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Matt's Five Worst Fictional Jobs # 3, Stephen King Monster

11/20/2013

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to my continuing countdown of some of the worst jobs that fiction has to offer (or real world jobs that fiction has made horrifying). Already we have discussed the perils felt by fictional Local Law Enforcement (# 5) and fictional School Administrators (# 4), but today we move on to a truly fantastical job that's not all it's cracked up to be... (and also, be sure to visit my wife's countdown on the same subject, visible here.)
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HELP WANTED: Are you a multi-powered demi-god of sorts, but not quite an actual demi-god (you're ancient and powerful but very vague about everything else) with a penchant for evil and a desire to terrorize and watch people suffer? Do you trade in madness and despair? Do you live in a world of poorly defined magical rules that can be made up on the fly and be used to defeat you? Do you like giving tangential psychic visions to people in a better effort to help them defeat you? Then consider becoming a Stephen King Monster!
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Dental plan not included.
PROS: Well, aside from headlining a book (and eventual movie) by an award-winning and best-selling author, if you like dispensing evil, this is the place to be. Job perks include a small town to terrorize (generally in Maine, though expansions to Florida and Nevada have been known to happen) and a myriad of superpowers that are so ill-defined you can pretty much do whatever you want.
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Including being Ron Perlman.
CONS: Sure, if you're unbelievably creepy and powerful, this really is the job for you. Unfortunately, being an agent of evil in a multiverse where God himself frequently cameos, you'll unfortunately have to face incredibly low job satisfaction rates as, by the end of your reign, you will certainly, mostly, lose (more on that mostly part later).
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Also, there's a good chance you might just be an evil hotel.
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Or an evil car.
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Or an evil laundry-folding machine. (Wait, what?)
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Or an evil lamp.
Odds on if you're a monster in a Stephen King universe, you're a shapeshifting demigod of sorts with near infinite powers who usually takes on the appearance of an average-looking guy who may or may not be a clown, is usually quite charming and gives off an air of unease. While this can be cool, these types of powers will almost certainly come with some ridiculous weaknesses. Magic in the King universe is constantly shifting and can often be defeated by sheer force of will, where the people who are fighting against you just need to believe in themselves enough that they will be able to defeat you with some ease (often using random objects, like chunks of silver or cheap storebought magic tricks as deadly weapons).
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When you can be defeated by a motivational poster, you might want to reconsider your career choices.
Furthermore, as a side effect of your unbelievable superpowers, you will almost certainly be giving off psychic vibes that, whether you like it or not, will give a ragtag group of ordinary citizens from the small town you claim as your dominion, probably led by an everyman writer, visions or prophetic dreams that will lead directly to your downfall. It's unfortunate, but it is unavoidable, because you are evil, and evil needs to be conquered.
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Which can lead to a this guy being defeated by...
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...these kids.
BONUS PRO: Remember how I said that you would only "mostly" lose? Well, this comes from the fact that if you're evil enough, you will never die. We're given a bunch of clues to believe that Pennywise isn't killed in It, Leland Gaunt opens up another shop in Needful Things, Christine somehow manages to put itself together again after going through a car compactor, Randall Flagg appears on an abandoned island somewhere at the end of The Stand, ready to greet his new followers...
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Probably these guys.
So really, while you're bound to live out an eternity as an 80's Saturday morning cartoon villain, forever shaking your fist as you run away saying you'll get them next time, you'll live to fight and fright another day. So while you may not have the greatest job satisfaction, it will be reliable and steady work.
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Go ahead. Don't turn around. I'm totally not breathing down the back of your neck right now.
So, do you think you could make it as a Stephen King Monster (please say no)? What is your favorite worst fictional job? Sound off in the comments!
  
And as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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The Challenge of Writing Sequels - Special Guest Post by Lehua Parker, author of One Shark, No Swim

9/21/2013

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Today please welcome special guest blogger Lehua Parker, author of the Niuhi Shark Saga. The second book in this YA series, One Shark, No Swim (available here) has just been released by the fine folks at Jolly Fish Press. Having been working on some sequels myself recently, I wanted to talk to her today about some of the challenges that come with this particular type of book.
Writing sequels can be particularly challenging given the need to expand the story while maintaining continuity with the first. What are some of the biggest challenges you faced while writing the sequel and how were you able to get past them?

You know, Matt, I kinda wish my problem was expanding the story. I have the opposite problem of trying to decide how much to tell and where to end in each book. In my head, the Niuhi Shark Saga is just one loooong story that needs to be told in chunks that make sense to a middle grade/young adult audience. The really challenging part? I see the entire saga as a single thread in a tapestry of interwoven stories that all take place in an imaginary place called Lauele Town on Oahu, Hawaii. Most Lauele Town stories are not for MG/YA and I wear blinders and ear muffs to shut out those other characters’ voices and themes in order to create something that will resonate with the Niuhi Shark Saga’s target audience.

Looking back at book one, One Boy, No Water, I can see that I was still thinking of Zader and his adventures as side plots to a much bigger story. In book 2, One Shark, No Swim, I’ve corrected that and centered the story firmly on Zader and his journey to discover his true nature. The reader is in Zader’s head more and I’ve used that as a device to set up inside jokes that island kids see coming and mainland kids figure out from Zader’s reactions. Zader is also more vulnerable as he questions the answers he used to take for granted. I think the tension and conflict is stronger because of it.

Another thing I realized between books is that middle grade readers need more bread crumbs (and sometimes the whole loaf!) to make intuitive leaps about a character or plot than older readers. Sometimes it takes a neon sign that says, “Pay attention to this detail. You may be quizzed on it later.” Most of them are at the age where they are just learning about symbolism, metaphor, and foreshadowing and if you do too much, you lose them. I’ve found myself writing the story in layers—the straight forward surface adventure, the cultural conflicts, and the coming of age angst all wrapped up like a burrito. (Or laulau, if we’re keeping to the Hawaiian theme.) It’s my hope that the series will also appeal to adult readers who will have a very different experience than the middle graders.

