I’m on a writing craze lately. In the past two days, I’ve finished a chapter of Laura Horn, wrote an entire chapter of Video Rage, and even did an entire article for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors. This time around, I did a little research on The Length Debate, seeing all the opinions on how long a piece of flash fiction, a short story, a novel, and/or everything in-between should be. It was a fun article to research, and I hope you read it and share your thoughts on the debate too.
And as always, I encourage you to subscribe and follow Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors. If you independently publish, it’s a wonderful site full of information for authors on everything from creating your own cover to information on developments with CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing to just general tips on writing fiction of any sort. I’m sure you’ll find it extremely helpful and informative, just like I did the first time I logged on.
Oh, before I forget and sign off, I just wanted to let you know I updated the About Me page on this blog. It’s just a little bit more general information, but if you’re curious, go ahead and check it out. You’ll find my somewhat-funny bucket list among the material I’ve added there.
See you in the morning, everybody. Have a good night, and I hope you don’t have any dreams about people with schizophrenia performing exorcisms in the street like I did last night (yes, I dreamed that. It seems even in my dreams I can’t escape the weirdness that is my somewhat macabre interests and hobbies).,
(This is the sequel to my previous post The Rabid Fans. In this installment, the fans are nuttier, the anger is much more bloodthirsty, and the references to Charlaine Harris’s work…is basically not part of this post. Sorry, but it’s an old story, and frankly there’s more to this phenomenon than vampires in the Bible belt. Onto the sequel, which may or may not be better than the original, depending on your opinion)
He’s Batman, deal with it.
Hollywood is being terrorized. Well, not really terrorized. More like annoyed. A few weeks ago, Warner Bros. announced that in the Man of Steel sequel, good ol’ Bats will be played by Ben Affleck. Now personally I have no problem with Affleck. He’s a capable actor, I liked him in Daredevil, and I’m sure, given the chance, he will break new ground in the role of Batman (if they force him to play a Bale copycat or something else that’s been done before, then God help the producers of the film). However, some fans were not so happy with the casting decision, taking to Twitter to voice their discontent in a tweeting storm. Many sent angry letters to Warner Bros. to tell them they hated their casting decision, and some even started a petition on the White House We the People page to get the White House involved.
That petition was taken down because, for all the obvious reasons, the White House isn’t going to take part in a casting call in Hollywood. They’ve got some bigger problems to deal with, in case you haven’t noticed. But then things got crazier, when this past week Universal Pictures and Focus Features announced that Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam and Ben and Kate actress Dakota Jonston were cast in the roles of the leads for the upcoming film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey. Moms and middle-aged women and a former neighbor of mine who just happens to be a fan weren’t happy when the announcement came out. Instead, they started a petition, this one on Change.org apparently, asking that instead of Hunnam and Johnston, Matt Bomer and Alexis Beidel play the roles.
I’m surprised this is being made into a movie, but hey, if it makes money, why not?
Obviously, Hollywood ignored both outpourings of fan reactions. And I’m not surprised. After all, a lot more goes into a casting besides good looks. Talent, availability, willingness to play a role, chemistry, and a bunch of other factors go into the casting of a single character. And if the fans don’t like it, that’s their decision. In a meantime, there’s a movie to make, and not enough time to bother with annoyed men and women on their computers.
That’s Hollywood’s line of reasoning, anyway. But honestly, I think even the elites in LA are a little annoyed and worried. Heck, I find it worrying. Fans these days seem so…entitled. It’s not just casting calls, but demands for sequels (or threats should a sequel/remake be made), certain characters be made couples or else. It’s insane.
