[Quick Plug: Part One of the new story Stevie One is now complete. The the final part begins here.]
Continuing from my earlier post, "Storytelling Lessons from the First Class," I decided to post about some things I've learned from watching the Underworld and Resident Evil movies. These lessons apply mostly to writing series, but the last one applies more generally.
For those who may have not seen the movies in these two series (and why not?), I'll say this in brief: The Underworld movies are about a centuries-long war between vampires (who are very aristocratic) and the "Lycans" (werewolves) who used to be their slaves. There's a Romeo and Juliet angle, and some plot elements which seem to have been borrowed by the Twilight books (based on what Wikipedia tells me).
The Resident Evil movies are based on the popular video game series, and they portray a world gradually taken over by zombies.
Both series are centered around strong female warrior characters: Selene (Kate Beckinsale) in the Underworld movies, and Alice (Milla Jovovich) in the Resident Evil movies. Both series have now gone to four movies, with the most recent one in 3D, and the fifth Resident Evil movie is coming in September.
Here are the lessons I've learned by comparing the two series:
1) A series shouldn't be a series of the same thing over and over.
I just saw the current Underworld movie recently, and it had advantages over some of the predecessors (better direction in the action sequences, for example), but it was clearly More of the Same. You liked the earlier ones? Well, here's some more. We might refer to this as Iron Man Syndrome (AKA "don't rock the boat"). Even the look of the movie is the same, that nearly black and white (or black and dark blue) color palette that has been there since the first movie.
The new movie is set in the U.S. for the first time, but everything still looks the same, and also the change is less striking than it might be because it was never clear where the earlier films were taking place anyway. There's less romance and more ass-kicking than in the first two movies (the third was a prequel, not featuring Selene, and so it sort of sits by itself), but it's still just a continuation.
The Resident Evil films have each been quite different. The first was almost all underground, very claustrophobic. The second was in a city, over the course of one night; the third was in a desert and mostly in bright sunlight; and the most recent was in a variety of settings. Throughout the series, the zombies have become less and less of a plot element as the series has transformed into an action-adventure story. So, not just more of the same.
2) Who am I rooting for again?
With the Underworld movies, sometimes it seems we're rooting for the vampires (because the main character in three of the movies is a vampire), though the vampires are pretty rotten to the Lycans and their entire power structure is based on lies. In the third movie, about the slave rebellion where the Lycans freed themselves, we're clearly rooting for the Lycans, but with the new movie we're back with Selene. It seems that ultimately we're rooting for whoever is the star of the movie.
From the beginning of the most recent movie Selene kicks mucho ass, including killing a lot of people (she isn't called a Death Dealer for nothing), but, aside from the badassery of some of the fights, I did start to wonder if all the people getting killed actually deserved it. The whole thing works better if you don't think about it very much (even apart from the fact that the plot of the most recent movie was very confusing – at least until I figured out that they were using the same plot as the movie Ultraviolet, which made it much easier to follow 
).
With Resident Evil, it's much clearer. The Umbrella Corporation (a huge multinational corporation specializing in consumer products, medicine, viral weapons, and general nastiness) are evil. They (admittedly somewhat accidentally) wiped out most of humanity, and are still experimenting with the same viral weapons that turned most of the world into a zombie disaster area. So, they're evil. Alice (and whatever few survivors are grouped around her in each movie) are generally good, though not uniformly. As for Alice herself, she's my answer when people complain (with reason) that all the current superhero movies are so boy-oriented. Where are the female superheroes? Well, here's one. She doesn't wear a cape and she doesn't have a letter on her chest, but otherwise she fits all the criteria.
3) Challenge your protagonist.
As I say, the action in the most recent Underworld movie was the best so far, but at this point Selene is so powerful (and so pissed off, and now even immune to sunlight) that there's not much tension in the fights. The Lycans she's fighting get bigger and bigger, but you know she'll kick their big shaggy asses sooner or later.
The smartest thing the Resident Evil people did with the most recent movie was de-power Alice right at the beginning. She was originally one of the Umbrella Corporation's bio-weapons, with all sorts of special powers, but this also made her increasingly difficult to challenge. So, Umbrella "took back its property" and left her as an extremely capable soldier. This was, as I say, a really good idea.
This applies more generally. In mysteries, for example, the reader loses interest if the detective is never stumped.
4) Remember the Bechdel Test.
In some ways the most striking difference between the series is that the Underworld movies are basically "Selene and the boys." There are no other strong female characters, and (as far as I can remember) movies #2 and #3 have no significant female characters at all other than the leads.