In a nutshell, my biggest challenges were switching gears to write the story that made sense rather than the vision in my head and making sure readers could connect the dots between books. But I gotta admit, I had a lot of fun channeling my inner 12 year old boy who doesn’t want to believe he’s not human because that truth would change everything.

Thanks for hosting me on the One Shark, No Swim blog tour.  Both One Boy, No Water and One Shark, No Swim are available online as trade paperbacks, hardcovers, and eBooks through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes. Readers interested in following my adventures in writing can connect with me at--

Blog & Free Short Stories: http://www.lehuaparker.com/

All things Niuhi Shark Saga: http://www.niuhisharksaga.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LehuaParker

Twitter: @LehuaParker

About One Shark, No Swim
There’s something bugging adopted Zader Westin, something more troubling than his water allergies where one drop on his skin burns like hot lava. It’s bigger than his new obsession with knives, designing the new murals for the pavilion with Mr. Halpert, or dealing with Char Siu’s Lauele Girlz scotch tape makeover. Zader can’t stop thinking about a dream, the dream that might not have been a dream where Lē‘ia called him brother then jumped into the ocean and turned into a shark.

Zader’s got a lot of questions, not the least being why he’s hungry all the time, restless at night, and why he feels a constant itch on the back of his neck. It’s making him feel like teri chicken on a pūpū platter, but Zader doesn’t want to think about chicken, not with his growing compulsion to slip it down his throat--raw.

With Jay busy at surf camp and Uncle Kahana pretending nothing’s happening, Zader’s left alone to figure things out, including why someone--something—is stalking him before it’s too late.

Summer in Lauele Town, Hawaii just got a little more interesting.

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About Lehua Parker
Lehua Parker is originally from Hawaii and a graduate of The Kamehameha Schools and Brigham Young University. In addition to writing award-winning short fiction, poetry, and plays, she is the author of the Pacific literature MG/YA series the Niuhi Shark Saga published by Jolly Fish Press. One Boy, No Water and One Shark, No Swim are available now. Book 3, One Fight, No Fist will be published in 2014.

So far Lehua has been a live television director, a school teacher, a courseware manager, an instructional designer, a sports coach, a theater critic, a SCUBA instructor, a playwright, a web designer, a book editor, a mother, and a wife. She currently lives in Utah with her husband, two children, three cats, two dogs, six horses, and assorted chickens. During the snowy Utah winters she dreams about the beach.

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Matt's Five Worst Fictional Schools # 3, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

9/19/2013

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Hello boys and girls, it's Back to School time, and in honor of this wondrous (for parents) occasion, I am dedicating my blog to five of the worst schools that fiction has to offer (please take a look at my # 5 & # 4 entries if you haven't already). So, while you may bemoan how your teacher's grading scale is unfair, or how they show up to study hall hung over, be thankful that you don't have to attend...
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THE SCHOOL: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

PROS: You get to learn magic, and not just of the "if you pray real hard, you might get something you want" variety, no, this is full-on god-like powers kind of magic, which when wielded properly is really, really awesome.
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Improper use, on the other hand, can be quite unpleasant.)
Also, you get this top notch magical education in an authentic (if surprisingly roomy) medieval castle, and with some of the best medical care that magic can provide!
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Yes, we can even fix that.
CONS: Confusing layout. School promotes class/gang warfare and slavery. Understaffing/dangerously negligent hiring standards. Lax security. The fact that you probably will get mutilated at some point during your stay.
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I'm not even going to get into the possibility of ghost molestation and the casual acceptance of date rape drugs (better known as love potions).
The problems at Hogwarts are myriad and entire books have been dedicated to describing all of them (they're called the Harry Potter series). Among the most benign of them is the fact that Hogwarts is poorly laid out. It's common knowledge that Hogwarts' halls are constantly shifting with the layout very rarely lining up the same way twice. On good days this could lead to students being late (most teachers will still punish you for being late, even considering the school's conniving against you), on bad days it could lead to serious injury or death.
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Apparently OSHA doesn't exist in the wizarding world.
The various magical creatures/enchanted paintings/spirits & poltergeists/curses that roam the hallways do not help this matter any.
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Oh look, Nearly-Headless Nick's taken mescaline again!
The social aspects of Hogwarts are even more worrying. Like many a private school, students are sorted into houses. Unlike most schools with houses, Hogwarts has a house that is widely regarded as pretty much entirely evil.
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Yeah, we're more or less entirely awful.
Despite the proven risks and track record of Slytherin house, no additional counseling or mediation is provided to these students to steer them away from their probable future in evil. If anything, this probability is embraced and encouraged with students in this house often proclaiming their racial superiority based on blood purity. Do we ever once see these students taking sensitivity seminars, or even be told that using racial slurs against other students is wrong?
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Though for a school that holds hundreds of these guys as slaves (willing though they may be in this twisted universe), maybe that shouldn't be that much of a surprise.
Of course, considering the staffing problems Hogwarts has, maybe they should be excused for some of the deficiencies in educational standards (including such things as no formal writing or mathematical education). With a school that has at least 300 students (though Rowling herself says there are about 1,000), there are only about 20 adults above the age of 18 to wrangle them, and that's if we're including the support personnel who are often not the most helpful people in the world.
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This guy just radiates trustworthiness, doesn't he?
The only qualifications we seem to see these teachers requiring is a simple desire to teach. As the rotating group of Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers has proved, competence (in the case of Gilderoy Lockhart) and the lack of a criminal record (in the cases of Remus Lupin and Severus Snape) are not particular requirements. Indeed, we have seen classes composed entirely of students staring at smoke (Divination), staring at worms (Care of Magical Creatures) and staring at a narcissistic lunatic staring at himself (Defense Against the Dark Arts under Gilderoy Lockhart). Not once does the administration intervene or try to impose anything resembling a lesson plan (and the one time a lesson plan is installed by an outside force, it is viewed as the worst thing in the world.)
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Though in this particular case, it actually was.
In fact, the regularity with which evil sneaks into the school is alarming, considering that Hogwarts is supposed to be one of the most secure places in the Wizarding World. Indeed, there are so many documented ways to sneak in (including, but not limited to, vanishing cabinets, polyjuice potion, animagi, secret passages, elf magic and the Room of Requirement, among others) that one must wonder if student safety was ever a concern to the administration at Hogwarts.
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Sure, the beard and glasses make him look smart, but he's actually quite careless.
Which leads into the final, and perhaps most impressive point: if you attend Hogwarts, you will get hurt. Over the course of the series, nearly every student is in some way mutilated or injured seriously enough to be sent to the hospital wing for an extended period of time. From magical accidents and wizard duels to exploding potions and vicious animal attacks, Hogwarts does not lack for ways to be terribly injured. They shrug this off because magical medical care is, well, magical, but if any responsible school had this many serious injuries in an average year, they would be closed down by the state.
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Then again, the wizarding world's government doesn't exactly have the most reliable track record.
So what say you, dear readers? Anyone out there who would want to attend Hogwarts? Do you think you could survive a Defense Against the Dark Arts Class? Sound off in the comments!  And as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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Matt's Five Least Favorite Pop Culture Endings # 1, The Works of Stephen King