So let me take this moment to let all you rabid fans out there know one very important thing: THERE’S A F***ING LIMIT TO HOW MUCH OBLIGATION HOLLYWOOD HAS TO YOU, AND YOU’RE BLOODY WELL OVER THAT F***ING LIMIT!!! I mean honestly, the people who make these pieces of entertainment don’t have to make these films/shows/books. They could easily find other things to do or make. Yes, they’ll try and stay close to the original vein of the story, and they will do what they feel is best. You may not like it, but to assume that you know better than the producers and directors and writers is just plain snobbish arrogance. I mean come on! They have money and creating a brilliant story on their minds when they make these things. To assume they’re not trying to make the best story possible or that for some reason a simple fan knows better, well before the story is even made, seems imbecilic to me.
Yes, I understand there are people who want sequels to John Carter or Dredd 3D despite their miserable box office intakes (I wouldn’t mind the latter personally). And I know you want the characters you love to be portrayed by competent actors who look like they would fit the parts (I’m a little skeptical because the person playing Sue Snell in the Carrie remake isn’t a brunette). And I know you want certain characters to end up with each other at the end of the series (I was a Harry-Hermione supporter until Book 5 or 6, I’ll admit it now). But listen, you’ve got to let these things go. Give the filmmakers and writers and directors a chance, and stop thinking you know better. I’m willing to see if the new Sue Snell can impress me. I want to see if Affleck can break new ground at the Dark Knight. And I think Harry-Ginny and Ron-Hermione has a sort-of harmony to it.
There will not be a sequel. Harassment must cease. Failure to comply will result in the ultimate punishment provided by law.
Besides, the world won’t end if there’s no sequel to your beloved film. People won’t die if the favorite actor/actress plays a certain part. The universe won’t cause a storm if Character A and Character B end up in love and having cute babies together. The world moves on, because everything I’ve listed above–50 Shades, Superman vs. Batman, Carrie and John Carter and Dredd 3D and others–they’re all FICTION. Not real, fake, born from the imaginations of people who are paid to lie. Yes, they feel real and I understand that, but at the end of the day, it’s all fictional and therefore irrelevant to the workings of the world.
Help those being treated like mutants now.
Stop Assad with me!
If you must get angry about something, then think about this: people in Syria are being killed like humans when faced with General Zod. In many nations, LGBT communities and women are treated like Marvel’s mutants. In many nations, women can’t decide between two hunks who look good without their shirts on or have sex with mysterious and tortured partners. They get married off to men sometimes much older than them by their parents and if they protest they can get tortured or killed without any protection from the law.
Now that’s something to get upset about!
But if you still disagree with me on all that I’ve discussed above, I’ve some friends I want you to meet. They’re very animated, but I think they’ll take good care of you and you’ll learn a lot from them and their foundation.
Get the picture? Good. Have a lovely evening, everybody. Hope you’re not planning on sending me hate comments or discussing casting and writing decisions for the latest Star Trek movie (yes, there were obvious flaws in that movie, but that’s a post for another time. Probably never).
It’s time for my weekly exercises. These pieces of flash fiction are part chance to practice my craft, part oppurtunity to get reader feedback on what’s scary and what’s not, and part shameless marketing ploy to get people interested in my published work. Remember, these exercises depend on reader feedback, so please give me your thoughts, good or bad, on the piece below.
The sky turned black as midnight. Everyone stared towards the heavens and the inky blackness. A moment ago the sky had been bright and blue, the sun still high above at four in the afternoon. But then it had turned pitch-black, like looking into an inkpot. No moon, no stars. Not a single source of light burned in the sky, and not even street lamps sensitive to changes in light could dispel away the darkness.
Family huddled together in fear. Lovers held each other, comforting each other in order to forget their disorientation and confusion. People left their offices, homes, and stores just to stare at the impossibly-black sky. For maybe five minutes, nothing changed and nobody moved, just looking at the sky in terrified wonderment.
And then a giant, skeletal hand appeared from the inky blackness and reached down as if to grab them all and take them away. Maybe that was its purpose. And the people who saw the hand and the long arm attached to it screamed.
