Archive for the 'Writing' Category

March 15, 2012 | Writing

Christopher Vogler writes “…an Anti-Hero is not the opposite of a Hero, but a specialized kind of Hero, one who may be an outlaw or a villain from the point of view of society, but with whom the audience is basically in sympathy. We identify with these outsiders because we have all felt like outsiders at one time or another.” Richard Riddick definitely fits this description. He’s a murderer, an escaped convict, he’s dangerous, and really, really hot. As I wrote in a response, Riddick is someone you don’t want to run into in a dark and cold alley late at night, or even during the day, but if you’re going to walk down a dark and cold alley late at night he’s the man you want right by your side or leading the way. However you don’t plan on turning your back on him. Even the Elemental Aereon says in her voice over at the beginning of the movie, evil needs to be fought by another type of evil. And Riddick is the evil this world needs to save itself. Convincing Riddick that he’s the one to fight The Lord Marshal is a problem My favorite actor, Humphrey Bogart is the perfect anti-hero. The Big Sleep, Casablanca, and The Maltese Falcon, (yeah I can quote the dialogue from all three).

Vogler cites two types of anti-hero: the first behaves in a regular way but has a wounded or cynical quality and the second is not admirable or likeable. Riddick is a wounded anti-hero, he gets our sympathy and our lust, but to society he’s an outcast. Vogler writes they are rebels, like James Dean or Marlon Brando (another lust inspiring male).

Okay so now back to The Chronicles of Riddick, his hero’s journey, and snappy dialogue. The Fourth Stage of the Hero’s journey is the introduction of the Mentor. I don’t consider Aereon as Riddick’s mentor. I think Imam serves this purpose. Riddick showed ‘trust’ to this one man and when he believes Imam has betrayed his trust he goes looking for him. In Pitch Black Imam at one point asks Riddick if he believes in God. Riddick says he does, just not the way Imam does. Vogler writes that sometime the Mentor must give the hero a push to get him started. Well I think Imam’s death is a hard push. While Riddick is trying to save Imam and his family, Imam sacrifices his life to save them. Riddick finds Imam’s dead body and remembers that the Necromonger who kills Imam has a knife in his back. Those Necromongers are crazy.

Imam’s death pushes Riddick into Stage Five of the hero’s journey, crossing the first threshold. “A villain may kill, harm, threaten, or kidnap someone close to the hero, sweeping aside all hesitation”. Riddick is about to enter the new world, the world of the Necromongers.

In a great hall the inhabitants of Helion Prime have been gathered to meet The Lord Marshal, actor Colm Feore, and The Purifier, Linus Roache, who went on to play DA Cutter on Law and Order. The Purifier says: “We all began as something else.” The Lord Marshall tells them this is their last chance and when one of the leaders challenges him, The Lord Marshall rips out his soul. Everyone bows and the camera focuses on Riddick who refuses to bow.
Anybody got any dialogue?

Once Riddick dispatches the Necromonger, who killed Imam, and keeps the knife, ( a very important tool) he is taken to The Lord Marshall’s interrogation cell by Dame Vaako, the actress Thandie Newton. She reminds me of Lady Macbeth, willing to do whatever is necessary to put her husband, Lord Vaako, Karl Urban on the throne. The Purifier accompanies them. It’s a trap, but now Riddick has entered the Special World of the Necromongers and he sees how Necromongers are created. Of course Dame Vaako leads him into a trap and The Lord Marshal discovers that Riddick is one of his most feared enemies, a Furyan. The Lord Marshall gives orders to kill Riddick, but The Purifier releases Riddick so he escapes. As he’s chased, guess who shows up? Toombs. Toombs shoots down a ship chasing Riddick and recaptures his prisoner.

Dialogue?
Riddick: ‘A five man crew this time?’

Vogler’s Stage Six: Tests, Allies, Enemies. Riddick has passed the first test. Now his enemy Toombs rescues him and in some sense becomes his ally by taking him off Helion Prime. What they don’t realize is they are Riddick’s pawns. The dialogue on Toombs ship is pretty good. Riddick persuades Toombs to take him to Crematoria where Jack has been incarcerated.

Dialogue?
Riddick: “I don’t know about this crew, Toombs. Maybe you should have told them what happened to the last one.”

Tomorrow we’ll finish Riddick’s journey. Looking forward to seeing you here.

March 13, 2012 | Uncategorized,Writing

“One last question, merc, and you better get this one right? Whose ship is this? Riddick asked Toombs.
“Mine,” Toombs answers.
Then Riddick shoves him out of the vessel and takes off.