8/27/2013

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Hello readers, and welcome back to my month-long tribute to pop culture endings that have confused, disappointed and even infuriated me. Thus far we have seen entries based around young adult classics (# 5), hour-long procedurals (# 4), foreign horror films (# 3) and syndicated science fiction programs (# 2). Today, however, I draw my attention not to any singular work of art, but to the works of one man…
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The one and only.
This one is going to be rough, because I am a huge, huge Stephen King fan (I won't say I'm his # 1 fan, because that would just be creepy). I’ve got one bookshelf dedicated to a set of first (and nearly first) editions of his work, and hope one day for the full set with the intent of ultimately reading every word the man’s put to paper. I’ve read The Stand more times than I can count (and even brought a copy of it along when my wife and I took a cross-country road trip several years back), regularly watch Under the Dome in spite of its colossal stupidity, and consider The Mist among my favorite horror movies of all time due to its reverence to King’s terrifying source material.
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Try telling me this isn’t scary.
And yet… yet… as much as I love the man’s work, I have to admit that his track record with endings is pretty poor. Sure, he knocks it out of the park sometimes, but more often than not fails to completely stick the landing. This comes as much from his awesome setups as it does the endings themselves, as no ending could ever really match up to some of the amazing stories that preceded them.
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I mean, how can you top God randomly showing up to nuke Vegas? And why do I get the feeling this caption’s getting me on some sort of government watch list? Also, to those of you who make said government watch lists, hi! My name is Matt Carter, I'm an author and my book, Splinters, comes out in late 2014! Buy lots of copies!
Other times, though, the endings just fall apart, or even manage to be wildly insulting to the readers who had invested hundreds of pages of time getting into the story and characters. Instead of going through and listing every single ending that he’s botched or disappointed with, I’m just going to give a quick rundown of my Top 3 below.
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# 3: THE STAND. King's ultimate tale of good versus evil takes place in an America ravaged by a virus that has killed close to 99% of the population. Those who survive have been driven into one of two camps, one good, led by the aged Mother Abigail, and the other evil, led by the personification of darkness itself, Randall Flagg. After some minor conflicts and skirmishes, four men from the good side take part in a journey to Las Vegas to face Flagg and fulfill an almost biblical prophecy. By this point in the story, you're probably thinking, man, this is awesome! This Stand is going to be great!
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Eh, not so much.
Stu, the man who has been for all intents and purposes the main character since the beginning of the book, is taken out of this journey early by a broken leg, and despite King's insistence throughout the remaining pages of the book, his story
is basically done here. The other three then go to Vegas to confront Flagg, where their "Stand" basically consists of getting forced into a public execution whose sole cosmic purpose seems to be to collect all the bad people in one place so God can nuke them. Instead of the battle for the ages between good and evil, we get a bunch of people standing around yelling while a crazy guy brings in a nuke to his false god while the real God blows it up. While not his worst ending, it is tremendously anticlimactic given the amazing setup that came before.
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# 2: IT. Stephen King's It is without a doubt one of his most bloated, featuring tons of unnecessary side stories and clocking in at close to his longest book. It gained a following mostly around the superior miniseries and Tim Curry's terrifying portrayal of Pennywise the Clown, I think, but for most of the book itself I was really enjoying the ride. Its many vignettes are filled with some of the creepiest images King has ever put to the page (leeches, frickin' leeches), and it has an awesome backbone that is built around this great friendship of the books seven main characters. These kids, by circumstance or divine intervention, have been drawn to one another, forming these great bonds that have to remind anyone reading it of their own childhood friendships, bonds that will help them defeat one of the greatest evils put on the page.
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Pennywise: Ruining every positive memory about clowns you might have ever had since 1986.
And once they've served their purpose (and had a very uncomfortable to read about orgy; don't ask), that's it. Their friendship is done. It turns out that their friendship that gave them the power to overcome this ancient evil was set in motion by an ancient god, and once they've done their job they're all sent on their separate ways, cursed to forget that they ever knew each other. Their friendship was a sham, and as a reader I couldn't help but feel cheated out of nearly 1,200 pages of my life.
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Dear lord get that thing away from me!
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# 1: INSOMNIA. This one really pisses me off, I can't stress that enough. Insomnia isn't one of King's best known books, but like many it is overlong and unnecessarily padded with extra characters and mysticism, but I have to say I enjoyed myself for most of the run. Its story of a couple retirees whose powerful insomnia has helped them tap into another dimension and bizarre powers is trippy, and has a lot of fun imagery, and when we find that the main character has gotten these powers for the purposes of stopping a terrorist attack, I had to say that it sounded pretty cool.
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But then this guy had to show up.
It is revealed that stopping this attack, indeed the point of this whole book, was not to save the lives of hundreds of people. No, it was just to save the life of one young boy in the crowd who we'd only had a few paragraphs of the entire book dedicated to. This is fairly King in nature, and wouldn't warrant a spot on this list, but to go that extra mile, we are told that somewhere in the future this kid is going to help Roland, the hero of King's Dark Tower series, which basically transforms this 600+ page book into a prequel for one of The Dark Tower books. When I'm reading a book, or watching a movie, I want to view it for its own merits, I don't want to see it as the lead-in for a completely unrelated work of art. By making the whole point of this book about another book that hadn't yet been written, I felt tremendously cheated, and could not resist putting Insomnia as my least favorite of King's endings.
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Sorry, Steve. I still love you, though.
Stephen King is my favorite author, and as many problems as I've got with his work, I will still read whatever he writes. Call it masochistic, call it crazy, but that's just how I roll.

