Vanity

Posted: January 31, 2013 in Reflections, Writing
Tags: , ,
2

In my creative writing class yesterday we critiqued a story by one of our classmates, the story starring a rather interesting character. The “interesting” part I’ll decline to elaborate too much on in case this classmate edits this story and it gets published or something, but there is something that I can reveal: the main character is one of those writers who think they are the best thing since Shakespeare, that they are destined for greatness and anyone who dislikes or doesn’t understand their work is an idiot who couldn’t find brilliance if brilliance kicked them in the ass.

The funny thing is, every writer has been that writer at some point in their careers. I certainly was. It’s usually at that point where we can string together some semblance of a story together with any coherence to it. For those who discovered the joys of writing young, that’s usually in the teen years. I know for a while I thought all I had to do was write and eventually I’d come out with a novel that would be published within a year of finishing it, sell millions around the world, and I’d have an actress girlfriend whom I’d take to the premiere of the movie version with me.

Thank God, most of us outgrow this phase and realize that writing’s hard, good writing is harder, and writing anything that could be published is an amazing feat. For some, it’s only done once or twice in a lifetime. Others get a bit luckier, and they get published several times. A few of those get famous for it, or at the very least can afford to take up writing full-time (I’ll settle for that if I can’t be famous). All of these people who have been published though, even if it’s only once, were published after they got through this “I’m brilliant” phase.

Now, I know there’s no way I can prove that to you. It’s not as if I went to thousands of published writers, both contemporary and in the past, and asked them what they thought of themselves and their writing. But I have a reason why I think this, and here’s my reasoning: the writers who believe this way look at those who can’t understand or don’t like their work as fools, as annoyances. At best, they should be tolerated, but according to these writers, the world’s better off without them.

Sounds a little sociopathic, doesn’t it? But I’m sure it’s a thought that every writer who’s dreamed of greatness has thought, especially during this vanity phase. And it’s a horrible thought if we let it take hold, because it make others look less than human. Subhuman. Inferior. Weak. And a writer writes stories for these people. Not for fame or for money (though I’m sure some writers do write for those very reasons, and if they have any talent, they are wasting it by writing that way), but for the people. We want to share our work with people, to let them enjoy our fantasies. Maybe they’ll like them, maybe they won’t. But we write for them.

And if we denigrate the common man, if we think our readers and the masses are fools compared to our geniuses, if we writers can’t empathize with the persons reading our work, then we can’t expect them to like our work. At some level, they’ll see the emotions we’re trying to portray through our work are false and that we don’t really feel them like others do and they’ll reject the story.

This came up yesterday in class. “If the writer can’t empathize with the readers, he can’t make a good piece of fiction.” That’s something like what my teacher said, and I think it’s true. The writers who let go of this egotistical, self-centered vanity, who don’t let it take hold of them, they’re the ones who end up published, who are in the bookstores or in the magazines or on the e-readers. The ones that don’t…well, if we could tell what they think when they think about themselves and then think about you and me, I think we could really learn to love to hate them.

Of course, you can be a little vain about your first published work or something that’s gotten some success. But for God’s sake, don’t go around thinking you’re all that and a bag of chips until you’ve sold a million copies of your novel, and even then, resist those thoughts! Not even the prettiest gold digger will want to be near you if you make it obvious that you are only interested in yourself and she’s just another planet revolving around your light. There’s a reason pride’s one of the 7 Deadly Sins.

Well, that’s all for now. If I don’t post anything tomorrow, have a good weekend.

I Love Getting New Ideas To Modify My Bad Stories

Posted: January 30, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
Tags: , ,
0

I often have ideas for short stories that start out promising but after I write them I look at them and I go, “How did I come up with this crap?” So I store the story away on my flash drive until I can come up with a way to make it better. Sometimes this takes days or weeks. Most of the time it only takes a few months, though I have one that’s been waiting for an idea for four years.

