Writers on Twitter: Something's Not Right Here

So I signed up for Twitter in January, and have been making efforts to follow writers, publishers, self-publishers, and anyone connected with the biz. It's been less than a month, but I'm already seeing two distinct camps in terms of the kind of content writers on Twitter are putting out:

(a) Rampant self-promotion, as in the following: 

• Review for MY BOOK: "Amazing, best book ever, love love love, buy buy buy" #tag #tag #tag
• "Your life will suck unless you read this book" MY BOOK TITLE HERE amzn.link.buy.my.book
• "TITLE IN ALL CAPS HERE" ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!! PLEASE RT!! #TAG

 (b) Helpful or interesting articles about writing, contests, etc.: 

• Twitter writing contest!  Enter here: bit.ly.link.to.something.useful
• Neil Postman Award: The author of the chosen poem will receive $500
• What (TV Show name) Can Teach Us About Creating Character Archetypes

I scan tweets every hour or so, and it seems that at least 60% of them are shoving someone's miraculous one-of-a-kind book down my throat.  Guess what?  I saw that tweet the first time.  And the second.  And the third.  I know your book was reviewed by Kirkus.  Hell, I can probably quote the review verbatim by now.  Does it mean I'm going to buy the book?  No.  It means I'm going to unfollow you because all you can add to my day is the umpteenth all-caps mention of your book title.   

Do these people ever get tired of pasting the same messages into HootSuite or SocialOomph? Does this kind of guerilla marketing actually work?  

If these writers are selling books and making money, more power to them.  It just seems like the point of screaming into the ether is to have something to say.  "GIVE ME YOUR MONEY" isn't really the message I want to be remembered for. 

Billy Joel and High School: One of These Really Needs the Other

I plugged a flash drive into my car's stereo system the other day, and a golden oldie cycled through yesterday:  Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."  You guys know this one, right?


It made me wonder...do kids these days even know what the heck this song is talking about?  Studebaker, Rosenbergs, h-bomb?  How many graduating seniors could take the lyrics of this song and present even a rudimentary knowledge of the people or events they're referring to?  I watch segments like Jay Leno's "Jaywalking," where people can't even identify Washington DC on a map, or tell the difference between Washington and Lincoln.  How in the hell is this song going to mean anything to someone who thinks the Gettsyburg Address was delivered during World War II?

Granted, I might not even have been able to parse all the references in this song in my senior year, and I was up to my armpits in AP classes.  But it seems like a killer idea for a history class final or project.  How awesome would it be to hand out lyric sheets to a class and have them learn what actually happened in the last half of the 20th century?

Plus, the song still kicks ass, so you'll always be entertained.  Take a personal challenge and see how many of these places or events you know.

Book Writing Strategy, Part 2: Trim Like You Mean It

If you've been following the saga of my current work in progress, you know the first draft strategy involved hauling ass to write 400 pages.  410, to be exact.  I finished in a somewhat burnt-out stage, but theoretically impressed at the fact that I'd done it all in about 9 weeks.

The second step is a rigorous chopping of those 410 pages.  I'm almost through with the first editing pass, with one more to do after this.  The stats are a little surprising: I can't believe I've already cut this many words!  I'm still 45 pages from the end, and I know the end sucks, which is why I've been avoiding it.  But up to this point, here's the blow-by-blow for the first draft and this revision:

First Draft
Final word count: 117,531
Final page count: 410

Second Draft (almost done):
Word count: 93,550
Page count: 345

Total words chopped: 23,981
Total pages chopped: 65

Now, you might wonder why I'm bothering to chop so damn many pages.  The answer is threefold:

(1) Anytime you can chop, you should.  The best fiction is *always* told in the fewest number of words and sentences.  You want your story to skip along at a tight pace, without extra words cluttering things up.  If your attention wanders at all while re-reading, something's not right.  In my experience, it usually means the characters aren't getting to the point.  Or there isn't enough tension.  Cut the parts that make your attention wander, or figure out why it's wandering.  Is it just too long?  Does it fail to advance the plot or offer a new perspective on your character?

If cutting is painful for you (as it is sometimes for me), here's a tip:  I keep all the lines that got axed in a text file, always open as I'm revising.  That way, everything I cut is still there...I could add it back if I discover that it really did add something I don't want to let go of.

(2) Don't forget that revision includes addition as well as subtraction.  There are two or three scenes I think I need to add to this book.  I'm picking apart the main character's motivation, and I don't think she's been pushed hard enough to defend it.  There are at least two scenes I need to add, where both her friends and her family question the path she's taking.  I think readers are going to have the same questions, so I need her to defend against their disbelief.  The problem is that, with a ms that's already well over 117,000 words, you have no room whatsoever to add.