So what say you, dear readers? Are there any other Stephen King fans out there? Any haters? What are your most and least favorite King endings? Sound off in the comments!

And as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

 -- Matt Carter

 (We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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Matt's Five Least Favorite Pop Culture Endings # 5, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

8/3/2013

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Hello, one and all, and welcome to August. Yeah, I know, it's not one of my favorite months either. It's one of the hottest and ugliest stretches of summer, and it always brings back memories from when I was a kid, as this was the point that I'd usually realize that the fabled season of summer was about to come to an end.
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But, now that I'm an employed adult and summer is completely irrelevant, I can look at it with a healthy sense of humor and cynicism; a healthy sense of humor and cynicism that tells me, "Hey, you can probably make a list out of this!" And so, in honor of the disappointing end of summer, I am going to dedicate the month of August to five of my least favorite endings in pop culture. As always, I must note that this is hardly going to be a comprehensive list, because let's face it, there's a lot of lousy endings out there. These five moments are ones that I've found disappointing, confusing, and in a couple cases even downright infuriating, and with one exception they all come from pieces of pop culture I've really enjoyed. 

I also shouldn't have to tell you that this list is going to have SPOILER ALERT at the top of pretty much every entry, so take that as a warning now for this one.

So sit back, relax, and let us begin our # 5 moment with...
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I came into the Harry Potter series fairly late in the game. My future wife, Fiona, got me a copy of the first book for my 21st birthday, and though I was hesitant to touch it at first, at her insistence (and, well, we were still just friends at the time, and I thought she was really cute, and I wanted to get in good with her...) I gave it a shot. Within three chapters I was hooked. I wound up flying through the first six books in about two months (the seventh having yet to be released), and loving almost every minute of it. Sure, there were more than a few slow spots here and there, and some plot contrivances that were pretty extreme...
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"Let us never use this to fix things ever again!"
...but all in all I loved the series. Naturally, with anything you love and don't want to let go, I reread the series once or twice soon after, and though little of the magic had rubbed away, the way Rowling used some rather flimsily explained magic to rationalize almost every ending soon became apparent. But it's magic, so I excused it. However, when rereading the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I could suspend disbelief no longer at how little sense the evil plot actually made.
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Mostly because of this guy. More on him later.
For a quick rundown of the plot, Harry has been forced into a magical tournament that will almost certainly get him killed. Through a fair amount of cheating and outside help, he has made it to the final round of the tournament in an excellent position. In the final stretch, he and another competitor, Cedric Diggory, grab the Triwizard Cup to claim a mutual victory, however the cup soon turns out to be a Portkey (magical teleporting device) that transports them to a graveyard. Death Eaters show up, Voldemort is brought back from the grave, Harry escapes back home and finds out before too long that a teacher he's trusted throughout the year was actually another Death Eater in disguise.
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Also Edwa-err, Cedric dies.
Now, on paper, reading this the first time, this was all suitably dramatic and seemed to make perfect sense. However, hidden by the shock of Voldemort finally coming back from the dead is how very little sense all of this evil scheme makes.

First and foremost, why was it necessary to put Harry in the deathsport competition in the first place? Voldemort claims to need Harry alive in order to be resurrected, wouldn't putting him through a series of trials that could very well kill him (as it is acknowledged by multiple characters this tournament is quite good at doing) kind of defeat this purpose? And what if, heaven forbid, Harry actually loses, as he was very well about to when Cedric came along?  
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This is a perfectly sane part of an evil scheme to kill someone, not a scheme to keep them alive!
Second, there is the issue of Mad-Eye Moody, a.k.a. Barty Crouch Jr. With the help of the shapeshifting Polyjuice Potion, Death Eater Barty Crouch Jr. impersonates Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher Mad-Eye Moody and becomes fairly friendly with Harry throughout the course of an entire school year. On several occasions, he is even alone with Harry for extended periods of time. Why did he have to wait until the end of the school year to get Harry out of the school when he could have just easily stunned Harry and kidnapped him on at least a half dozen separate occasions? (And don't say anything about Hogwarts not allowing apparition, that school has more security flaws and secret ways out than it has in). Why does he spend so much time in Hogwarts surrounded by people who actually knew Mad-Eye beforehand and would be likely to figure out he's not who he says he is the longer he stays?
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"My lord, can't I just stun him and-"
"NO! THAT WON'T NEARLY LOOK COOL ENOUGH!"
I know all of this boils down to Voldemort being obsessed with making a spectacle of it, but when resurrection is on the line, being showy should really take a backseat to executing a plan with a high chance of succeeding.

