What Time There Is

We just wrapped on “…What Time There Is” (video below) and what better title to emphasize just how small 48 hours can be! This was our last practice before the 48 Hour Film Project (happening on July 31st-August 2nd), and our first road movie. There is so much to learn!

Road movie was a somewhat deliberate choice on our part. We wanted something that was not among the main genres for 2015 (and wasn’t Fable), but could still challenge us in new and exciting ways. And we were definitely challenged! Do you know how hard it is to film in a car driving down the road? We’ve got an inkling now!

Our cast and crew were amazing all weekend. We got to borrow two different houses and one Mercedes this time around, and shared the weekend with lots of energetic, creative folks. We couldn’t have done it without them!

In case you’re wondering, the title comes from For Whom The Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway. Our main character was reading this at the start of the video. On set, he opened to a random page and found the quote:

“But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again (I hope), he thought and so you had better take what time there is and be very thankful for it.”

With that in mind, here is what we wrote Friday, shot Saturday, and edited and posted today. After you watch it, you’ll know how appropriate it was to finish this on Father’s Day:

Following the First Star - reading - again

Finished "Following the First Star" by me. This is becoming my most read book, often for reasons other than just reading the book. I re-read it when I got the printed copy. I re-read it when I wrote "A Sky of Stars." I re-read it when I wrote "A Sky of Stone." I re-read it this time because I'm thinking seriously about revising it again.

Show, don't tell. That's the biggest downfall of this book. I'm telling you too much and showing you too little. If I were to reverse that trend, the book would be significantly more enjoyable, and possibly a bit longer as well. As it is, though, it is a quick read.

Point of view is probably the second biggest thing to fix. There are places where I the reader am not sure what's happening because I the writer changed perspective.

There are a handful of missed/misspelled/weasel words, too, but that's a minor problem.

Lots of words. Lots of revisions. I'm feeling a bit daunted.

Save the Cat - reading

Finished "Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need" by Blake Snyder. As a relative novice to screenwriting, I thought the advice in this book was really good, and although it speaks to a fairly rigid formula, this is about what I was looking for when I read "Screenwriting for Dummies." Maybe Save the Cat will hold up once I'm more experienced, I don't know. Ask me in a couple years. On the bright side, it's a super-quick read and has exercises in it that you can do with just about any script to improve it and the things that go along with it. On the down side, I thought Memento was a fantastic movie.

Now I Believe

I made it to the finals in The Iron Writer, and was greeted with the following elements:

A person born with red eyes
A poison dart frog
Pukwudgies
Three Stooges Happy Birthday Song

Here is the story I submitted, followed by the results and feedback.

Now I Believe

I heard the stories growing up, but if I believed them, I might have reached Hartford that day. I was in my Ford F-150, driving 75 miles an hour down I-91. The morning sun climbed the eastern sky, but I was already tired. I checked my eyes in the rear-view. They were red, as they have been since birth, but they were bloodshot, too.

When I looked back at the road, I was bearing down on some unfortunate blur of a creature. A porcupine? I had the vague notion of hoping it wouldn’t pop my tires. I expected to hear the impact any moment. Instead I was plunged into darkness and quiet. I rubbed my eyes and felt cold, worn stone instead of the warm, comfortable seats of my F-150.

“Wee baaaked yoooou aaaaaaaa birrrrrrrrrrthdaaaaay caaaaaaake…”

The high-pitched, sing-song voice echoed around me. I opened my eyes in time to catch motion to one side. I turned to see a little human figure with faintly glowing gray skin. He stood next to a table, on which was the small birthday cake he sang about.

“Iiiif yoooou geeeet aaaa tummmmmmmy aaaaaaache…”

The song went on in that high, childlike voice as he pushed narrow sticks into the cake. With the ring of sticks in place, he lifted the cake from the table and carried it toward me. Without even the slightest gesture, the tip of each stick sparked into candle flame.

“Aaaaaaand yoooou mooooooooooan aaaaaaaand grooooooooan innnnnnn woooooooe…”

My eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. He was close now, but only three feet tall, proportioned like a man, not a dwarf. He held the cake in front of me. The candles ringed a colorful black and yellow frog, a poisonous dart, its back glistening in the flickering candlelight.

