Quantum Storytelling

I’m under the weather today so I’m going to keep this short.

I saw the movie Domino over the weekend. It was entertaining enough—enough to solve another Quantum problem for me. There was nothing specific in the movie that tipped me off other than the Domino character being such a femme fatale. It gave me some thoughts on where to take Frank’s girlfriend.

This of course got me thinking about creativity and idea synthesis as it always does. I’ve heard some people, especially musicians, talk about working within a vacuum. That is, they don’t want to listen to other peoples’ music or even hear music while they’re songwriting. I can’t be sure but I think I’ve heard the same desire for a vacuum occurs within other mediums.

What I find amusing is that the creator feels they’re being original by blocking outside influences. I try to imagine what I would create in a vacuum, and the first thing that comes to mind is that the vacuum would never be ‘pure’ in any sense of the word. There’s always memories, both personal regarding my life and then there’s the memories of every book I’ve ever read, movie I’ve ever seen, or video game I’ve ever played. There is no perfect way to block past stimulus out.

The more important question is why would you want to?

Another package of research material arrived yesterday. This one had some really good nuggets: Dashiell Hammet Complete Novels, Raymond Chandler: Stories and Early Novels, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, Writing for Comics by Alan Moore, and of course, Firefly.

I’m about midway through Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammet, and it’s really fantastic stuff. I would say even if you’re not writing a detective story, his pacing is something every writer should study. The story literally starts with a bang and doesn’t stop. There is no dead time, long pages of backstory, not a terrible amount of character’s musing or internal monologues. It’s all straightforward, solid, coherent, logical, exciting, rich storytelling. I can’t wait to read more.

As an aside, the Library of America publisher has done a great job with these books. Very slickly hardbound with smooth thin pages and an attached tassel bookmark.

I started watching Firefly last night. I couldn’t really understand what all the buzz was about, as it seems difficult if not impossible for Firefly fans to summarize what’s so cool about the series in a single sentence that conveys the concept accurately. After watching the pilot Serenity 1 & 2, I’m starting to grasp what’s so damn cool about it. For one, the characters are all interesting. They’re properly aligned in conflict with one another in interesting ways; Real Drama.

The pacing is also excellent. Something new, dangerous, or interesting is happening literally every second of screen time. If all his writing is like this, I’m beginning to understand why Joss Whedon has a decent sized gaggle of worshippers.

What’s with Understanding Comics and Writing for Comics? I don’t really intend to write one, although that’s an interesting idea. I think comics as a medium demand an attention to detail and structure that other mediums may not, with the exception of film of course. Take storyboarding and make it an official medium and you’ve got the world of comics. Because I’m interesting in script-writing along with novel-writing, comics are a very rich place to stick your literary nose.

Having recently finished Preacher I must say I’m on CLOUD NINE with all this great writing. I’m starting to get many, many ideas for how I want the construction of my NaNoWriMo story to play out over the course of November.

These are truly exciting times!

I’ve been working on one of my characters for the NaNoWrimo story and I was trying to think of a good character flaw to give him. I want to avoid alcoholism and normal drug use because I think those have been pretty well covered.

I’ve heard about a particular side effect of sleep medications that cause memory loss if you stay awake past the point you’re supposed to go to sleep. I’ve heard stories of people ending up in unusual situations because they stayed awake too long and couldn’t remember what they did or how they got there.

It seems like an interesting concept to play with, but also an addiction to sleep medication is not something I’ve heard or read much about, and so it seems like an interesting angle to attack.

I’m not entirely committed to the idea at this point, which is perhaps one reason why I feel perfectly comfortable sharing it here. I’m still trying to consider all options. Hard boiled and sleep meds don’t really go together. A little voice inside me screams that I could do better than that.

It’s gotten me thinking about the process of course. I had stumbled across Lee Pletzer’s blog a couple days ago where he had a post about character creation.

I generally think of a character I’d like to see. It usually starts with one facet–I look for a perspective that is self-defined by the culture the character grew up or was raised in, or the perspective forced upon them by their job. Their more subtle characteristics always seem to bubble up from there. This is a bit different from say, personality. I feel every character an author creates is at least partially a reflection of themselves, and so in some manner every character will take on certain quirks or personality that reflect the writer’s muse along with a bit of their own personality. Or maybe I just take that for granted.

Either way, I feel the perspective every character brings is more important than whether they like sugar and cream in their coffee, or whether or not they hate lima beans.

I like to take the familiar and put a twist on it. That is the impetus behind the sleep med addiction. I’ve heard, read, and seen too much of the standard alcoholism to really appreciate it in regards to character flaws. Who needs another boozing detective, right?

And so I must search high and low for something else, the 99th idea if you will. What other kinds of character flaws are interesting?

Something that bears dramatic relevance to the theme of the story?

Certainly food for thought!