Ruthless chopping gives you the breathing room you need to step back and figure out what's missing.  Then, you have all the space in the world to add material where you  need it, without the pressure of thinking, "Shit, I can't make this scene more than 3,000 words."  Don't limit yourself--free yourself by cutting what doesn't belong before you go back and add what does belong.  This works especially well after your first editing pass because as you read the book a second time, you'll have a better feel for where your story needs to be shored up.

(3) It forces you to dig deep into your story.  What's really necessary?  This is where you think about plot and character on a deeper level than pure language and the cutting of unnecessary words, like in step 1.  Think about scenes and chapters in the big picture of your theme and what you're really trying to say.  Does that scene add to your theme?  Does it set up the next plot complication?  Does it tell us something we didn't already know?

If a scene's sole purpose is to show that one character is a pain in the ass for your hero, ask yourself--is that something we already knew?  Can you combine the important words or events from the second instance of that pain-in-the-ass character to the first, so we get one powerful confrontation or instance where we're told that this character will be a thorn in the hero's side?  If we've already established this, we don't need to beat a dead horse.  The next time we see this thorn, he or she should be actively plotting the hero's demise, not merely annoying him or her once more.

There are eight million reasons to revise.  I'm just covering a few of them here to get you started.  I've said it before, but I'll say it again....revision is the most important thing you can do for your writing.  It's where your craftsmanship shines through.  Your plot might be inspired, but unless your writing and editing support that vision, it's not going to win over agents, editors, or your future readers.

My husband shakes his head when I mention spending hours on a single paragraph, but that's the kind of attention you have to give to crucial scenes.  Read them over and over and over.  Inspect every word and make sure it's earned its place on the page.  Any time you stop reading, whether because of a strange reply from a character or a phrase you have to read twice to understand, stay stopped.  Go back over it and tweak it eight ways from Sunday until it's so smooth you can read over it without a snag.  This might mean you devote an hour to one conversation, or have three versions that you have to decide between.

This is how it should be.  I am firmly convinced that this is the only way you can make sure you stand out from the crowd.  If you can give that much love and attention to your work, editors and agents will notice.  And so will readers.    

Merry Christmas to All

The Wiltz family
Christmas tree, 2012

Is everyone's Christmas shopping finally finished up?

As of last night, mine is. I took the one-stop-shop approach this year, and if you know me, you can probably guess where that one stop was made.  Let's say there's gonna be a lot of glass clinking in the car on the way to Gram's house tomorrow.

I have to say, I'm looking forward to some pickled herring tomorrow night. My dad's side of the family is Swedish, so we celebrate on Christmas Eve.  Dinner usually consists of Swedish sausage and mashed potatoes.  Last year, we had some pickled herring out as an appetizer, and it was pretty tasty.  I'm really hoping to see that jar on the counter again.

Yes, that is a stuffed
Napoleon Bonaparte I use
as a tree topper.

On Christmas day, we celebrate with my mom's side of the family.  It usually consists of a couple of games of Aggravation, which is pretty much our family game.  If you've never played this game, it's a great excuse to metaphorically kick the crap out of your friends and relatives.  We wail on each other, knocking marbles off the board with reckless abandon.  It's a little known fact that I sold my soul to be able to roll a 6-6-1 at will.  I'm working on a post that will map out some metaphors that use Aggravation as a way to get better at writing, all part of the lineup I'm getting ready for 2013.

But that's work talk, and this is a time to relax.  Writers need a few days off, too!  So enjoy Christmas, enjoy the great food and company, and eat as many servings of dessert as you possibly can before you throw up.  There will be plenty of time for discipline and exercise in the new year.

Glowing Album Review: Ellie Goulding, Halcyon

Cover photo from
Ellie Goulding's album, Halcyon

In case you haven't noticed, the past few posts I've made have been of the Scrooge variety:  stuff sucks.  So I wanted to be sure and post something that's not negative just to show you guys that I don't hate everything.

I am absolutely LOVING Ellie Goulding's new album Halcyon.

It is awesome writing music, driving music, singing music, everything music.  I put it on when I'm alone, I put it on when the hubby and I are typing away, I put it on anytime I want to hear music, actually.  I'm addicted.  I have tried to listen to other things, but always end up switching back to Halcyon.  It's crack, apparently.

Prior to being blown up on the radio and played every two seconds, I kind of liked "Lights."  I kind of liked her first album.  It was all right, decent background music, but didn't have any standout tracks that I would put on a mix tape, for example.