“Dooooon’t foooorrrrrgeeeeeeeeet weeeeeeeee toooooooooold yoooou soooooooooo.”

The frog hopped away leaving a vacant, frog-butt-shaped space in the icing. The little man stared into my eyes over the burning candle sticks. As I watched, his eyes went from a menacing black to the same red color of mine, standing out against the gray of his skin.

“Maaake aaa wiiiish, deeeear, aaaand blooooow ooooout the caaaandlesssssss.”

The sibilant final word caught me up in the strange moment. I took in a deep breath to blow out the candles and was flooded with a memory from childhood. I had heard this song before! It was from an old Three Stooges routine, when television was black and white.

I released my held breath, blowing across the sticks, and everything changed. I was back in my truck. My eyes were filled with the bright light of morning; my ears heard shattering glass and crunching metal all around. The cake was suddenly my truck’s airbag exploding in my face. I was launching forward into it as my truck’s hood crumpled into the back of a tractor-trailer!

I told the State Trooper I was texting and driving, but this was one of many accidents along this stretch of highway the locals attributed to the Pukwudgie. Each year more knew of, and believed in, these dangerous tricksters. I didn’t believe before, but I do now!

 

Now for the feedback:

Judge 1

Story Arc 4 (If I could make this 4.9 I would)
Use of Elements 5
Grammar/Spelling 5

Possibly best use of elements, mixing the birthday song with an exploding cake that injures the driver. I liked the sibilant voice.

The ending was the single weak point for me. Not that every character needs to die, they don't. I simply enjoyed the other endings better. The ending made sense but was not as strong as "From the Journal" for me. It came down to a personal preference.

Judge 2

Story Arc – 4
Elements – 4
Grammar/Spelling – 4

No problems with the grammar or story, though I wasn’t particularly enthralled with either. Fantasy and magic is an ‘easy street’ and I also wasn’t taken by it that much. I had trouble connecting the main character with the element ‘person born with red eyes’. If someone had red eyes, they would’ve had problems integrating with society as a whole and this character felt too straight forward for that.

Judge 3

Well written, good flow to the story.

Story Arc 5
Use of Elements 5
Grammar/Spelling 5

 

Overall I came in second, which is pretty good in my opinion given that this was the finals for the year. It was quite enjoyable, though I think my time with the Iron Writers is at an end for now. It's not because of the judges, the challenges, the feedback, any of that. It's because the organizer decided to go with 100% popular vote to determine a winner, and I don't feel like bothering my Facebook friends that much. I also think the popular vote has nothing to do with the quality of the story, whereas with judges, there is at least some relationship between them.

On the other hand, one of the judges for this contest said "magic" (and fantasy) is an 'easy street' in a challenge where one of the elements wields magic. The other talked about the sibilant voice, in the sense that he liked it, but the sibilance was the last "s" on "candles" which led to the explosion. It was the fuse on the cake.

Either way, though, I think my time with The Iron Writer did improve my writing a bit, and got me to think about revising other work. More to come on that later.

Lamb - reading

Finished "Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" by Christopher Moore. If you're anything like me, it will take you longer than you expect to finish this book. Yes, it was funny and irreverent in places, and an interesting take on the life of Christ, but it wasn't a great book. I actually put it down for a bit while I read something else, then came back to it. Not to say I didn't laugh out loud a couple times, because I did. A couple times.

Hellfire Eyes - Results and Feedback

I received feedback on my story, Hellfire Eyes, which I submitted to the Iron Writer last week. The ratings from the three judges, on a scale of 1-5 where 5 was the highest, were:

Spelling and Grammar: 4, 4, 5 (highest of contestants)
Story Arc: 4, 4, 4 (tied for highest)
Use of Elements: 3, 5, 4 (second place among contestants)
Total: 37

Dani J Caile's story Uncle Terence scored 34 points and got second place.

The feedback was:

Judge One:

Grammar: 5 - No problems here, from what I saw.