I’m done with my writing break, and I started with a new article for the blog Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors. This article’s topic is Resources For Researching The Unfamiliar. I thought it might be helpful if I wrote an article that gave authors ideas for places they can go if they want to know more about a subject they may not know much about. And who knows? Other authors might have more tips which I can be incorporated into the article at a later time and date.
I hope you check out the website. Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors is a wonderful blog that can help authors of all types and stripes and is full of useful information. Also, look forward to more posts, because I’ve got plenty to write about now that I’m off my writing break.
I’ve mentioned in many previous posts that I am working on a novel called Snake, about a serial killer in New York who is hunting down members of a powerful mafia family. In the most recent posts, I may have also mentioned that I am working with my friend and fellow writer Angela Misri of the blog A Portia Adams Adventure to edit Snake and make it ready for publication in Spring or Summer 2014.
As of this evening, Angela and I are officially a quarter of the way through the hundred chapter book and are getting the book done on schedule and will probably be done by New Years. I’m very happy with how speedy the process has been and how diligently Angela’s been working on looking through and critiquing my manuscript. Thanks for your hard work and taking time out of your schedule Angela!
Also, I would like to mention that just because the book’s a hundred chapters doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it. Each chapter is less than ten pages, so I wouldn’t be surprised that by the end of this, the whole book will be less than 400 pages (we’ll see). The only reason you shouldn’t read it is if you think it’s not your type of book (follow this link to see if it is).
I’ll let you know when there’s more news on the editing and publishing front. Wish us both luck and definitely check out Angela’s blog. It is definitely worth a read.
Writing is a mostly mechanical exercise, making practiced movements with a pen and paper or seeking the correct key on a keyboard. And putting those words together is part of the higher mental powers given to the human species through millions of years of evolution. But the act of imagination, the power it gives us to bring those words together into a coherent narrative and even tell stories with those words, to me that it is transcendent of all the abilities we’ve garnered from evolution. To me, it’s almost a gift of the soul.
I keep three separate lists on my flash drive. One list has short summaries and blurbs of novels, films, TV shows, comic books, and even video games I’d like to write. I’m up to sixty-one ideas at the moment. The second list gives short descriptions of short stories I plan to write (seventeen at the moment). And the third list has subjects for articles I can write for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors (great blog, by the way. Totally recommend it). That’s a total of eighty-eight ideas, and all of them are possible through my imagination. Heck, I wouldn’t have any of the ideas for stories I write if it wasn’t for imagination.
And imagination is influenced by so many things. Everyday life influences imagination, allows it to be transformed into stories. I read an article about efforts to stop forced marriages with metal spoons and I got an idea for a short story from that. When I went to my science fiction class, I had an idea for a novella that I had to blog about almost immediately (see this post for the actual article). Speaking to some friends about the recent death of an actor to suicide, I thought of an idea for a crime novel. When the lights in the Super Dome went out early this year, I got an idea from that too.
And not just events in life fuel the imagination. When I read or watch TV or a movie, I get ideas from them too. Just today, a book I’m in the middle of reading gave me an idea for a short story taking place in Jerusalem. Watching a favorite episode of Doctor Who the other day, I had an idea for a six-book series featuring Agatha Christie (Whovians, I bet you can guess which episode that is). I even have an idea for a movie to bring back a TV franchise I used to love as a kid. And how many fairy tales and childrens books have I taken and turned into new stories that boggle the mind and scare the soul? All this is possible through these works’ influences on my imagination, and my imagination’s influence on me.
Imagination. It is the ability to absorb events or old ideas and–pardon the adjective used–regurgitate it into a new form. It is the application of ideas and concepts in a new light, in a new way. It’s the churning of our subconscious, which spits out, like in a Greco-Roman Creation myth, something new and fabulous and beautiful. It is a force that I contemplate, that I look at and wonder about its complexity.
And perhaps one day I’ll write a story about its impact…oh wait. I’ve already got one or two ideas based on that! Never mind.