The first three books had well-executed twist endings, and I think in this event, Rowling tried to outdo herself. In crafting an ending that looked cool, coherency was put by the wayside, and an already overlong and plot-hole-riddled book gets a few more massive holes punched in it. I won't necessarily call it a bad ending, but I will call it a very disappointing one.  
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But hey, at least Voldemort looks creepy.
So what do you think? Do you agree with my sentiments, or are you fine with the ending as is? Do you also think the Harry Potter books endings could have used less deus ex machine and a little more logic? Sound off in the comments! 

And as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back!

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor
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So, What About Fan Fiction?

8/1/2013

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Sorry folks, it's time for another article on writing. It's not going to have many pictures, it won't be as funny, and it will have next to no pop culture references, and it's also going to be a bit shorter than usual. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you, but will promise I'll be back on that line later again this week. Scout's honor! 

I'm here today to talk about my opinions on a topic I've seen usually talked about with anger, embarrassment, or at the very least light confusion: fan fiction. I don't know what the general consensus is on it, but having seen the uproar after the recent announcement of Amazon permitting the sale of certain types of fan fiction, and mulling over the idea in my head some, I wanted to put my two cents out there. 

In short, I think fan fiction is a good thing.

Mostly.

If you'd like, I can recommend a few good places to buy torches and pitchforks to use against me.
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Avoid Phil's Pitchfork Shack, his prices are terrible.
Before I go any further, I will say yes, I did get my start in fan fiction. Elementary and middle school Matt would write vague stories for Jurassic Park and War of the Worlds and whatever other things happened to catch his short attention span for a moment or two. As soon as I discovered the internet and the thriving community of fan writing that existed there, I might have gone a little crazy. For a few years there I was a writing machine, writing stories for various horror movies, mostly as an excuse to get as horribly violent as I wanted to be and enjoy how squishy the human body is, but also to absorb adulation and inflate my ego after briefly making a name for myself in a fandom or two. I look back on those years now with a mixture of fondness and embarrassment. Fondness for those nights when I would just while away until the insane hours of the morning trying to figure out just how many more plot twists I could cram into a chapter, embarrassment at how much of an ego this gave me and how bad most of what I'd written actually was.
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Not this bad, at least.
Still, all in all I think that fan fiction is a good thing. It's one of the easiest and best gateways to writing, lacking the intimidation factor of having to come up with a whole new world and new characters, and allowing those who want to write a chance to stretch their legs. Not all of those who want to can, but hey, at least the opportunity exists. And even for established writers, I think it can be a fun diversion or writing exercise. One day, should such a thing as free time actually exist in my writing schedule, I fully intend to write a tongue-in-cheek novella, Harry Potter and the Terror of Camp Crystal Lake with an adult Harry & Ron as aurors battling Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th series (stupid, yes; awesome, potentially).
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Who do you think would win?
My one problem with fan fiction, really, is the increasing legitimization of it. As a diversion and a gateway for moving into different kinds of writing, I think it's fine, but if it's made into a viable career option we may see a sudden dropoff in creativity flooding the market, and that worries me. We see it already in movies where studios aren't taking any risks and are only really greenlighting established characters and franchises, I fear that happening in other forms of fiction as well. I still want there to be a world where people seek to put new and exciting stories out there with new and exciting characters. I don't want to live in a world where the only stories that can exist are ones involving people and places and things that have already existed. 

But enough ranting. I enjoyed my time as a fan fiction author, I'm glad to no longer be one, and I'm glad anyone who wants to write has the opportunity to do so in this fashion.

(P.S. You'll note that I completely ignore the topic of erotic fan fiction in this article; I did this because I do not feel particularly qualified to do so, and am honestly a little frightened of it. I respect it's existence, but I have a harder time arguing that fan fiction should exist when said fan fiction involves Jean-Luc Picard and Inspector Gadget double-teaming a sentient Rubik's Cube, not that I've ever seen that particular grouping, but given the nature of Rule 34 it probably does in some dark, weird corner of the internet.)
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Did you honestly expect me to try and find a picture for that?
So what do you think, dear readers? Are you for or against fanfic? Is its existence a sign of the apocalypse or a good, harmless form of fun? Sound off in the comments! 

And as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back!

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What Are You Looking At, Butthead?: A Plea for Deeper Fictional Bullies

7/15/2013

6 Comments

 
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Hey, an article on writing! Who knew? Don't worry, there's still plenty of unnecessary pop culture analysis mixed in here as well. 

In writing the third book of The Prospero Chronicles, I've met the challenge of playing with a character archetype I never really thought I'd get around to: the bully. Having been mostly invisible in my school days I never really encountered that many bullies in real life, and I've never found that many of the ones in pop culture to be particularly compelling. Oh sure, there's plenty of iconic and entertaining ones out there if you look around a little (just pick a random 80's teen movie, any one, you'll find one), like Biff Tannen, Nelson Muntz, Draco Malfoy, Douglas C. Neidermeyer...
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Ogre...
...the list goes on. However, with very few exceptions I can't say I've ever found most bully characters to be particularly interesting. Sure, you can get a good actor in their shoes and these deficiencies can be ignored, but until I started writing a bully I could never really put my finger on just what my problem with bully characters was, but now I think I've got it. By the very nature of storytelling conventions, most bullies border on completely insane.
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Maybe not meme-level insane, but you get the idea.
In most stories, bullies fill an antagonist's role, where their goal is to make the main character's life a living hell. This is fine and all, bullies do do this in real life, and yay for realism, right? However, given the narrow perspective of fictional stories, far too often we are just given a thinly drawn character whose antagonism for the hero borders on a level of obsession that H.P. Lovecraft would call excessive. 