Remember the story I wrote over winter vacation about a possesion gone wrong? I had an idea that’ll basically mean total rewrite, but it’s a better story than it used to be. Perhaps I’ll be able to submit it afgter all!

Of course, this’ll have to wait until after I finish rewriting “Enigma”, which means there’s going to be a longer wait for the new stories I want to write. Virtual sigh, a writer’s work is never done, is it?

Well, I better get to work. Have a good night.

The Rise of the Television Serial Killer

Posted: January 29, 2013 in Reflections, Scary Stuff
Tags: , , ,
0

Occasionally, I have to devote a post to some hardcore horror subjects, and today I’ve got something I’d like to discuss: serial killers on TV. It used to be that serial killers were relegated to the worlds of novels, and films and they stayed there. Why wwas this? Well, novels had long ago ceased to be scandalous, and a novel was only called to be banned if there was something very extreme about it (such as the gratuitous and very kinky sex of Fifty Shades of Gray, or the popularity and messages seen or percieved in Harry Potter). A serial killer or two in a thriller novel wasn’t so bad, especially since there was always a detective or two there to hunt the freak and his mommy issues down (because until recently, it’s always been mommy issues; damn you pop psychology!). As for movies, they may be decried for their violence and sex, but those sorts of horror movies are restricted to adults mostly, and it is difficult for a kid to get in to watch them. Even with videos and DVDs, not a lot of parents show their kids serial killer films, afraid their kid might become the next James Holmes, Eric Harris, or Adam Lanza.

If a serial killer did show up on TV, usually it was in a crime show, and only just for one episode (two, if it was an episode arc meant to draw out something special from a character). There were never any shows about serial killers, the movies that featured them were heavily edited for sexual content and swearing before airing (never mind being fitted so that the end on the :00 or the :30), and otherwise they weren’t a part of the wasteland that is television. Why is that?

I think it might be due to that TV, unlike the movies, is open to everybody with a TV and a remote, so it would suck if a kid whose favorite game is fairy princess sees Michael Myers stab two teens who’ve just been copulating. Also, TV shows are marketed to get the most viewers, unlike movies, which are marketed to get the most money from moviegoers. Yes, there is a difference: movie studios get a portion of the sales from movie theaters when people see their movies, while television studios get profits when companies pay to have their ads air during the commercial breaks of popular shows. Since a broad variety of people watch TV in general, unlike a single movie, so the shows are marketed to get the most people watching in order to get the most ad fees.

Horror only appeals to a small number of the TV-watching population, and serial killers appeal to only part of the horror fan community. With that in mind, horror doesn’t often get airtime, let alone serial killers. When horror does make an appearance, usually it’s during Halloween or it’s an element of a crime or drama show (examples are Grimm or SVU).

But for reasons I’m not sure about, serial killers are appearing on TV these days, with their own shows or being a huge part of other shows. I think it might have something to do with a resurgence of serious horror on TV. We’ve got Walking Dead on A&E, American Horror Story on FX, and Supernatural on CW, serious horror shows without any of the comedy associated with earlier horror shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the girl-bonding themes of Charmed. No, this is serious horror with traditional tropes like angry spirits, demons, and zombies, and the critics and the viewers are eating it up like candy. I guess it was only a matter of time before serial killers started getting their fair share of airtime, and there’s been some pretty good sharing there:

There’s the Bloody Face character(s) of American Horror Story: Asylum, who’ve been bringing the terror to the TV screen; the cancelled J.J. Abrams show Alcatraz had several serial killer characters throughout the series; and The Following, a crime thriller about a serial killer with a following of killers he manipulates from his jail cell, is enjoying strong ratings on FOX. Plus there’s more: A&E is developing a prequel-that’s-not-a-prequel of the famous 1960 thriller movie Psycho called Bates Motel; and on NBC, there is a much talked about adaptation of the first Hannibal Lecter novel Red Dragon called Hannibal, that I am looking forward to with a vengeance.

