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prydon · 2 years

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also curious about 19 in regards to sbs, how do you plan a 180k fic??

uhhhhh poorly, haha. but this is a fun one to get into, so here's some insight into the very messy process.

19) when it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

sbs was originally plotted to be only 30k and end where canon left off, so it definitely wasn't all planned from the beginning. i wish i still had my original outline, but it was just an email draft that i later deleted...

basically, i had some simple ideas that i bullet pointed into chapters. it went: jupeter feeling each other's pain as kids -> nureyev realizes juno is his soulmate in murderous mask -> juno realizes they're soulmates in frp but still leaves -> they feel each other's pain in s2 -> they reunite and get back together -> some fun drama with the broken leg and dark matters bot in s3 -> nureyev gets captured by someone and juno is able to rescue them bc of their connection.

at the time i started plotting it, i assumed we'd know nureyev's debt backstory before i finished (ha) so i didn't even plan any of that. then once i realized we weren't gonna get that reveal in time, i came up with my own idea, went back and retrofitted it into the story, and everything sorta... spiraled from there.

it's also important to know that a good 60k of sbs was added in editing while i was in the process of posting it, per revisions me and my beta thought of lol. a lot of that 60k was me seeing problems in the fic, fixing them, and then having to go back and add set up for those fixes.

in general, A LOT of retrofitting and working backwards happened. for example: okay, i want nureyev to be captured by new kinshasa bc it would add drama, and him being rescued by his creditors is a good way to show how powerful they are. but why? who would turn him in? well, his creditors know his identity, but they wouldn't do it, they need him. someone who works for them, then. how? maybe they bug him. who would be able to do that? oh, maybe a security guard who has access to his comms. but why? well, they want his bounty. for what? maybe to pay for medical bills. OH, i can link that to the soulmate thing bc pain... etc etc.

tbh, working backwards is such a useful strategy and i recommend it to everyone though unfortunately it's way harder to do when you're writing something serialized that isn't finished in advance.

this is also where a beta definitely comes in handy, too. there was a (bad) version of the fic where nureyev had a big crying breakdown in what later became the vacation chapter, and my beta pointed out that it just didn't work at all bc it left nureyev with nowhere to go in terms of being emotionally vulnerable in front of juno. she was totally right, and that feedback resulted in me cutting the breakdown entirely and moving it to after the ship crashes on the desert island.

long story short, sbs is in many ways a franken-fic and not at all my best showing when it comes to planning, so... probably not really much there that's worth emulating :'D beyond "get lucky and get a wonderful beta who expects a lot out of you" and "if you do add a ton of stuff that you didn't originally plan, remember to add set up for it too".

#asks #anonymous #i very much doubt anyone cares enough to read this whole ramble but it was fun to write out aiusfhasufh #thank you for the opportunity anon!

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r0b0tb0y · 4 years

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do you think you could share some of ur planning process in your writing? do you center them around big plot points or do you move chronologically? how detailed are your notes? are you inspired by a certain mood or theme, or are your beginning ideas more tangible? looking to compare other authors' processes to my own.

Thanks for the interesting questions, anon! I’d be delighted to share.

Usually I start with a key problem/situation/emotion that I want to explore. Then I surround that with scenes/actions that are necessary to make that moment happen. Often I find a way to string a few different ideas together: sometimes my first fic in a fandom will be me trying to pack in all the concepts I want to explore. I really like working to structures: I do 5+1s, Hero’s Journey, word limits, flashback/flashforwards, and so on, to make the pacing click. The sequence that I sketch out here becomes my outline.

Most importantly for me, and probably different from how other writers work: I always know how my stories are going to end. Maybe not word-for-word the final scene, but I know exactly which story elements will come together and the mood I want to close on. Everything in the outline and the draft is designed to build toward that ending: this is why I often have plot twists and callbacks.

I might also have a playlist, wordbank, images, or other kinds of sketchy little notes. These usually live in the doc with the fics: and I confess that I write almost all my fics in the Notes app so I can access it anywhere.

My outlines are dot points, and then I fill in each scene. Often I do the filling out of order: if inspiration strikes for a certain scene, I’ll write a few sentences in the outline. This happens often with pieces of dialogue: I usually have the dialogue planned out for key moments before I start properly drafting. At this stage I will also try to find ways to work in repetitions and motifs: a recent example is the line ‘the world keeps turning,’ which appears three times in Hanging the Moon (you haven’t read the last one yet).