Halcyon is different.  I read that it's a breakup album--and it shows.  This is a good thing.  The lyrics are deeper, and some of them are the kind that reach inside you to stab you in the heart and steal your breath.  The melodies are haunting and catchy at the same time.  The mood is melancholy but somehow triumphant.

It's a weird place to be...acknowledging despair and sadness, but also the fact that things will get better.  That's what makes this album so much fun to listen to.  The rhythms and melodies lift you up, but then when you listen to the lyrics, you realize, holy crap, this girl is in despair.    

Track 2, "My Blood," is a standout.  It has a thumping, rhythmic background with chanting that sounds almost Native American.  The chorus takes flight out of the low, bass rhythms of the chorus.  This is where her silvery, elfin voice creates a beautiful contrast with the beating drums.  Her lyrics bring it all together:  "The waves will break every chain on me / my bones will bleach / my flesh will flee / So help my lifeless frame to breathe."  The metaphor of the song is that the breakup of a relationship results in blood lost.  She sings about "all the blood I lost with you," and seeing the color of her blood on walls and rocks.  If you've ever been through a bad breakup, you know that's exactly what it feels like...a slow murder.

I'm also a sucker for a depressing ballad, and there are two killer ballads back-to-back toward the end of he album.  Track 9, "Explosions," and Track 10, "I Know You Care," made me stop what I was doing and remember to breathe.

"I Know You Care" is probably going to be one of my desert island songs.  It's just Goulding and a piano as she sings about the turning point in a relationship where you know it's going wrong.  She sings, "You were like home to me / I don't recognize this street" to explain the way her lover has changed toward her.  Then, she follows up with, "Outside the cars speed by / I'd never heard them until now."  It's one of those writerly details that amaze me on this album.  She's pinpointed that moment, that very moment when the world around you changes and suddenly you see and hear things you didn't before...and it's not a good thing.

Late in the song, as she describes the nuclear fallout of this relationship gone wrong, she sings, "I know it wasn't always wrong / but I've never known a winter so cold / now I don't warm my hands in your coat / but I still hope..."  Her voice tilts up on "hope," and you know there's a whole world contained in the phrasing of that one word.  It's so beautiful and it breaks your heart.  Four lines later, she ends the verse with, "Why can't I dream? / Why can't I dream?"  It's the bleakness of a soul-shattering breakup without the strained, treacly, sickly sweet voicing that ruins many pop and R&B ballads.

The Brits are really kicking ass in terms of albums I'm loving right now.  The last album I had in heavy rotation was Emeli Sande's Our Version of Events.  These smart women are writing songs that feel true, without the dance-pop bluster that American radio hits seem to rely on.

If you haven't heard it, try to find a quiet place to listen via YouTube.  I can't recommend it enough.  Plus, I read in an interview that she loves to run (me too!) and her writing idol is Haruki Murakami.  This may be a full-on girl crush.

Ridiculously Comprehensive Movie Review: Anna Karenina

I've been waiting patiently for a couple of weeks now to see the new Anna Karenina adaptation.  The early signs were good:  Keira Knightly as Anna, a merchandise tie-in with Banana Republic, and a storyline created by, oh, only one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century.  All signs were go.

So yesterday, with a bribed husband in tow and a whiskey flask in my purse (source of his bribe), I plunked down my $20 and sat down in a dark, smelly theater to see what Joe Wright had managed to put together.

I now wish I had spent that $20 on more whiskey.

This movie was sort of like the Russian version of Sofia Coppola's failed Marie Antoinette movie from a few years ago.  Pretty, but without a soul and largely miscast.

Here's the basic plot (no spoilers here):  A married woman, Anna Karenina, begins a flirtation with an attractive young cavalry officer named Vronsky.  The two engage in an affair, and complications ensue with Anna's niece Kitty (who wanted Vronsky for herself), Anna's husband Karenin, Anna's young son Seriozha, and society in general, who frowns on Anna's behavior.

Now, this pains me to say, because I love Keira Knightley and no one's smoky-eye makeup ever looks better on the red carpet.  However, something was off about her in this role from minute one.  Something was off about the entire movie, too.  Let me see if I can explain this a bit better.

Weird Thing about this Movie #1: The Staging
The movie has a strange staging effect.  It takes place on a strange rotating stage, as if the director wanted us to have the feel of a stage play.  Curtains rise and fall, painted set pieces drop into the background, and people walk out one door only to walk in another door right beside the first, in order to indicate a change of scene, place, and time.  It feels contrived rather than interesting.  It does not add to the intimacy of the story, nor does it advance any of the characters.  It's basically a wasted gesture that just ends up being confusing.  Plus, not all of the movie is done this way.  The scenes with Levin, a character who lives in the country, are actually shot in the country, not on the revolving stage.  So what's the point?  Why do this for part of the movie, if you're not going to do it for the whole thing?