So there are several shows featuring serial killers, some on the major networks such as FOX and NBC, and perhaps more will be made in the future. As a huge fan of serial killers (the fictional ones; I don’t condone killing outside of fiction) and a guy who penned a novel about one, I can’t complain about that. Thoguh don’t expect me to watch the Psycho prequel unless the reviews are phenomenal, because with a story like Psycho where the sort of psychosis that Norman Bates has isn’t even clearly defined, it’s going to be difficult to create a show based on how that psychosis developed and keep it interesting. Now if there was a show about Jason Voorhees between his supposed death and when he started killing…no, that’d still be difficult to sell to me.

Also, I would like to clarify some comments I made on this post. Although I said that parents don’t usually show serial killer-themed media to thier kids so they don’t become killers themselves, and that TV shows try not to traumatize kids for that same purpose, I don’t believe that violent movies/TV shows/videogames produce killers. Although there are studies that link excessive video game playing and violent behavior and stuff like that, there is no proof that these violent shows, movies, and games produce actual killers. And if there is any study that shows a correlation, feel free to show me, but I would like to remind you all that correlation doesn’t mean causation; I’ve taken two or three classes that have emphasized that point. Besides, the killers I listed above all had documented mental disorders, and there’s no study yet that show a correlation between movies/TV shows/video games and mental disorders.

And while we’re on the subject, mental disorder doesn’t necessarily mean dangerous. That’s very rare, and it usually doesn’t get to the level of violence we’ve seen in recent months when it is dangerous.

Now that I’ve said all this, I’d like to say good night.

Updates on “Enigma”

Posted: January 29, 2013 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

I’ve been tackling ways to make one of the short stories for The Quiet Game a better read, and so far I think I’m on the right track. For those of you who haven’t read previous articles on this subject, The Quiet Game is a collection of short stories I’m putting together, and “Enigma” is one of them. At the center of the story is an autistic boy named Jason, who sees a wolf spirit symbolizing death. I had originally started this story with a large Navajo mythology component, but I’m afraid I might have to drop that.

In fact, I may have to drop a lot. This story is getting a total rewrite, and so far a lot has changed. In fact, the title of this short story may have to be changed to reflect its new nature.

But I’m okay with that. I did it last semester when I turned “Doll’s Game” into “Animal Child”, doing a total rewrite to make a better story. I’m not sure where “Enigma” will go as a story, what’ll happen later in the plot, or what the name change will be, but I hope that by the end of it, I’ll have a much better story than I did when I wrote the first version. I’ll let you guys know how it came out.

Oh, and if you want more updates on The Quiet Game, please check out the Facebook page I set up. The address is below:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/TheQuietGameFiveTalesToChillYourBones

Have a nice day.

Posted: January 28, 2013 in Uncategorized
0

A friend of mine whom I share many passions with has uploaded the latest trailer for the upcoming film, “A Good Day to Die Hard”. Can I just say, I cannot wait? Bruce Willis is awesome, and I am looking forward to some huge explosions this Valentine’s Day!

storiesbywilliams's avatarStories by Williams

die-hard-5-poster-570x844I know, I complain pretty bitterly about all the unnecessary sequels and remakes that are coming out these days. But a Die Hard sequel is one thing you will never hear me complain about. I mean, c’mon, it’s Die Hard! Pure, smashy, action, death-defying goodness! And when a new trailer for the upcoming A Good Day to Die Hard comes along, especially one that boasts this kind of action-pornographic goodness, I’m sure to post it!

Note that this trailer expands on the last one by sticking to the main points of interest, but adding some key details. Basically, we’re given a bit more info on who the bad guys are and what their agenda is before getting into a big father and son shoot em up! And I couldn’t approve of the setting more. There’s just something about a post-Cold War Moscow. So beautiful, rich in culture and history, but…

View original post 62 more words

Review: Adam Levine on Saturday Night Live

Posted: January 27, 2013 in Review
Tags: , , , ,
2

Can I just say, when SNL does a good episode, they do an amazing string of sketches garaunteed to get me laughing?