This stage is often where I abandon a WIP. I’ll get a nice tight structure all figured out, and the process of filling in the gaps is exhausting—I’ve already written down all the good bits! This is why a lot of my stories have ellipses, omissions, and gaps: I’d rather a story be finished with things left unsaid, than unfinished. Often my stories/scenes start and end abruptly because I’ve decided I’m done, you know all you need to know.

Once drafting starts, I try to write chronologically. I do this pretty consistently with longfics, although my later chapter outlines become super detailed as I insert more notes, and the last few chapters are more like filling in the gaps. With short fics, I tend to write key scenes out of order: I drafted the final ~500 words of the Poe/Mandalorian oneshot when the rest was just dot points. This usually requires a bit of retrofitting/redrafting, making sure the whole thing is cohesive and the beginning clicks with the ending.

Most of the reason this process works for me is because I love writing endings: once I’ve got my heart set on where I want to go, I’ll put in the hard work to get us there.

Under the cut is an early version of my outline for Hanging the Moon—cut off at chapter 24, no spoilers! In the outline, I bolded the beats in the Hero’s Journey to shape the narrative around it. There are lines that end up in the narration (’stubbornest jaw in the galaxy’) and snippets of dialogue (’We have minutes!’). You’ll see that it starts out detailed, and in other parts left loose so I can figure it out later.

The order of some details changes, and you can see that Part III is still relatively vague: the Hive is there, and the yurt on Yeosi, but that’s it. Part IV and Part V are more detailed, but you can’t see them yet!

Some fun details:

Early on I was considering writing Poe as deaf: he ended up with supernaturally good hearing because he needed to be able to eavesdrop on the other characters in important moments.

I wanted to work in an aside about this being same-universe with Cargo with a mention of Poe’s old mentor. Ultimately it didn’t work, because Poe’s Navy training (which he didn’t have in Cargo) became plot-significant, and I wanted to focus on Leia as his mentor.

There are some things mentioned much more directly than in the notes than the final narrative—Poe’s adoration of Finn’s outdoor voice, for instance.

There are some important clues left out of this version: it’s no more spoilery than the fic itself. I know how to spot the important stuff that I clearly added in to foreshadow later plot points, but they don’t stand out any more here than they do in the final version. It’s useful to only write as much as the reader knows, but I can also tell this is an early draft because there are important hints that I hadn’t written in there yet…

No chapter breaks yet! These came along relatively late, as my chapters fell into place at an evenly-sized 1200-1500 words. Some chapter breaks came up naturally, and others I added after drafting to keep the pacing consistent. I added chapter titles (often silly ones snatched from funny lines in the draft) so I’d have a good reference point for where I was in such a big story.

That was probably a much longer-winded answer than you were looking for! I hope it helps you figure out your own process. Everyone’s is different: you’ll find what works for you!

#fic #about #hanging the moon #Anonymous

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nightmareonfilmstreet · 6 years

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The Monster Behind The Mask: Remembering FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III

Friday the 13th Part III was released theatrically in the United States on Friday, August 13, 1982. 36 years ago tonight. Does that make you feel as old as Pamela Vorhees’ grey sweater? If the answer is a resounding ‘No, you fool – I was born in the 80’s, I had to wait at least a decade until I watched Jason mutilating camp counselors’, then welcome to this special look back on one of the more divisive Friday the 13th films. Grab your machetes, pull down your ice-hockey masks and don your wacky green/red 3-D spectacles, because we’re heading to Higgins Haven for some stabby-stabby fun with Jason Voorhees.

By the time Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) came around in theaters, audiences had become swamped with low-quality slasher titles. Slasher film fatigue had set in hard, and although Jason’s second outing grossed over $21.7 million in the United States on a budget of $1.25 million, fans were disappointed with a rehashing of the original story, and it failed to pull in the original’s box office success. The fact that they gave no explanation to the ridiculous ending of Part II showed that the people in charge didn’t really put much value in the continuity or story progression. One thing everyone could agree on though: Jason needed to be scarier. He needed to be a real boogeyman. And to get there, there were going to need a gimmick to get that cold hard cash-vein open again. They needed…3D.

A New Dimension In Terror

The titles jumped out at you like Superman’s cosmic intro, only….cheaper looking. Not to mention a bombastic funky 70’s inspired theme that I totally dug, man. What you have to remember is that in 1982 although 3D film-making was still in its infancy (Jaws 3D anyone?) by 2010, it had become almost commonplace for any film released to be retrofitted for a new dimension of sight and sound. Friday the 13th Part III, however, paved the way for future 3D films. You may have a strong fondness for everything three dimensional, but for all the people that love donning plastic visors on their head the other bemoan the comically irritating ploy to cough up more money at the box office. I wear glasses and absolutely hate 3D films becuase it feels like I’m wearing glasses on top of glasses…which I am!

