Friday Finds

Should be Reading hosts Friday Finds—an opportunity to share on their site “books you ‘found’ and added to your To Be Read (TBR) list.” Mine is Spheres of Influence by Ryk E. Spoor.   

The vivid cover attracted my attention, and when I looked it over in a bookstore, I found the writing style was somewhat similar to mine: A minimal amount of dialog tags (e.g., he said, he asked, he whispered, he shouted, etc.). The way the dialog is included in paragraphs should show who is speaking. 

I made an exception to my current practice of buying fiction in the form of e-books. I bought it from that bookstore as a way of rewarding them for allowing me to grab it off their shelf look it over, and as a way of having the cover artwork lying around. 

Ender’s Game Joke Fail

On Sunday evening, I visited my church’s youth group, which I’ve done on other occasions. I purposefully arrived late because I knew they were having a nerf gun battle at the start. You have to imagine over thirty middle schoolers and high schoolers battling it out inside a church building. I watched the last part of it from outside and decided it wasn’t the size of the gun, it was speed and strategy that mattered. 

photo by JKDesigns 

After that, they all sat down, and we were asked to name things we were thankful for. I decided to start with something funny, so I said, “I saw Ender’s Game, so I’m glad I got here after your foosball game.”

Obviously, I made a mistake by saying “foosball” instead of “nerf gun,” but I don’t think it mattered. A couple of the kids chuckled. The rest of the 30+ kids stared at me, not making a sound.

So I don’t think I should quit my day job.

I recovered from that and made a strategic statement. I said, “Not all the adults in church will say this, but I’m thankful for the internet. It makes research a lot easier. And as long as you watch yourself, it’s no different from walking into a bookstore.” I was indicating there was no real moral difference, because I didn’t want them to think that all the adults are a bunch of stick-in-the-mud types.

Not long after that, I realized the senior pastor had walked into the back of the room and must have heard what I said. He likes to rail against the internet from the pulpit.

They had leftover pizza from earlier in the evening that they were urging people to take. I wasn’t going to eat anything, but I finally snagged a piece and ate it on the way to my car. That night, I had bad food poisoning and was desperately trying to rip the cellophane open to some pink bismuth (the generic form of Pepto Bismol).

So that was my sparkly evening.

(To see my review of Ender’s Game, click here.) 

Review of Ender’s Game

I remember reading the novella Ender’s Game in a 1979 issue of Analog. I never read the novel it was expanded into, but I remember the original story: Ender’s training, the weightless game of propelling themselves towards the opponent’s goal, and Bean. I remember vividly one of the battles in space, and the concern of one of the commanders that they were “pounding the nails in”—meaning that they were crucifying Ender. Then there was the final game, where Ender would be up against their finest game master, hopelessly outnumbered in ships. There was the odd reaction of the commanders, who went into despair because they didn’t understand Ender’s strategy—odd for adults to react to a game that way. And of course, the climax of the story, and how Ender fared. After all these years, I remember the story.

This movie delivers. Eleven year-old Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is chosen to lead humanity’s efforts to fend off an alien threat. Trained from a young age in strategy, he simply thinks and reacts differently than a normal person would. Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) sees him as a thoroughbred and keeps pushing and pushing him. But as Major Anderson (Viola Davis) asks, “What will be left of the boy?”

The supporting actors playing the other children in the combat school are terrific. Normally, the temptation would be to show child actors doing cutesy things, but the movie shows them in all their earnestness. The weightless games they play are astounding, and it was right to wait until the special effects business was sufficiently mature to make this movie. All the moral quandaries are there on whether it is right to make Ender such a matchless child soldier, but we know how this will be resolved, we know Ender will be in it for the finish.

Ender’s Game is the best movie I’ve seen this year. (As a note of caution, this movie features children, but was written for adults. Middle graders and below will not truly understand the moral quandaries. Think of William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies. 