Use of Elements: 4 - Plutonium by nature is radioactive. By saying a plutonium-crafted weapon is on display in a museum pulls the reader out of the story. But

Story arc: 4 - The end of the story seemed rushed, but there was a definite arc.

Judge Two:

I wish the author provided more specific ages of the main character at the different points in the story before the MC was an adult. 

I really liked the twist at the end. I didn't see it coming

Judge Three:

Interesting but dry narrative. Good grammar and flow

Good description of elements but the elements were not integral to story, except astigmatism.

It's hard to tell, but it looks like Judge One's feedback was cut off or incomplete. They also said there was a solid plutonium weapon on display, thinking it's dangerous. I wasn't saying there was a plutonium halberd on display, just that the main character's perception turned it into such. To quote the story, "making it seem as though it was cast of solid plutonium." (Should that have been "were" for subjunctive?) But it's fine. Getting feedback is better than no feedback and no clue where the ratings came from.

Thanks to the judges for their efforts, and the other worthy contestants who wrote strong stories!

Hellfire Eyes

About two weeks after Artemis Returns, I was pulled into The Iron Writer again. This time it was for the seasonal playoffs. Here is my piece. I don't have any feedback on it yet. The elements were: astigmatism, magma, a solid plutonium halberd, and a picture of the canals of Venice.

Hellfire Eyes

My eyes have always been a source of curiosity. Severe astigmatism plagued me from an early age, accompanied by blurry vision, frequent headaches, and lower grades. My parents would not allow modern medicine to intervene. Disease was caused by the devil, they said. Only prayer could save me. They cared about me, though, so they prayed all the time.

As a teenager, a secondary condition called phoenix crystal nucleation had taken hold. With it came the coloration seen in every science journal photograph of me - the crystalline striations of red, gold, and orange reminiscent of the legendary creature’s birth flames. Through my eyes I perceived rivers of hellfire everywhere. Where you see a street covered with gently falling rain, I see Hell’s rivers overflowing their banks, unleashing evil across the land. Where you see gondoliers on the canals of Venice, I see Charon ferrying down congealing lava flows from some unseen magma chamber below.

One year I accompanied my parents to Washington, D.C., where we visited the Smithsonian Institute for a conference of religious scholars. I still remember the Institute’s stylized yellow sun on a blue field, which could have represented God, science, art, technology, or even heraldry. An adjoining exhibit held a variety of medieval weapons recently unearthed, ironically enough, from the excavated foundation of the Center for Peace in Rouen, France. While my parents were distracted with their conference, I made my way in, careful to avoid the fountains and pools throughout. It was to no avail, though. My hellfire eyes always saw more.

At the display, the light from a bare fluorescent bulb cascaded downward over a particularly tall halberd, making it seem as though it was cast of solid plutonium. I was transfixed! I must have stared for fifteen minutes. It was while I stood there that I met acclaimed ocular surgeon Dr. Eklund. We spoke at length about science, technology, developing surgical procedures, and even theology. 

We stayed in touch. When later I became an adult he provided a comfortable place to live at his manor in Baltimore where he studied my condition and developed what we both hoped would be a cure.

On the fateful day, I was awakened early and brought by limousine to the George Washington University Hospital. A wheelchair carried me to the pre-op room where nurses transferred me to a hospital bed and prepared me for my procedure. My next stop was an impressive operating suite full of machines, monitors, and people. A gallery above was open and packed with onlookers. I envied them their ability to see from that vantage. The anesthesiologist at my side asked me to count backward from one hundred. I said a prayer to my newfound faith in science and slipped into unconsciousness.

When next I was aware of my surroundings, I could see with perfect clarity. The bright lights of the surgical suite brought out the tiniest details, from the sweat on Dr. Eklund’s brow to the frantic movement of the doctors and nurses, trying in vain to revive my body below.

---

It was about five days after submitting this story that I saw Daredevil, and the way the special effects team chose to visualize (no pun intended) the way the main character sees things around him. It was quite similar to what I described here for how my character sees things that flow in some way.