For a good example of this, let's take a look at Draco Malfoy.
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Hi Draco!
He's in the Harry Potter series from the very beginning, and is ostensibly a rival of Harry's, but at best he only ever rises to the level of annoying tertiary antagonist, and at worst he's an annoying borderline stalker. Notice the word annoying in both parts. Instead of ever proving to be a serious danger to Harry, Draco spends most of his time obsessing about how much he hates Harry, or what Harry is doing, or what Harry's friends are doing, until it makes you start to wonder if he's got Harry Potter posters covering his room in Slytherin house. We know he even fumes over him in private, as we sneak into what he thinks is a private conversation in Chamber of Secrets and he's talking about... yup, Harry Potter. He follows Harry everywhere, he harasses Harry and his friends every chance he gets, is ridiculously popular (for some reason, we never see why even the other Slytherins tolerate him), and up until the last two books of the series, when he is developed some, dedicating most of his free time toward making Harry's life a living hell. On top of that, regular jokes are made of his cowardice, and he's physically hurt and/or mutilated as a punchline fairly regularly.
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How he spends the other half of the books when not harassing Harry.
In small doses, any number of these behaviors are perfectly acceptable in a fictional bully. However, when your bully solely exists as a distorted mirror of your hero, where he's there only to show you what the hero is not and has no real character to him otherwise, you've got a problem. For a bully to be a real threat to the hero, they need to be more than just an obstacle; they need to be a character who has reasons for doing what they're doing. They can't just bully because they like doing it, or because they're just plain evil. They should actually get something out of the act of bullying, or at the very least have a rationalization for their behavior that works in their own twisted mind. Or take a page from the real world where they bully because they get even worse treatment at home and this is their easiest path to power (it's depressing, but if done well it's effective). 

As well, their relationship to the hero needs to be taken into consideration. It's fine for them to butt heads occasionally, or even often, but unless you're writing a horror story about dangerous obsession, the bully would still have a life outside of harassing the hero. The hero cannot be their entire life. Show me the bully hanging out on the street, or walking his dog, or going to the grocery store, or, shocker of all shocks, DOING SOMETHING NOT EVIL! (Not that I'm implying that hanging out, walking the dog or going to the grocery store are inherently evil). It's unheard of, I know, and it may take up a few valuable words, but developing a bully even just a little beyond how they relate to the hero can really expand them as a character.

I hope I'm doing this right. The bully character we just introduced into The Prospero Chronicles is so far proving a lot of fun to write for. He's loud, he's abrasive, and he spends a lot of time making one character's life hell, however we've made it clear that he does have other interests in life and lives by an odd code of honor and morality that doesn't always make sense, but always makes sense to him. Whether or not he actually works out is for the readers to decide, but I think he'll prove fun at the very least.

As for the rest of those fictional bullies out there... I just want to see a little respect thrown their way. I want to see them as more rounded out characters and not just straw men. I want to see them actually work with the story instead of having them just be a crutch for it. I want to see them be as dangerous as their stories demand they be.
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Except you Stan Gable. You stay magnificently blonde and douchey.
So what do you think, dear readers and fellow authors? What are your thoughts on the bully dilemma? Sound off in the comments below! 

And as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back!

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World War Z (The Movie) Review, or, "Please Stop Telling Us How Awesome Brad Pitt is, We Knew That Coming In, You Don't Have to Scream It At Us"

6/22/2013

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Whenever I go into a movie I’m pretty sure I’m not going to like, or that has received some pretty awful reviews, I go in telling myself, “I’m going to see this with an open mind.” Ideally this should be the mindset of any reviewer, because if you go into a movie knowing exactly what you’re going to think of it going out, then why bother going in the first place? Still, though, over time this saying has gone from something I say to actually open my mind, to something I say defensively, something that protects me in the event I actually don’t like what I’m watching so I can say, “Well, I gave it a fair chance, AND IT FAILED ME!!!” It’s stupid, it’s childish, and it is probably something I will do until the end of time.

I only start with this semi-crazy-sounding rant because I don’t believe there’s ever been a movie I have done that more for than World War Z. Going in, it had a lot that made me nervous. First, it was an adaptation of what might be my favorite book of all time, and a very, very loose-looking adaptation at that if the running, swarming zombies were any indication. Second, it had a very troubled, very public production, with numerous problems and a complete third-act reshoot that very rarely bodes well for a movie. Third… PG-13! Who the hell makes a PG-13 zombie movie? I mean, The Walking Dead gets away with this, barely, but… come on! Zombies! Blood!

So what I’m saying is, I was a bit nervous going into it. By all rights I probably should have stayed away, but it has zombies, and it has Brad Pitt, both of which are things I enjoy in a movie, so I wanted to give it a chance. So I sat down with my wife at the wildly overpriced 3D showing of the movie, I unplugged my brain for a while, and I watched World War Z.

And you know what? I enjoyed the hell out of myself. I could point out everything wrong with the movie (and boy there is a lot of that), but like a low-quality roller coaster I still found myself exhilarated and thrilled by the experience just enough that I could excuse the fact that the lapbar kept disengaging during some of the loops.

Despite the grand scope of the movie, the plot is very slight. Brad Pitt plays Gerry Lane, a former UN Investigator, now a family man (not that they matter much) who is called upon to find out just what caused a worldwide epidemic of the undead in the hopes of finding a cure. The next 90 minutes are basically a series of excuses to show us just how awesome and capable Brad Pitt is, mostly in his ability at saving people’s lives, being an awesome zombie slayer, and just how noble he is in willing to sacrifice himself at a moment’s notice. This is fine and all, for a while, but toward the end it became something of a running joke between my wife and myself, where we would say, “We already know Brad Pitt is awesome, you don’t have to keep shouting this at us!”