Unless you have your own pair of flimsy pre-revolutionary 3D glasses, (which I doubt you have) you’re going to see a lot of shots of people waggling sticks at the camera, having yo-yo’s thrown at them. You’ll also be treated to an overly long lingering shot of a crazy old man sticking an eyeball uncomfortably close to the screen. Steve Miner (who also directed Part II) returned to the director’s post to helm Friday the 13th: Part III and this new dimension of terror that continues straight after the events of Part 2.

The Higgins Haven Massacre

Just like its predecessor, the film opens with an extraordinarily long recap of the previous film. We see final girl Ginny (Amy Steel) running away from ‘Baghead Jason,’ trapped in the makeshift cabin Jason has been holed up in with his mother’s severed head lovingly affixed to a small alter. Ginny tricks Jason into thinking she’s his mother, by donning her sweater and generally berating the child-like minded serial killer. Before she can use her machete on him however, Jason sees his mummified mumma’s head and avoids her killing blow. Paul (John Furey) appears and begins wrestling with Jason. While Jason is distracted, Ginny hacks him in slow-motion with his own machete. They assume he’s dead, but we see Jason slowly moving off the screen. Cue: Opening Credits.

Originally, Friday the 13th Part III was supposed to focus on lone survivor Ginny Field, (Sorry, Paul) who checks herself into a mental institution after her traumatic escapade with the pillow-wearing, dungaree killer. The film would have been similar in that vein to the popular Halloween II (1981), with Jason tracking down Ginny in the hospital, but that idea was abandoned when actress Amy Steel declined to reprise her role. Perhaps she didn’t want to be typecast as the scream queen for this particular franchise, but by 1986 she was again up on screen evading a knife-wielding killer in the slasher parody April’s Fool Day (1986). There was also speculation that producers were worried fans would reject a Friday the 13th which didn’t follow the established formula.

I would love to find a script with this narrative, because the franchise may have steered in a different direction (or it could have died a horrible death right there and then). Every good franchise needs a protagonist the audience can root for. Alien (1979) had Ripley, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) had Nancy and Halloween (1978) had Laurie. You could argue that Friday the 13th had Tommy Jarvis, but he didn’t appear until the fourth installment. Looks like Steel missed the boat on this one if the powers that be really wanted her as the series’ Final Girl. With 12 films, a whole bunch of novels, video games, and the short-lived television series under their belt though. it looks like they went the right way.

Our new group of young victims are as follows: New Final Girl Chris (Dana Kimmell), ‘Spanish Phoebe Cates’ Vera (Catherine Parks), hot and steamy couple Debbie (Tracie Savage) and Andy (Jeffrey Rogers), hippie potheads Chili (Rachel Howard) and Chuck (David Katims), and franchise favourite, the lovable self-deprecating prankster Shelly Finkelstein (Larry Zerner).

The group arrives at Higgins Haven, a cottage (with a barn!) a mere stones-throw away from Packanack cabin, where the previous slaughter took place. The Scooby Doo/Cheech and Chong gang meet up with country farm boy Rick (Paul Kratka). It’s quickly established that he and Chris had a romantic tryst during their last summer at the lakeside cottage, and Rick instantly tries to get back to where things left off by feeling her up. Not cool, man. Not. Cool.

Chris explains that she wants to get to know him again but he responds that there are only so many ‘cold showers’ he could take. Wowzer. He essentially behaves like this for the entirety of the movie (bar one scene when Chris recounts a traumatic experience) but the weird thing is the filmmakers seem to want you to empathize with this guy – like he’s the hero of the movie. Film of the time, I guess?

After some tomfoolery from Shelley (and without the slightest irony of axe-wielding maniac foreshadowing), we’re introduced to a group of bikers that marks the first time in the franchise we’re introduced to black actors. It’s just a shame that they turn out to be scumbags. All the while, Jason’s been hiding in the barn, looking menacing from an over the shoulder perspective. He dispatches of the bikers when they arrive at the cottage to take their revenge on Shelley and the gang, following an altercation at a shop in town. Don’t assume that Jason is here to protect anyone though. He quickly sets his sights on the college co-eds and, of course, things really ramp up when he dons the now iconic ice hockey mask for the first time.