Stage Two of the Hero’s journey is: The Call to Adventure. According to Vogler, the hero is faced with a challenge, problem and can no longer stay in his Ordinary World. Although if it were me, getting off that frozen planet would be a no brainer. But for Riddick he now knows the bounty was placed on his head by Imam, one of two he rescued off the alien planet. Someone he ‘showed trust.’ Vogler states: “The Call to Adventure establishes the stakes of the game, and makes clear the hero’s goal: to win the treasure or the lover, to get revenge or right a wrong, to achieve a dream, confront a challenge, or change a life.” With Riddick it looks like he’s out for revenge, because since he’s a wanted man he’s not really righting a wrong unless he turns himself into the authorities. Yeah right.

Once on Helion Prime, Riddick breaks into Imam’s, (the actor David Keith) home and cleans up, physically. And he’s looking really good. When Imam comes home, Riddick quietly and deadly confronts him. Imam, worried about his wife and young daughter, tells Riddick that if it weren’t for the threat of invasion he would have never revealed where Riddick was hiding. Imam’s daughter, Ziza, isn’t afraid of Riddick and asks him: “Are you going to kill the new monsters this time?” Imam responds: “Such are our bedtime stories.” Riddick wants the pay day off his head. So Imam summons three clerics who come to try and persuade Riddick to help them stop the Necromonger invaders. Then Aereon, (actress Judi Dench), an Elemental who was the one who placed the bounty on Riddick’s head. She explains her reason is because he’s a Furyan, the one race the Lord Marshal fears. As she explains the situation, Riddick says “Maybe you should pretend you’re talking to someone educated in the penal system, better yet don’t pretend.”

What’s your favorite line from this scene?

Stage Three of the Hero’s Journey as written by Vogler is: Refusal of the Call – The Reluctant Hero. Riddick is indeed a reluctant hero. He tells Imam, after he beats the crap out of the soldiers, it’s not his fight. Imam challenges him by telling him that young Jack never forgave him for leaving her and she left looking for him. Vogler says: “The hero has not yet fully committed to the journey and may still be thinking of turning back.” Riddick leaves looking for way off the planet, but witnesses the invasion.

Imam flees with his family and they are separated. Riddick saves Imam first and then his family.
Any lines from this scene?

Wednesday I’ll get to the really good stuff. Lots of Vin Diesel, Karl Urban, and the adventure begins.

March 12, 2012 | Writing

Welcome Richard Riddick fans and writers. Of course you might be both and that’s fantastic. Last week a writer friend of mine Jenna Howard and I traded favorite dialogue from The Chronicles of Riddick. I have several other friends who love the movie, or is it Vin Diesel, or both, and can quote dialogue scene by scene. So as I ease my way back into writing in 2012 I thought it would be fun to discuss our favorite dialogue, the scene it’s from, and how the movie fits into the Hero’s Journey as so well written by Christopher Vogler in his book, The Writer’s Journey, Mythic Structure for Writers. Vogler’s work is based on Joseph Campbell’s most influential work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Beginning today Monday, March 12th I’ll post a scene and you can respond with your favorite dialogue from that scene. Then I’m going to briefly describe what stage Riddick is in The Hero’s Journey. Vogler in his book writes the following. “A hero leaves her comfortable, ordinary surroundings to venture into a challenging, unfamiliar world. It may be an outward journey to an actual place; a labyrinth, forest or cave, a strange city or country, a new locale that becomes the arena for her conflict with antagonistic, challenging forces.” Vogler goes on to write that the journey can be an internal journey and that the hero “grows and changes, making a journey from one way of being to the next; from despair to hope, weakness to strength, folly to wisdom, love to hate, and back again.”

Before we delve into The Chronicles of Riddick I think a short review of the first movie, Pitch Black is needed. I originally wanted to see this movie because Claudia Black was cast in it and at the time she was on Farscape, another scifi favorite series of mine. But once Vin Diesel came on the screen as the captured convict, Richard Riddick, I was hooked. In Pitch Black a passenger transport vehicle crash lands on a planet. Riddick is being transported to a penal colony. He is a murderer with shiny eyes that can’t tolerate light or sunlight. The captain is killed, and the docking pilot, Carolyn Fry is about to jettison the passengers to save her life when the navigator stops her and he is killed leaving her in charge. As the remaining passengers try to find a way off the planet they discover that the geologists died when the planet was plunged into darkness 22 years ago and it’s about to happen again. The alien creatures come out looking for food and will kill the small group. Their only chance of survival to use the old ship’s power cells and use a small craft they’ve found. Riddick is determined to get off the planet and if he has to kill or leave the others behind he will. His one soft spot is, Jack, who everyone assumes is a boy and really a teenage girl that idolizes Riddick. Finally there are only four left, Imam, a holy man, Jack, Carolyn, and Riddick. Forced to leave Imam and Jack in a cave Carolyn and Riddick make their way to the ship and Riddick tries to persuade her to desert the other two and leave with him. Carolyn refuses even engaging in a fight with Riddick. She says ‘I’d die for them.’ Riddick returns to the cave with her and rescues Imam and Jack. Jack says she never doubted him. As they near the ship, Riddick is attacked. Carolyn goes back for the injured Riddick and is killed. Riddick yells “Not for me.” He returns to the ship and is about to take off with Imam and Jack when he powers down the engines and waits until the aliens crawl over the ship. Then he fires up the engines and kill many of the aliens as he pilots off the planet. He tells Jack to tell people he died on the planet.