Weird Thing about this Movie #2: The Dramatic Pauses
If you can get past that, there are a few more artsy-for-the-sake-of-being-artsy touches that also have that contrived feel.  Characters pause like statues at particular points so we can see Anna and/or Vronsky moving around in the scene.  Like the ornate theater-style sets, though, it's unnecessary.  This plot and these characters happened in a society thick with togetherness.  Separation like this only destroys the intimate, everyone-knows-everyone-else's-business effect that the plot needs for the ending to be believable.  Wright captures this feel once, when he flashes onto the faces of disapproving Russian society matrons as they grimace and smirk at the misbehaving Anna.  I kept thinking, "I know there's a movie that did all this better.  Oh, that's right--Dangerous Liaisons."  Pretty much everything Anna Karenina wants to be was already done...and done better...in Dangerous Liaisons.

Weird Thing about this Movie #3: No Development/Reason for Love Story
The whole point of this story is to create sympathy for Anna, a woman who does something wrong.  She has an affair, but we're meant to sympathize with her impetuousness, her willingness to risk everything for love, her ability to go after what she wants and flout society's stuffiness to do it.  None of that actually happens here because the director didn't take the time to make the love story believable.

Anna and Vronsky basically fall in love during one strange ballroom dance scene.  They've exchanged a few words and glances prior to this, but it's not anything beyond a mild flirtation.  But somehow, once dance, and we're supposed to believe mad passion has been inspired.  The actors can't quite pull this scene off (director's fault?  not really sure here), and the screenwriter really needed to have another scene or two where we see Anna struggling with this.  As it is, she seems to smile at Vronsky, dance with him, breathe heavily for a minute, and declare herself in love.  There's very little struggle, and very little reason why Anna would fall for Vronsky.  His hairdo is horrific, and he's kind of stuck on himself.

The problem here is that if we don't believe these two are madly in love, we won't believe what comes afterward--Anna's mad struggle to free herself from her husband and set up shop with Vronsky, despite Petersburg's social ostracism.  It seems weird that she would do this for this man.  In the book, all of this is given time to simmer and develop (the benefits of a nearly thousand-page book, I guess).  But in the movie, we have to buy life-altering mind-numbing passion in one scene.  It's not enough, at least not the way it's written, staged, and directed here.

Weird Thing about this Movie #4: Keira Knightley Seems Off as Anna
I thought this would be a slam dunk.  I mean, Keira Knightley is born to play tormented historical heroines, right?  Of course.  So why is this different?  I think it has to do with this being a Russian book.  There is something deep and dark and churning in the Russian soul that I think this movie missed entirely.  Keira Knightley played Anna as happy and playful before her affair with Vronsky.  I could have been okay with this, if that playfulness were shown as part of some deep emotional tide running within her.  Instead, it seemed like she was an overgrown child, having more fun at the kids' table than with adults.

Once she hooked up with Vronsky, she became a total stage-5 clinger, to make a nifty Wedding Crashers reference.  She was shrill and shrewish, instead of fatalistic and soul-consumed.  I now want to see Vivien Leigh in the role, because I'm thinking she might have been better at the whole soul-consumed thing (what with her depression and bipolar issues and all).

Basically, this Anna seemed like a silly girl instead of woman who let her sense of fatalism control her destiny.  It made the character silly and the movie silly.  I'm trying to think of who else might have been able to play this role

Weird Thing about this Movie #5: Vronsky's Hair
Oh my God, Vronsky's hair.  I don't care if Russian dudes in the 1880s actually looked like this.  Now, it just looks silly, like the Masterpiece Theater version of Gene Wilder's hair.  Give the guy some regular hair, please.

Overall, I feel like this was a wasted opportunity.  It was pretty, for the most part, but wrong.  Just wrong.

Ridiculously Comprehensive Book Review: The Romanov Conspiracy by Glenn Meade

Grand Duchess Anastasia,
or, as Meade calls her,
"Princess Anastasia."
By Bain News Service,
public domain,
via Wikimedia Commons.

We all love a good thriller, right?  We love it even more when it combines history, mystery, and exotic settings.  That's what The Romanov Conspiracy by Glenn Meade promises on the jacket copy.  Does it deliver?  Let's find out.

Full disclosure mode: I’ve also written a Romanov-based thriller, so I’m slightly biased, not to mention hyper-sensitive to the treatment of the subject.  So instead of addressing the plot, I’m going to focus on the elements themselves: the characters, the writing, the pacing, etc.      