The point is, the imagination is something that is such a benefit to the act of writing, the act of living, that without it life would be so much less beautiful and powerful and amazing. It’s given me a ton of ideas, and I hope it’ll give me some more in the future. Because if my imagination can allow me to create a large body of work to leave me behind, even if I don’t get famous off of it all, I’ll feel like I’ve left behind an amazing legacy for the world.
Though if I can get famous I won’t complain.
What’s your view on the imagination and its impact on writing and on life?
Normally I’d be getting ready for bed now because it’s late and I need my sleep for classes. However, I started writing this evening, and I got so much of Chapter Twelve of Video Rage done, I was like, “No way am I going to let this chapter wait till tomorrow to be finished, especially with the amount of homework I’m likely to have!”
And I’m proud to say the hard work paid off. I’m now about one-third of the way through the first draft of Video Rage, the sequel to Reborn City. Well, it’s actually a little less than a third, seeing as the book has a planned 37 chapters, but it’s close enough, so who’s going to start a protest over it? Anyway, it’s a third of the way done, and I’m very excited to announce it.
The last couple chapters I’ve written for VR were actually a lot of work. I had to go through 10 and 11 twice before I could leave them alone, And Chapter Twelve had to be written just right so that it’ll have the impact I want it to have. In fact, a lot happens in Chapter Twelve. I bring up Kony 2012 in the story, and it has an impact on the protagonists, the Hydras. Yeah, I know that video, for all its hype, didn’t lead to Joseph Kony getting caught, but it was influential, which is why I use it in the story.
Remember this video? It makes itself known in Video Rage.
I also made a reference in the chapter to an early idea for VR called Bee Colony, in which the Hydras meet a colony of giant man-bees. Yeah, it sounds ridiculous, especially when you consider how Doctor Who used the idea with Agatha Christie. I thought so too about a third of the way into the outline, so I scrapped the idea and went back to the drawing board. It wasn’t until I saw Kony 2012 that I had an alternative to the man-bee plot, and it’s worked out better than the original idea, I’m happy to say. And the honeybees make an appearance in this chapter, though they aren’t man-sized or anything.
Now for the page and word counts. In total, the number of pages I have in this draft so far is 103 (double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font, in case you were wondering), and the word count so far is 28,039 words. Jeez, this novel’s coming together. I wonder how long it’ll be by the time the first draft is done. Heck, I wonder how long it’ll be when Reborn City comes out in November!
For now though, I’d like to take a little break from writing to rejuvenate and relax, or as much as I can while still doing schoolwork and working 3 days a week. In my spare time, I’ll probably take a few days, read a book, watch my shows, sleep, celebrate the Jewish New Year, edit chapters of Snake when I get them, and make jokes that are funny about thirty percent of the time. After that, I’ll probably write an article for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors, and then start on Part II of Laura Horn, the other novel I’m working on at the moment.
Until then though, I’m going to go to bed. Good night everybody, Happy New Year from your friendly Internet Jewish blogger and horror writer, and I’ll write again when I have the energy to do it. See you later!
I finally sat down this evening, after finishing a whole lot of biology homework, and I watched the movie Warm Bodies. It’s amazing when people can take a tired, old plot and make it seem fresh and new. If you don’t get what I’m talking about, just see the movie. You’ll get it.
But it put me in mind of a zombie story I’ve written myself. Well, it’s not exactly a zombie story. Zombie-like or zombie-ish. If I call it a zombie story, it seems like it gets categorized into a larger body of work that people see as overused these days…and increasingly getting as dumb as its main antagonist. But my short story, “Buried Alive”, actually features some zombie-story elements. And even though I’m satisfied with the ending, I feel…I feel like the story could continue after it finished. And, I realized, I kind of wanted it to continue.
Just one problem: I don’t want to make a bleeding novel out of this story. I’ve got enough on my plate without another novel at this point.