So now we come to The Chronicles of Riddick, the sequel. The movie begins with a narration by Aereon who explains who the Necromongers are and their leader The Lord Marshal. The Lord Marshal is determined to convert the universe to the undead by destroying planets. She says that in ordinary times evil would be fought by good, but this time evil should be fought by another type of evil. Richard Riddick is not your regular hero, he’s an anti-hero, hero. And we’ll talk about this more this week.

The first stage in the hero’s journey is: The Ordinary World. According to Vogler you show the hero in his ordinary world. Riddick for the past five years has been living on a frozen planet, hiding from ‘mercs’ who are trying to collect the bounty on his head. This isn’t my idea of a normal, drab existence, but for Riddick it must be. He’s deflecting the mercs from Imam and Jack whose lives would be in danger if he’d stayed with them. So the story opens with Riddick being chased across the frozen tundra by a spaceship commanded by Toombs, portrayed by Nick Chinlund. Riddick lures Toombs into a cave and dispatches one by one Toombs’ crew.

One of my favorite lines is Toombs when one his crew suggest the cave is too tight to follow Riddick. Toombs says: “So throw on a fresh pair of panties and let’s get this right.”

So what’s yours?

January 30, 2011 | Writing

Today is Sunday, January 30, 2011 and I just finished setting up my writing goals for the year. You might think I’m thirty days or sixty days late since you’re supposed to begin January first. Why? December is filled with holiday craziness, last minute things to do, parties, presents, family coming in, family leaving. And in the chaos of it all I’m expected to be goal-oriented, write down what I intend to do in 2011. I needed time to breathe, review 2010 – after 2010 ends, consult my change partner Laurie Powers (who thinks I’m nuts in my goals for this year and yet is willing to support my madness), write them down, scratch a few out, add a couple, tinker with how I could achieve them. 2010 was when I finally got healthy again and I intend to respect my positive physical condition, be active, be creative. Take good care of me.

So my question is: Have you already failed in any one or more your goals for 2011? If you said you weren’t going to eat chocolate until RWA New York, have you had a twix bar? Exercise daily? Did you commit to writing every day for a certain amount of time and so far only written two days a week? Maybe one day and no longer than an hour? Does this mean you’ve failed for 2011? No. There are eleven months, three hundred and twenty-six days by my math. I’m including January thirty-first but not counting Christmas, Thanksgiving, fourth of July, RWA (five days), and your birthday.

I believe in not setting yourself up to fail, but make goals that challenge you when you’re thinking straight and not at the end of the year when happy chaos reigns. After the revelry dies down, people go back to work and school, the house is clean, and you catch up with yourself, then this is the time to set your goals. You have a clear head, clean paper, and can see what you want to achieve in the upcoming months. By the second week of January I had my writing goals written down, put each project on a calendar and began fulfilling each goal. Write, revise daily – check. Have more than one project going on at a time – check. Submit at least once a month beginning in February – check. Enjoy the process – double check. Comic Con – triple check. Enjoy and spoil my granddaughter -quadruple check. Play tennis – okay only a double check. Yeah exercise is a goal, twice a week at the health club – half a check. I spread my goals over twelve months, ending January, 2012 and applied a lesson learned when I was a banker. Many large retailer’s fiscal year ends January after the holiday season ends. So why not do the same thing?

Goals are broken, sometimes it’s inevitable. They’re made to be pushed back another month, if necessary. Life gets in the way, you get in the way. Something always happens. If nothing happened and you could work through your goals without a hitch you’d be worried the world was about to end. Goals are made to be changed if the original one isn’t working out. Be flexible, realistic. Be accountable to yourself, don’t give up if you wrote twenty days in January and didn’t the rest of the month. Ask why, assess what you did right, dust your ego off and get back to work.

Laurie made me promise that if I missed a goal, I wouldn’t be depressed. Since I just received a rejection Saturday, we were able to quickly put my promise to the test. I was dejected, upset, and decided that this rejection was for work last year which has been greatly revised since I submitted it, so the rejection belonged in 2010. The past. It’s a Lion King thing. I’ll move forward and submit elsewhere, I’ve got a quality list of agents and editors to send my work to. And I came up with my way to deal with rejection. I’m buying a sterling silver stackable ring for each 2011 rejection. A thin band I can wear on each finger. This could get ugly so let’s hope that I only have twenty or less rejections before my first sale.