Still, Brad Pitt and his greasy haircut aside, this is a very enjoyable movie. The scale of the first two acts is impressive, while the third act’s more restrained, more classic zombie movie tone is a bit jarring, I think it worked overall as it built tremendous tension. Honest to god, this movie’s a lot scarier than I expected and a lot scarier than it had any reason to be. While a good chunk of this came from some very well-executed jump scares, the constant, unending nature of the zombie hordes (which have been reimagined here as fast-moving, swarm insect-like creatures) is truly frightening, like watching a force of nature at work. The viral nature of these zombies is more present than ever, as they aren’t really interested in eating people, but rather just biting people and moving on so they can spread the virus to as many as possible. Though this is a bit jarring at first to the zombie media soaked mind, seeing them take running leaps at people, unmindful of their own safety is a pretty cool, creepy image.

As well, the setpiece sequences of this movie are well-executed as they should be in any blockbuster. The early sequences of Philadelphia quickly being overrun are creepy and awful in a traditional zombie movie, end of the world sort of way, while the zombie hordes breaking into the walled cities of Israel really allowed the film to show off what kind of zombie movie could be made with a really huge budget. Again, the third act, taking place in a World Health Organization facility in Wales, is a bit slower, a bit more traditional zombie movie than the global scale of the rest, but is tremendously creepy when it wants to be.

So, it’s an enjoyable movie, which is great. Now for the problems.

More than anything, World War Z reeks of a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be. At first it seems to want to just use the title to tell the story of a global zombie epidemic but with a unique story all its own, but then we get some heavy callbacks to the book including a character who actually recites a few paragraphs of dialogue. Then, when it tries to tie itself into the book, it breaks with the story and creates a zombie plague that is nothing like what the book tried to portray, nor a comparable world response.

As well, I have to put a complaint out there about Brad Pitt’s family in the movie, that complaint being that he shouldn’t have had one in the first place. His wife and children offer nothing to the plot other than something for him to occasionally angst over at best, or something to actively put them in danger (repeatedly) at worst. The fact that they’re sidelined for two-thirds of the movie and we’re still forced to check in with them every so often even though they are doing nothing of consequence is, from a storytelling standpoint, weird.

Also, I will say that the movie didn’t take the greatest advantage of its attempt at a global scale. While the attacks we see are big, many of the international locations (including a South Korean army base, in a rainstorm, at night, and Wales) are not the most exotic to look at, and kind of squander its global potential. The Israel stuff was pretty cool though, I’ll give them that.

And for that ending, we’re going to have to enter… THE SPOILER ZONE!

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

All right, about that ending. In this movie, Brad Pitt, because he’s awesome ya know, quickly deduces that the zombies in this movie only infect healthy targets and will actively pass by people with any chronic or potentially life-threatening medical conditions, and with the help of some World Health Organization scientists figures out that by purposefully infecting ourselves with a fatal disease and then curing it, we can make ourselves invisible to zombies. On paper, I gotta say this sounds kinda cool and at the very least sounds like it has some basis in science. The more I think about it, however, the more it seems to unravel.

If anyone with a life-threatening illness is ignored, we probably would’ve seen a lot more people being passed up by the zombies. Chronic smokers and drinkers would probably be ignored, not to mention anyone with cancer, or heart disease, or any number of other conditions. Large portions of the world infected with HIV and AIDS would be immune. I’m pretty sure any leading minds with a set of eyes and a cell phone would have figured this solution out a lot sooner than Brad Pitt, who doesn’t have a medical degree as far as we know.

It also adds a rather sad tone to the orphan Brad Pitt rescues, Tomas. One of the first times we see this boy, he’s in an apartment with its door being knocked down by the living dead, and he is trapped inside with his parents. The next time we see him, he’s running to Brad Pitt completely ignored by the zombies, and his parents are chasing the rest of them down, now firmly among the ranks of the living dead. While it’s possible that Tomas may just have been faster than the zombies (which seems unlikely), it might be wise of Brad Pitt to tell the boy that he probably has cancer.

(END SPOILERS)

(END SPOILERS)

(END SPOILERS)

All griping aside, I gotta say I enjoyed the hell out of World War Z. It’s got its problems and it’s nothing like the book, but as summer popcorn movies go, you could do a lot worse.

Anyone else out there see the movie? Have any thoughts on it?

As always, please take the time to like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter! I’m big into liking/following back, so just drop me a line!

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World War Z (The Book) Review

6/22/2013

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Max Brooks is a fascinating writer, and one who takes his work very seriously. Some might even say too seriously. I remember seeing him speak once at a Fangoria convention a few years back, and he is one of the most passionate defenders I have ever seen of the old-school, slow, viral-style zombies. He was funny, well-spoken, and loved shooting down anyone who would try to suggest that vampires or masked killers might be superior to zombies as horror movie villains (his rationale: you have to find most of those monsters, while zombies will always come down to finding you). I don't have the exact transcript of what was said that day, so I will have to paraphrase this next part, but I remember him saying, "You know that guy who's always sitting at the back of the movie theatre loudly complaining about how this or that is inaccurate? You all hate that guy, right? Well, I'm that guy." It got a good laugh. A few minutes later my wife and I got him to sign our copies of World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide. I can honestly say that was the highlight of the whole convention, and I'm saddened by how few people were there in attendance of his portion.