Adam Levine is a great actor, a wondeful singer, and can I just say I was a little overwhelemed in a good way when he took off his shirt? Holy crap! My buddy and I were watching the show together, and I both think we developed man-crushes on the guy. Also, Mr. Levine does a great gay talk show host, and he interacts so well with Bobby Moynihan (more on that later).

That being said, the other actors also were wonderful. Nasim Pedrad always kills me as Arianna Huffington on Weekend Update, the way she’s flirting with Seth Meyers without actually flirting. Bill Hader showed us what would’ve happened if one of his other characters, Stefan, was named Bryce, had his sexuality repressed, developed rejection issues, and developed a need to control everything around him while showing me that his voice can go higher than I thought possible. And I just love it when Bobby Moynihan dresses in drag, especially when he dresses as Janet, the strange woman from Yonkers who has a horrible face and yet beds a lot of celebrities.

Some highlights from the show include the Janet sketch, the Cold Open where Jay Pharaoh as Barack Obama has a weird conversation with Keenan Thompson as Martin Luther King Jr, the SNL Digital Short featuring The Lonely Island (how I missed you guys and your shorts!), the joke commercial for a prequel series to The Sopranos that almost put me in an early grave and…I’m forgetting something…oh right. ANDY SAMBERG! Along with Cameron Diaz and Jerry Seinfeld, they parodied Levine’s show The Voice and got him to take his shirt off. I missed that dude and his Digital Shorts.

Kendrick Lamar was a good musical guest. He’s not my thing, but you know what? I didn’t dislike him, and I didn’t totally ignore his act either. So there’s something to be said for that.

For this episode, I give it a 4.2 out of 5 for a ton of entertainment, a ton of laughs, Janet, and Andy Samberg.

Join me for a review in two weeks, which will probably involve me either tearing into Justin Beiber or being pleasantly surprised by him in most aspects except his singing.

A Whole Lot of Writing Starting…NOW!

Posted: January 26, 2013 in ideas, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
Tags: , , , , ,
0

Boy, do I have a lot of work ahead of me. I have two short stories I want to edit, plus two more I want to write first drafts for! I’m not sure if I can get it all done this weekend, but it can’t hurt to try, can it?

The first short story is The Quiet Game, the titular story of my upcoming collection. I want to see if I can shorten it a bit and change a few things I did with it, while also making it that much more scary than it already is, at least for me. It’ll take a bit of work to do, but I aim to do it.

The other story I want to edit is Enigma, from the same collection. However, I’d say what I plan to do with it is closer to a total rewrite. I’ve been going over the plot of the story for the past week and I figured out that the story itself is just not scary enough for my tastes. So I plan to go over it and totally change the plot around in order to make the story scarier, not only for readers, but for the main character, who I realize is acting way too calm for an autistic child thrust into an unfamiliar situation (for those of you not familiar with autism, those affected with the disorder, both children and adults, don’t like changes in routine or new surprises, so it’s hard for them to adjust. Overstimulation or too much change can lead to meltdowns if you’re not careful). So I’ll add to his terror, and hopefully to the reader’s terror as well.

As for the new short stories, I have two in mind. One I mentioned in a post earlier this week, based on a very dark period in my life and taken very much out of the context I experienced it in (it’s fiction written by me, so what do you expect?). The other is based on a dream I had last night, involving a new breed of moth that does worse things than get too close to your porch light. It’s positively disgusting!

I’ll try to get as much done as possible, especially since I’m sometimes prone to the weirdest distractions. I once spent an entire hour looking over news about a TV show I liked when I should’ve been writing! But God willing, I’ll get it all done. After all, I’m a writer, and that’s what writers do. We write, no matter what the circumstances.

Wish me luck!

Older Entries
Newer Entries