Blockbuster Closing

It’s the end of an era: Blockbuster announced it’s closing their remaining stores. Personally, I preferred Hollywood Video. Remember those? Anybody? Anybody?

photo by Dwight Burdette

Someday you will tell your grandchildren about how you had to rent these disks to see movies, from physical stores. Then you had to drive back and return them in a few days. And sometimes, you even used paper money to pay for them. 

Carrie publicity stunt

I don’t plan on seeing the remake of Carrie. But here’s a publicity stunt that was done before the movie was released, pulled on unsuspecting customers at a coffee shop. 

The woman with the sunglasses perched on top her head had the best reaction. But the guy wearing glasses who kept hold of his coffee cake for at least part of it was pretty funny.  

Tesla Fire - Writing Hint?

Recently here in the state of Washington a Tesla made headlines by going up in flames—and the fire started in the battery. Is there a writing lesson here? 

photo by Plug In America

People assume that batteries are safe compared to something nasty like gasoline—and I’m certainly not saying this is evidence that Tesla batteries are unsafe. But consider: A tank full of gas has to contain enough energy to propel a car weighing thousands of pounds at freeway speeds for a considerable distance. A battery in an electric car has to contain a similar amount of energy. A moment’s reflection will reveal that the potential for fiery disaster exists with either sort of propulsion.

I already had this concept in mind because of a steampunk discussion at a science fiction convention. An artist there was an enthusiastic fan of a Victorian author who wrote about a fantastical machine that could fly from the temperate regions all the way up to the polar regions. The author glossed over the fuel problem by saying it was battery-powered. But the artist pointed out that a battery that compact that would contain that much energy would explode if it were bumped a little.

So go ahead and write your artful accounts of powered machines that don’t use a petroleum product. But acknowledge your readers will have a brain: incredible concentrations of energy will be dangerous. On the other hand, that can make for interesting plot complications. 

Teaser Tuesdays—Star Trek: The Newspaper Comics

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. We’re to post two random sentences from our current reads. Mine happens to be from Star Trek: The Newspaper Comics. 

  

Both sentences are from Spock, referring to chess: 

“I wouldn’t call it brooding . . . But I have estimated the probability of your beating me at 47.3%”  —p. 122. 

Most people don’t remember the Star Trek comic strips that started in 1979.  Since the stories would continue from one comic strip to the next, this collection has the feel of a graphic novel, composed of a number of short stories.  As the cover above shows, the artwork was more than decent for a daily strip.   

Rhiannon Held’s Tips on Writing

I’ve seen Rhiannon Held a few times at conventions or readings.  Her current book is Tarnished, available at the usual places.  She’s given some helpful writing tips on her blog, based on the movie Pacific Rim. 

And she appears in period dress

I never saw the movie, and it’s not necessary to benefit from her tips.  When she took her first tip from the movie, “Establishing scale” and applied it to writing, I knew she had something insightful going on. 

So look at her blog and see if it helps with your overall writing.  

Moving Paragraphs

While revising my werewolf story (don’t worry, it’s not a sexy werewolf story), I realized a few paragraphs were dragging things down.  They were meant to increase tension, carry the story forward, and give personal insights into a couple of the characters.  As Jess says, every scene should have multiple functions, right?  Well, these didn’t work, so I planned to delete them. 

The paragraphs are struck through with heavy Xs

Later on in the same chapter, I realized these paragraphs would work.  The main character is getting fed up, and adding these same paragraphs would get him to the point where he’s just had it. 

What’s important is not to just copy and paste them into the other scene with mild adjustments to make the grammar work.  It’s best to rewrite the paragraphs word-by-word while putting them in.  Why?  In that act of rewriting, the author may make changes to match the word rhythm of this other scene, or realize it’s necessary to tighten up parts of the writing, or explain some concept with more detail.  You wouldn’t want some other guy to plop down paragraphs in your story, would you?  In this case that other guy is you, and what you were doing in some other part of your story.