I know that was a weird tangent to start out with, but I wanted to get into that before I went into my review of World War Z to offer some context. You see, I used to love reading zombie stories back in the day, and after the first half-dozen or so stories you realize they all roughly had the same formula: the world's either going to hell or has already gone to hell, a group of survivors rallies together, they find a hideaway, they barricade in, they start infighting, zombies overwhelm the defenses, a small portion of survivors manage to escape into an uncertain world. Sure, there's a lot of variety to be had if you really go looking, but at their core most zombie stories are small, personal stories with very little sense of scope beyond the boarded up windows of whatever novelty shelter our survivors are in. World War Z is anything but a standard zombie story. Brooks takes on the zombie apocalypse at a truly global scale, told as an after-action collection of interviews, featuring dozens of stories from people of all walks of life from all different parts of the world, all of whom offer unique horror stories of what happened to them in the days leading up to, during and after a zombie apocalypse that humanity barely won (and in some countries, won may not exactly be the right word).

His stories and characters are truly all over the place. We hear a lot from politicians and military commanders who either tried to prevent this from getting out of hand, or never believed it was a problem in the first place. A long time is spent with a schizophrenic South African war criminal who just so happens to be a messiah of sorts, whose Apartheid-inspired plan may very well have saved the world. Even more time is spent with people on the ground, from soldiers to civilians to even the odd celebrity who managed to make it through the undead apocalypse and tried to find some way to use their skills. We hear stories of true cowardice and moral decay, like the pharmaceutical executive who profits off of a fake cure at the begin of the plague, and stories of inspiration and bravery, like the defenders of Paris, fighting in the submerged catacombs with limited supplies and the astronauts who stayed behind on the International Space Station so they could keep the crucial satellite network working, even though it probably meant starving to death.

Max Brooks' study of history and technical detail is extensive, and offers perhaps the most realistic tale of what would happen to a world besieged by the living dead. It isn't a pretty picture, with cruelty and borderline (and sometimes not-so-borderline) fascism being necessary means to an end for most countries to pull themselves up and defeat the living dead. It isn't a fun book, though it is fun in places, and it takes some dedication to get through at points. I won't call all the stories within classics, as there are a few that run on a little too long, and others I'd like to hear more of are a bit on the short side.

A few truly minor, trivial complaints aside, I cannot speak highly of this book enough. World War Z is the zombie novel. Read it if you love history, global politics, or just a good old-fashioned zombie story.

The World War Z movie comes out this week, and though it appears to be based on the novel in name only, I intend to go in with an open mind. It could be awesome, it could be terrible, but for the most part I am just hoping to be entertained and call it a day, knowing that sometime in the next 20 years or so someone else will get the rights to the property and might make a more faithful adaptation. (Note: I wrote this review days before actually seeing the movie. Please excuse my late posting on it.)

So any other WWZ fans out there? Are you looking forward to, or dreading, the movie? As always, please take the time to like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter! I’m big into liking/following back, so just drop me a line!
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The Book Was Better?: JAWS

5/27/2013

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The common wisdom these days about book to movie adaptations is that “the book was better”. Oftentimes this thinking is justified, as most movie adaptations are either rushed to capitalize on a recently popular book or are boiled down versions of timeless classics that by the nature of runtime have to cut a large amount of necessary plot points. Then of course there are the movies that decide to change the original story for some asinine reason, like the late-90’s TV movie version of Animal Farm that decided to tag on a happy ending. Seriously, what were they thinking?


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Probably that these animals vaguely looked like Babe, and that kids like Babe more than metaphors for the rise of Stalin.

Still, there are a lot more successful, high quality adaptations of good books than people generally want to admit. The Harry Potter films excellently translate the wonder and darkness the books had to offer. Jurassic Park is one of the classics of adventure. Carrie and The Shining are considered true classics of horror.


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And let us never forget Bond. James Bond.

These examples all come from good movies made from good books. The truly fun ones that mess with the “book was better” mentality are the great movies that come from mediocre, or even flat-out awful books.


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Like this.
Stephen Spielberg's film adaptation of Jaws is one of the classic thrillers, tightly paced, incredibly tense, and ultimately focused on the character drama of three unlikely men teamed together to kill a man-eating shark.


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And a soundtrack that made more people afraid of the water than a giant fish with a blender for a mouth.
Thank you, John Williams.

Peter Benchley’s original novel, on the other hand, lacks pretty much every element that makes the film a classic. Sure, the character drama of three men and a shark is there, kind of, and it does make a solid attempt at being a great man vs. nature book (emphasis on attempt), but in the end it is mired down by a lot of unnecessary subplots and bits of character drama that come out of nowhere that ultimately create a boring story about some truly unpleasant people that you really wouldn’t mind being eaten alive by a Great White Shark.

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Seriously, how can you make this boring?
Jaws is, and should be, a story about three men from differing backgrounds hunting down a shark stalking a quaint New England town. It’s not about Chief Brody’s inferiority complex about his formerly rich wife, or how the mayor is in debt to the mob (though that does explain why he militantly wants to keep the beaches open), or Quint’s thoughts on just how awesome an aborted whale fetus is for shark fishing. It sure as hell isn’t about the baffling side-plot about Chief Brody’s wife indulging in a rape-fantasy with the visiting icthyologist (if there were ever a list of words I never thought I'd have to use in the same sentence, "rape-fantasy" and "icthyologist" would have to be up there).

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Can't you just feel the heat radiating off of him?
Jaws the book had a lot of good ideas, but none executed as well as they should have been. This is one very definitive case where the movie was better.

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Especially because Spielberg knew that blowing a shark up was much more entertaining than watching it bleed to death.
So, what do you think? Are you a Jaws fan? Ever run across one of those surprise cases where a movie adaptation blew away its original book?

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    Author

    Matt Carter is an author of Horror, Sci-Fi, and yes even a little bit of Young Adult fiction. Along with his wife, F.J.R. Titchenell, he is represented by Fran Black of Literary Counsel and lives in the usually sunny town of San Gabriel, CA.

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