Let’s start with the good:

1.  I was turning the pages pretty quickly in the first quarter to third of the book, thanks to the interesting characters Meade gives us, particularly two men named Andrev and Yakov.  They're from opposite sides of the tracks, one a Tsarist soldier and the other a die-hard Red.  Their paths cross as children and then again as adults.  Another interesting character, named Sorg, is an American spy in Russia who interacts with the Tsar's family in good times and bad.  Each of these men are intriguing and given enough personal background and motivation so that you start to feel for them.  A murdered younger brother, a murdered father, an unrequited childhood love carried into adulthood…there’s some good stuff here.  Their emotions feel real, and I got sucked in.     

Now let’s address the bad:

1.  This book is too damn long.  It’s almost all set up and very little payoff.  The extremely long, drawn-out scenes work well in the beginning of the book since you’re just getting to know the characters.  But once you look at the page number and realize you’re on page 300 and the rescue of the Romanovs has barely begun, it gets frustrating.  This is where an editor comes in handy.  Maybe Howard Books can’t afford one, or they can and that person was busy with other things while this book was in production.  All I know is there is no reason for this book to be 515 pages.  It could have been 300, easy.

2.  The frame is lame and nowhere near as present as the jacket copy makes it out to be.  If you read the jacket copy, you’ll think most of the book is about Dr. Laura Pavlov, a forensic anthropologist working in Russia who stumbles on clues as to what really happened to Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the Romanov family, supposedly murdered in 1918.  The story starts and ends with Dr. Pavlov, but she’s present about as much as the main title and end credits are present in a movie.  This book takes place in 1918 for 98% of the page total. I still would have read it knowing this, but it would have been nice to have an honest representation on the jacket copy. 

The epigraph also promises that the book is going to connect Anna Anderson to this conspiracy/rescue attempt.  That was really all that kept me reading once the plot bogged down in the 200-400 page range.  Unfortunately, the only mention of Anna Anderson in relation to the titular conspiracy comes at the very end of the book, tossed away in less than a page, with a vague mention of a secret brotherhood being behind her seemingly uncanny knowledge of royal life at the Russian court.  

Really?  No one called B.S. on this?  

SPOILER ALERT.  Also, the book purports that Anastasia escaped the slaughter of Ekaterinburg, that Anna Anderson was a decoy sent into the world and trained by a secret brotherhood that tried and mostly failed to rescue the Romanovs.  Who these secret brotherhood members are is unclear.  But the book also never explains who it was that was found in the earth near the rest of the Romanov family.  It’s one thing to claim the body isn’t Anastasia because of unreliable DNA testing.  It’s another to say it wasn’t her because the real Anastasia survived, without offering a plausible explanation as to how a person who shared DNA with the rest of the family ended up in the exact same spot as Alexei yet we’re not supposed to believe it’s Anastasia.  That’s quite a coinky-dink, isn’t it?

And we’ll finish with the just-plain-ugly:

1.  The writing.  It’s bad.  Like, bad.  It’s clumsy and badly in need of editing.  There are lots of adjectives.  Lots of brand names, as if that suffices for a description of a thing.  The verbs are trying a little too hard in places like this:  “….I snapped open the leather briefcase on my lap and plucked out a file”.   "Snapped" and "plucked" in the same sentence just feel overwraught.

In other places, the storytelling is heavy and ponderous, like Andre the Giant trying to tiptoe:  

• “I still recall the peaty wood smell when as a child I would leaf through the family album, filled with the faded images from another world.”
• “Some events in our lives are so huge in their impact upon us that they are almost impossible to take in.” 
• “It felt intensely cold.”  

I read sentences like this in my freshman year of college, in the intro to creative writing.  To be fair, I wrote some of them, but I also learned to realize I was wrong. 

A lot of the dialogue is unnatural and stilted, like the following line spoken by an old woman remembering the past:  “Of all the royal family, Anastasia was the  most rebellious, the most sparkling.”  Does anyone…would anyone…ever speak this sentence out loud?  Who says “the most sparkling”?

2.  George V refers to Nicholas II as Nikki.  It’s not the nickname I disagree with, but the spelling.  Why use “Nikki” as a nickname and not spell Nicholas with a “k”:  Nikolas?  It makes no sense.  There is no consistency, and it drives me bonkers.  

The same thing happens with Russian royal titles.  Meade calls Nicholas “tsar,” which is the Russian equivalent of “emperor.”  Yet instead of using the Russian title of “Grand Duchess,” Anastasia is referred to as a “princess.”  No one even halfway interested in Russian or Romanov studies would ever refer to her as Princess Anastasia.  Even the kiddie cartoon Anastasia gets it right and calls her Grand Duchess.       