People will argue what their favourite Friday the 13th movie is until the end of days. Did you like the characterization of the teenagers in Part 2 or 4? Did you simply enjoy the hack n’ slash nature of the original? Were you excited when Jason went to Hell? Some people just want to watch cheesy 80’s effects and have some popcorn while devouring grisly death sequences with their eyes. But something doesn’t sit right with the third outing. They could have gone a much deeper, darker route with Chris‘ that might have lead Mr. Vorohees‘ down a very sketchy road. I’m obviously talking about…

The Final Girl

Late in the film, we see Chris and Rick sharing some quality catch-up time together. Up until this point Chris has been hinting that something terrible happened to her but now she’s finally ready to share her story. Even after Amy Steel declined to return, it’s safe to assume that some fragments from earlier drafts were kept to highlight Ginny’s (now Chris’s) trauma from the previous movie.

Chris explains that, while on vacation, she came home late one night which caused her to have an argument with her folks. She fled her house and ran into the woods where she fell asleep under a tree. Some time later, she was awoken by the sound of footsteps. The footsteps belong to none other than Jason and he grabs at her legs as she struggles to get away. She goes on to explain that she woke up in her own bed the following morning, without any recollection of what transpired after she was captured.

So what happened here? It’s unlikely that she would have survived an attack by Jason, so how did she escape? The series has been known for its nonsensical dream sequences and poorly crafted plot devices, but this is a pretty big moment for Jason. There are theories that she was raped by Jason and there are novels that further explain the story, but some people on the film claim this ambiguous resolution was always planned since actually outright calling it a rape would be too much for audiences to take at the time. Others say Dana Kimmell who played Chris, was a devout Mormon and forced the producer’s hand since she was uncomfortable with going so far as to call it a rape scene. However, at the start of the film, a reporter states that “Reports of cannibalism and sexual mutilations are still unconfirmed, at this hour.” It would seem that someone in the production wanted Jason to have a much darker streak than his previous appearances.

There are many articles and essays about The Final Girl in horror films, but this one scene could have changed the balance of how viewers perceived Jason Voorhees as a child-like killing machine with mommy issues, into something far more dangerous and disturbing.

Friday the 13th Part III is a divisive film. The franchise needed a shot to the arm and ultimately it would be 3D effects supervisor Martin Jay Sadoff that inadvertently created a movie monster boogeyman. As it happens, Sadoff kept a bag full of hockey gear with him and the crew wanted a mask to avoid applying prosthetic make up on actor Richard Brooker all the time. This is the first film where we see Jason for an extended period of time, as opposed to keeping him in the shadows constantly. The plot is nonsensical, sure – the characters are paper thin and forgettable, the 3D effects are mostly a gimmick – but in the cannon of the series, it catapulted Jason to an iconic status. And for that, Part 3 will forever remain ingrained in fan’s minds.

How do you rank Friday The 13th Part III. Is it one of your favourites, or do you consider it one of the weaker additions to the franchise? Let us know in the comments below, over on Twitter, or in our Horror Group on Facebook!

You can also take a look behind the scenes of Friday the 13th Part 3D with host, Paul Kratka, in this insightful fan driven documentary featuring untold stories and interviews with several franchise favorites, never-before-seen location footage and set photography, as well as a touching look back on the life of Richard Brooker.

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briangroth27 · 6 years

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The Cloverfield Paradox Review

I absolutely love Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane, so I was stoked when God Particle was announced as the third Cloverfield film. The delays in its theatrical release were frustrating, but I hoped they would only improve it and make the wait worthwhile. When Netflix renamed it The Cloverfield Paradox and released it right after the Super Bowl, I was shocked and excited. And it was…underwhelming, unfortunately. I absolutely believe there’s a great concept at the core of this movie, but it’s nowhere near the quality of the first two.