Looks like Sean Connery in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
But then I thought of an old high school memory: in some of my English classes, particularly the AP courses I took when I was an upperclassman, we read a lot of Ernest Hemingway. My teacher just had this thing for Ernest Hemingway. Don’t know why. I didn’t particularly care for him, but we read quite a bit of him. Indian Camp, I think we read twice in my four years of high school.
And I remember, there was a character in many of Hemingway’s stories, a guy by the name of Nick Adams. This guy appeared everywhere, sometimes a kid, sometimes a teenager, sometimes an adult. I once asked my teacher about this guy, and he replied that Nick Adams appeared in plenty of Hemingway’s stories. Two dozen, to be exact. What made Nick Adams so appealing to Hemingway? He was supposedly based on a lot of Hemingway’s personal experiences, so maybe that had a lot to do with it.
In any case, I thought, “Why can’t this short story be my Nick Adams?” It would be short stories I write every now and then, featuring the same world and the same protagonist, all originating from “Buried Alive”. I could even release them in a collection someday, far, far in the future. Who knows what could happen?
In any case, I’ll see what I come up with when I have the time and the energy to write some short stories. There are definitely possibilities here for a series of interconnected stories.
Have you ever written a short story and wished you could write a sequel/spin-off/related story to it? What happened?
I just recieved my fourth review for my collection of short stories, The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones. This review comes from my aunt, Michele Siegal (actually, it says my uncle’s name on Amazon, but that’s because they have a joint account). The review, which gave the book 4 stars, went like this:
“This is the first time I’ve read any of Rami’s stories. I was very impressed with the wide variety of stories and the way he wove the paranormal into each piece. Paranormal is not something I usually read and I enjoyed this collection very much. The collection reminded me of the Twlight Zone. The descriptions were especially well developed. Keep on writing Rami!”
Thanks Aunt Michele! I’m glad you enjoyed the variety and the descriptions, and I’m flattered that you think I reminded you of The Twilight Zone. And with this review, I’m maintaining my 4.0 average on Amazon, which I’m very happy with. And with book sales slowly but steadily rising, I can only hope that more reviews will come.
If you decide to read The Quiet Game, please don’t hesitate to write a review, whether you enjoyed the book or not. I always appreciate feedback, positive or negative, and reviews really help indie writers such as myself move up in the world.
Hope you’re having as good a day as I am. If I have anything else to write, I’ll post it later in the day (and if I can get my homework done in a timely manner, I might just have something to write about).
Oh, I had a productive day today. I got a ton of homework done, edited The Quiet Game after being told there were some glaring errors in the book (sorry! If you buy/download it now, there will be less errors than before), I did my weekly exercises (see last post), I came up with an idea for a short story and a book series, and–oh yeah, I finished Part One of Laura Horn, one of the two novels I’m working on right now.
I called this part of the story “That Girl’s A Mouse”, based on what one of the girls at Laura’s school describes Laura. As we read the chapter, we find out some of the reasons Laura’s like that, though some things are still in mystery. I rather enjoy writing Laura’s story, but I sometimes have trouble getting into her head. In some ways she’s still a mystery, even to me, which makes her all the more fun and intriguing to write about.
Now for pages and word counts. The prologue, which is about ten pages and two-thousand, three-hundred sixty-four words, is about three chapters long. The first part spans from chapter four to eleven and is forty-five pages and twelve-thousand, one-hundred and eighty-nine words. This brings it a total fifty-five pages and fourteen-thousand, five-hundred and fifty-three words. With fifty-six chapters left, it’ll probably get much longer. I’m guessing somewhere around 350 pages and maybe seventy-thousand pages. It’ll be awesome when it’s done.
Tomorrow I plan to do my biology and sociology homework, then I’ll hopefully edit chapters ten and eleven of Video Rage. I’m not entirely satisfied with those chapters, so I can’t start chapter twelve until I at least give those two a look-over and see if there’s some way to fix them up a little.
Rami Ungar The Writer 