Overall, I really wonder how the author’s previous novels earned “rave reviews in the New York Times and the Washington Post.”  The craft just isn’t there, and I would have expected that to be recognized by the Times, if not the Post.  

Maybe that’s the real conspiracy.  

A Brief Note on the Semicolon: Why the Freak Can't People Get This Right?

What the heck
is so confusing
about this?

I've noticed something about the semicolon:  No one knows how to use it anymore.

I don't understand the reason for this.  The rules have not changed.  It's not like the whole analog-to-digital TV thing, where everyone in the country was told there was going to be a massive change and notified during every commercial break for months in a row.

How is this singular piece of knowledge being lost?  How is it that a dot and a curved line mystify so many writers, editors, and proofreaders?

Let's consult a few sources:

• According to the APA and the Chicago Manual of Style, you should use a semicolon to: (1) separate two independent clauses that are not joined by a conjunction, and (2) separate elements in a series that already contain commas.
• In an article for the New Yorker's website, Mary Norris relays an apt descriptor from a style book put out by an English firm:  "A semicolon links two balanced statements; a colon explains or unpacks the statement or information before it."
• According to Merriam-Webster, a semicolon is a punctuation mark "used chiefly in coordinating function between major sentence elements (as independent clauses of a compound sentence)."

By no means is this an exhaustive list, but it's a start.  Now, let's focus on the ways people use it to link their thoughts incorrectly.  Here are a few examples I dug up at work:

SEMICOLON EFF UP #1:

Wrong:  Despite the fact that kids are well fed, exercised, and socialized there is still a problem that persists; oral health.

Corrected:  Despite the fact that kids are well fed, exercised, and socialized, there is still a problem that persists: oral health.  

Why the first one is wrong:  A semicolon connects two complete but closely related thoughts.  "Oral health" is NOT a complete thought.

SEMICOLON EFF UP #2:

Wrong:  You can tailor much of the desktop environment; for example, the background window.

Corrected:  You can tailor much of the desktop environment--for example, the background window.  

Why the first one is wrong:  The portion of the sentence after the semicolon is not an independent clause.  If you spoke it aloud, no one would have any clue what your context is.  Plus, there's no verb.  So there you go.

SEMICOLON EFF UP #3:

Wrong:  My favorite things to do in Hawaii are surf; hiking; and sailing.

Corrected:  My favorite things to do in Hawaii are surf, hike, and sail.  

Why the first one is wrong:  You mean aside from the non-parallel verbs?  SEMICOLONS ARE NOT COMMAS.

I beg of you...please pay attention when you use semicolons.  If you're in doubt, don't use one.  Much like nuclear missile launch codes, semicolons should never be deployed without complete and utter confidence in one's decision-making abilities.  If you're certain you want to use them, a few minutes of online research will give you great examples of what to do or not do.  Then read this, just because it's funny.  

In closing, I have to post a quote I found, written by some dude named Henry Marie Joseph Frederic Expedite Millon de Montherlant who wrote, "One immediately recognizes a man of judgment by the use he makes of the semicolon."  Too true, bro, too true.

Ridiculously Comprehensive Movie Review: Skyfall

In the pantheon of James Bond movies, this will not go down as the best, or the second best, or the third best.  It is, however, a considerable improvement on Quantom of Solace.  If you haven't seen the movie yet, beware--SPOILERS AHEAD.  Let's break it down.

The beginning is promising.  James Bond and an unnamed female partner (she'll be more important later) are chasing some dude through the streets and over the rooftops of Istanbul.  He has a hard drive around his neck with a very important list that M is on fire to get back.  Dirtbikes, trains, and bulldozers all make an appearance in the opening sequence.  It has a retro feel because of the train--when was the last time you saw a good on-top-of-a-train chase sequence?  It's not quite as breathtaking as the parcour sequence that opened Casino Royale, but Casino Royale is in a class of its own in more ways that one.  

After the opening sequence, this movie gets a little muddy...and stays muddy for about 40 minutes.  Bond "dies," comes back, and has to get re-cleared for duty so he can help M recover the list he almost had his hands on in the train sequence.  The list contains names of all the British agents embedded in terrorist cells around the world, so it's pretty darn important to get it back.  Whoever took it taunts M with some Rick-rolled-style computer screen graphics that tell her to "think on her sins" and let her know that her tormentor is a skilled hacker with the design skill of a 13-year-old.

This where some of the movie's problems start to appear.  The movie becomes more about M, her questioning by higher authorities, and the already-addressed-in-the-Bond-franchise theme of spies being obsolete in the computer age.  I'm pretty sure they beat this horse to death in Die Another Day.  Of course, Bond is invested in the job because British pride is at stake, but it feels cold.  It's not the same as his emotional stake in the previous two movies.