Full Spoilers…

The story of a particle accelerator experiment seeking to create an unlimited energy source for an Earth quickly running out of them was a solid premise that felt reasonably realistic and relevant to problems we may be facing in the near future. Ava Hamilton’s (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) dual emotional struggles of leaving her husband (Roger Davies) back on Earth for years while she tested the accelerator and her attempts to grapple with the deaths of her children in an accidental house fire gave the film some strong emotional resonance. Mbatha-Raw carried the emotional arc of the movie very well (and she had the best material to work with), though the middle of the film seemed to lose focus on that aspect. In the end, I enjoyed the way she was able to push her alternate self onto a better road by warning her about the house fire along with providing her the instructions on making their particle accelerator work. Hamilton’s brief desire to jump ship and live on this alternate universe with her kids was understandable, but I liked that they referenced the realism of that situation: those weren’t really her kids and they already had a mother. I definitely appreciated that they didn’t make it an easy decision, like having the alternate Hamilton die in the fire instead of her kids. The rest of the characters were pretty thinly drawn and didn’t capture my attention the way Hamilton did. They were fine for what we did get out of them—and I appreciate the diversity of the casting throughout the movie—but they struggled to escape the stock characterizations they were given. For example, a subplot about a parallel version of Schmidt (Daniel Bruhl) being a traitor only served to give Mina (Elizabeth Debicki) a reason to try and kill him, without giving him the chance to reflect on who he might’ve become or revealing some hidden truth about this version of himself (or giving her a moment to realize that now she was the traitor). That all the astronauts represented different countries (and eventually, different universes) was a nice way of reinforcing the theme of cooperation and the idea that the only way to save the world is if we work together. The scenes set on Earth—apparently added after test audiences wanted to know what was happening there—didn’t work that well for me (despite solid acting) because they didn’t show much; they ended up taking screentime from the more interesting plot in space without swapping in something equally engaging. If you’re going to tease apocalyptic tears in the fabric of space and time, show us what comes out of them! If it was meant to be a thematic tie to 10 Cloverfield Lane’s bunker setting, it didn’t work for me. And if the escape pod or the crashed alternate Cloverfield Station was supposed to be the mystery debris at the end of the original film, that could’ve been explained better.

I thought the physics gone crazy was fun, creepy, weird, and imaginative, but I would've liked them to push things even further, particularly given any logic rules seemed to be out the window. Instead of the "very similar Earth" they traveled to, I wish they had gone much bigger and visited the dimension all the aliens and monsters are coming from (“Earth is gone!” was a cool hook, but finding out they’d just moved the station across the solar system was a letdown, even with the alternate Hamilton stuff). Not only would a dimension of original aliens be more innovative than what they did (and the danger would've been bigger, showcasing their escape from a universe gone mad), but it would've worked as more of a direct backstory to the rest of the Cloverfield films instead of just saying all the weirdness is a completely unintentional result of an unrelated accident. Scientists trying to out-think the impossible to get back to their dimension would've been a fun challenge for their logic-driven minds, while inadvertently opening doors to those horrors throughout the multiverse as they got home would’ve been a better gut-punch twist ending than just a massive Clover showing up (think of all the alternate versions of Hamilton’s kids who will now suffer because of the monsters she let into their worlds). I would have cut the conspiracy theory exposition about the station and just showed a montage of it happening (with a Hamilton voice-over explaining it), complete with scenes from the other two movies, making the link between films a surprise. Additionally, if you wanted to continue Hamilton’s story, you could have her set out to fix the mess she inadvertently caused (which, yes, sounds a lot like Abrams’ series Fringe, which had a similar event break physics in multiple universes). Unfortunately, it seems a more solid connection would've been impossible with the way this movie was made: God Particle was a standalone film that had Cloverfield connections retrofitted into it during production (so was 10 Cloverfield Lane, but that was a far stronger solo effort and it was less important to the overall Cloverfield mythos). Had this been written as a Cloverfield movie from the start, it would've been much tighter and stronger. As it stands, it feels more like a good idea that didn't reach its potential.

That said, I don't think they ever needed to connect these movies into a shared universe in the first place. Abrams' initial idea of Cloverfield being a "theme park" with each movie being an unconnected but thematically-linked "ride" was cool; sort of a cinematic Twilight Zone. Still, this was an interesting way of connecting the films without having to explicitly explain how each new movie fits in (particularly if they continue folding previously unconnected movies into the Cloverfield umbrella, like the upcoming Overlord). Whatever craziness is going on in future installments, we can just assume it's happening in a different time/reality from the other films (unless a character recurs).

The Cloverfield Paradox is fun and showcases a strong performance from Mbatha-Raw, but unfortunately falls short of its predecessors. Luckily, this isn’t a conventional franchise, so this one’s untapped potential doesn’t hurt the other films in the series or create unnecessary work for future sequels to pick up the slack. I wouldn’t mind seeing Mbatha-Raw’s Hamilton set out to stop the breaches (maybe she could team up with Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Michelle from 10 Cloverfield Lane!), only to show up in the aliens’ dimension so that we could explore the weirdness to the fullest in a true, from-the-first-draft Cloverfield movie.

Check out more of my reviews, opinions, and original short stories here!

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