There's a new guy in command above M (named Mallory, played by Ralph Fiennes), and a new Q, who looks vaguely like a British guy I used to date.  They spend way too much time on the Q character.  Two minutes would have sufficed, but he gets closer to 10 or 15.  The movie gets bogged down in bureaucracy here, and the watcher's attention lags.

Things perk up a bit when Bond gets sent to Shanghai to catch the guy who has the list of British agents.  Sam Mendes makes Shanghai look futuristic and cool, and whoever did the cinematography here deserves an award of some sort.  This part of the movie looks gorgeous.  In Shanghai, Bond fails to recover the list and kills the guy who had it before getting any useful information out of him, but we learn one thing:  the fight scenes in this movie are way too short, and yes, there is actually going to be a Bond girl in this movie.  (This movie is a little short on the sexual innudendo and/or tension that make Bond movies famous.)

Now we jump to Macao for no real reason other than to present a new set-piece, complete with man-eating lizard things that look like overgrown Komodo dragons.  Some dude who looks like my cousin's husband gets chomped up in a ridiculously cheesy fight scene.  The bright spot of the Macao bit is when Bond meets Severine (pronounced "Sevrine"), played by Berenice Marlohe. She has nails I would kill for, but they applied her makeup with a trowel in the casino scene.  I think the makeup weighs more than she does.  In any case, she does a fantastic job of playing the I-can't-leave-the-bad-guy-because-he'll-kill-me bit.  I started to think the movie would get more interesting here, and it did...for a whopping 10 minutes.

Severine takes Bond to her master, the arch villain played by Javier Bardem.  Of course, when you think Javier Bardem, you think of the bowl-cut creepy guy he played in No Country for Old Men. They're basically trying to recapture that creepiness here, except it doesn't work.  It feels like a copy.  The blond hair is ridiculous, and all I could think about was how superior the character in No Country was.  So, basically, they moviemakers wasted Javier Bardem's genius.

There's an interesting William Tell bit on Bardem's island, but it also means (SPOILER ALERT) Severine makes an absurdly quick exit.  This disappointed me.  She was eye candy, and provided a counterpoint to the M storyline, which is pretty dry.  I was hoping they'd do more with her character, but it was pretty much just a transition point to Javier Bardem's character.

And this is where the next hour of the movie just falls apart. It becomes a mess of letting Bardem show off his faux creepiness, trying to make the biggest mess in the London Underground they can, and not having any of it really enthrall the audience.  It's a mess.  Just trust me on this.

Suffice to say, there's a total confusion about what this movie is really about.  Is it about old vs. new?  Is it about M?  Is it about the cost of leadership when your toy soldiers are real soldiers?  Is it about what happens to the soldiers we leave behind?  Who knows.  The writers and director think it's about all these things.  It's confusing, it sprawls all over the place, and none of the messages really hit home because they're so half-assed.

Fortunately, there's good news--the last half hour or so veers back into classic Bond territory.  Yes, the Aston Martin reappears, complete with grill guns.  We find out what "Skyfall" means (no, it's not a nuclear program or brainwashing program or any spy program at all).  We see where James Bond grew up, and find out his parents' names.  We find out a hell of a lot more about him than nearly any of the previous movies have given us, except maybe On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where he begins the movie as a married man.    

There is a big fight at the end, lots of stuff blows up, and one of the major characters dies.  James Bond cries.  But there's an oddly anti-climactic feeling to it, almost as if you expected more from Bardem's character, who seems content to let his army of goons do everything for him.  The hands-on villains are so much more fun to watch.  Anyone can send a dozen gun-toting soldiers into a house and tell them to blow everything up.  That's boring.

When the movie ends, it's basically right back at the beginning:  thanks to a restructuring of MI6 personnel, you now have things set up the way they were for Sean Connery or Roger Moore.  You have M, you have Moneypenney, and you have good old James Bond, ready to risk life and limb for England.  It feels like a re-boot.

Overall, there are some plot holes you could drive a truck through, and the story's characterization leaves a lot to be desired.  Bardem's character is pretty much a wasted opportunity.  They want you to believe he's as good a secret agent as James Bond (and approximately his age and experience level, meaning old school type who the higher-ups believe is a dinosaur).  They also want you to believe Bardem is the world's best hacker/programmer.  I find it hard to believe that these two coincide.  Either you spend all your time becoming the world's best spy or you spend all your time hacking and joining Anonymous.  I don't buy both. Plus, the stupid "think on you sins" message that popped up over and over in the first half of the movie never reappeared.  Bardem never said those words to M, which seems like something a psychopath might want to do.  Bond also didn't have much of a connection with Bardem's character, which seemed like another missed opportunity.  They obviously knew each other, but not well and not with the kind of brotherhood-gone-wrong ethos that made Sean Bean's character in Goldeneye more interesting and more moving.

I was also disappointed at the small role the girls had to play in this one.  As weird as it sounds, M was almost the main Bond girl in this movie.  I love Judi Dench, but the character of M just isn't interesting enough to hold up this movie.  Give me Severine any day, or bring Eva Green back from the dead.

As for Sam Mendes as a director, I think he did a decent job with what he was given.  The scenes are shot well, the locations are beautiful.  The fight scenes are all way too short, though, which might have been a script flaw rather than a directing flaw.  I'm not sure who to blame for that one.  The whole thing just doesn't hang together, but short of a rewrite, I'm not sure it's anything a director could have fixed.  I'm pretty sure the screenwriters alone are to blame for the mishmash of themes and lack of a clear through-line.         

Bond is Bond.  I love him, I love Daniel Craig as Bond, and I just wish Casino Royale hadn't been so damn good because it's now next to impossible to live up to that standard.

Revision: Let's Get Down and Dirty

Okay, so periodically, I make posts that show you guys how I'm revising. I talk about this a lot because it's one of the most important parts of writing, and one that's often criminally neglected. Revision is where the real writing, the real work, gets done. I've felt this way for a long time, and the more I write (and revise), I'm only more convinced that it's true.

Here's one example of revision from my latest project:

BEFORE

She thought again about the Mexican kids in the courtyard at lunch.  What did they do when they got home from school?  Not this, she was sure.  Did they watch TV, or play soccer, or call up their friends and go cruise downtown?  She’d been on the college-prep track as long as she could remember, which meant that she and regular kids were developing into two different species.  Just like Darwin's finches in the Galapagos.  Separate them for too long, and they’d lose the ability to communicate, to mate, to produce viable offspring. (about 93 words)

AFTER

She thought about the Mexican kids in the courtyard at lunch.  What did they do after school?  Watch TV?  Play soccer?  Three years on the college-prep track meant that she and regular kids were developing into two different species, just like Darwin's finches.  Separate them for too much longer and they’d lose the ability to communicate, to mate, to produce viable offspring. (about 62 words)

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong about the first version. It's just that it isn't the tightest, best, and sharpest it could be.  Here are a few specific changes I made in order to get to my second draft version:

Sentence 1:  Delete "again" from the first sentence.  The reader has already read the section where the character thinks about the Mexican kids for the first time.  Therefore, she knows this is the second time.  The word "again" is unnecessary.

Sentence 2: Change "when they got home from school" to "after school."  The meaning is the same, but it's accomplished with fewer words. This is always going to be better.

Sentence 3: Delete the whole damn thing. Because the character is griping about the fact that she's stuck inside doing homework while other kids are having fun, the comparison is obvious. The fact that she's thinking about the other kids doing other things means she knows they aren't doing homework. Why waste words, even 5 of them, to express this?

Sentence 4: Remove "did they" and "go cruise downtown." Shorter sentences can be much more effective, especially if you're listing things. The rapid-fire short sentences have more immediate feel, as if you're right there with Emma (the character) as she's thinking these things. Also, I don't really gain anything by including a list of three items, as opposed to two. The reader gets the picture after two, so I cut the third list item entirely.

Sentence 5: Delete "she'd been on" and "as long as she could remember."  These are fluff.  The revision offers a more concise version of this thought, and a concrete detail.  "Three years" is much more specific than "as long as she could remember."

Sentence 6: Delete "in the Galapagos" and attach this sentence to the previous sentence. The reference to
Darwin is probably enough to bring back vague memories of Darwin, turtles, the Galapagos, the HMS Beagle, and something about the birth of the theory of evolution. There's no need to mention Darwin and the Galapagos when the mention of Darwin alone will serve my purpose.

Sentence 7: You'll notice here's where I added to the second version. Instead of "too long," I went with "too much longer."  I wanted to raise the stakes and show how Emma, my character, is at a tipping point in terms of social development. "Too long" is a generic statement.  "Too much longer" means that Emma knows she's on the boundary of something in a way that isn't generic at all.

Phew.  If you're still with me, you see how much I agonize over each word in each sentence in each paragraph.  I know not everyone is going to do this, or even think it's necessary. I just hope I can inspire you to start looking for little things to cut (extra words, unnecessary cues) that bog down your own writing.

Happy revisions!