(By the way, one of the weird thing about these movies is that we never see any female werewolves at all. And nobody ever mentions it. At least the Lord of the Rings movies mentioned the Entwives and the apparent lack of female dwarves.)
The Resident Evil films always have a variety of female characters: scientists, soldiers, a TV reporter, a student, a doctor, a nurse, an actress, a cop, and a girl named Kmart. The women in these movies have many conversations, about many subjects other than men. One of my favorite scenes in Resident Evil: Apocalypse is on a deserted street, in a disabled bus, where three women basically analyze their desperate situation and their limited options, each one bringing different expertise to bear, while the only male character protests in vain that things aren't really as bad as they actually are.
This is not a scene you're going to see in the upcoming Avengers movie, or the last X-Men movie, or pretty much any other mainstream superhero movie that I'm aware of.
February 19th, 2012
I have two things to write about this week.
The first thing is that Mindmistress is celebrating its tenth anniversary! What is Mindmistress? It’s a webcomic, and it’s really good. Al Schroeder is the writer and artist, and I talked about his influence on me here. And Al is celebrating the anniversary by talking about all of his influences.
The second topic is this: I’ve always thought that one of the most important things about telling stories is how (and when, and if) you reveal information. It can make all the difference in the reader’s experience.
In newspaper writing (at least this is what I’ve read) the first paragraph should always contain Who, What, Where, When, and Why. This is not usually how you tell a story, no matter whether it’s a novel, a movie, or a tale told around a campfire.
The example I usually use is this: two people are having a conversation. One of them is lying. The conversation – the words and the body language and gestures – can be the same, but the experience for the reader will be completely different if you reveal the fact of the lying before you show the conversation, or during it, or after, or never. And what if the other person on the conversation knows about the lying but doesn’t let on? When do you reveal that? More different scenes out of the same conversation.
This is true also in The Alexandria Quartet, where the narrator learns at the begining of the second book that some of the things he thought in the first book were wrong, so he has to go back over the same events and examine them all again.
In a mystery story, usually you hold back the identity of the killer until the end, but in the TV show Columbo, for example, the murder and the murderer were always shown at the beginning. Whole different story, even if all the rest of the scenes were the same. I could go on, but you get the idea.
This also applies to titles. “Inherent Vice” doesn’t tell you too much about the book. Pynchon’s titles are mostly intriguing rather than informative (the title “V.” tells you pretty much nothing, and the search for its meaning is the plot and the theme of the book). The exception of course is “Mason & Dixon,” but that doesn’t really tell you very much about what kind of book it is.
I think about this also in relation to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” I’ve seen it suggested that the title was changed from the original (“Men Who Hate Women”) as a commercial decision (and certainly the use of “girl” is questionable, especially since Lisbeth’s fight to establish herself as a competent adult is a huge plot point, and the fact that she isn’t – legally – is a weapon used to control and exploit her). But the problem with “Men Who Hate Women” is that it actually tells too much. It’s a headline, not a title for a novel.
I’ve tried to do this also. Several people have commented on “A Sane Woman,” saying that it was intriguing title. I’m glad to hear that, since that was my intention, but you never know in advance if these things are going to work out exactly as planned.
I tried to do that with my current story Stevie One as well, which is a segue (not the most elegant one ever, but what can you do) to the fact that more of the story is posted. We’re near the end of part one now.
February 12th, 2012
Four links today.
1. There's more of Stevie One posted. The new part starts here. We're now about halfway through Part 1. The rest is nearly done, so it should be posted soon.
I had a very familiar feeling this week while I was working on this. One quarter of Part 1 posted, the second quarter being tweaked and polished, the third quarter nearly ready to go, and the fourth quarter handwritten but not yet typed up or edited. Some of Part 2 is written, and a few scenes from later on, but other than that it's a mystery.
I'm always aware that other writers don't work this way (well, prose writers – TV and radio writers are used to it), but it seems very normal to me, maybe because I've been doing it for so long. After all, I started to write and publish A Sane Woman in those monthly chapbooks twenty-two years ago.
The main thing I'm working on that's a bit unusual for me is concision. I really don't want this to be too long, so I've already removed two scenes that I thought weren't necessary. And it helps that these are new characters, so I don't have to bring new readers up to speed on things. Of course, some familiar characters will be coming along later, including a certain well-dressed amateur detective.
2. I linked to Tiyana's first post about consistency, and now she's gone at another aspect of the question with an excellent post called, "Characters: Consistent Yet Fluid." This point applies to what I'm doing now, as I mentioned in the comments over there.
3. Another post that's been helpful to me is Jo's post, "Narrative Structure: Breathe In, Breathe Out." I don't think I'm going to start monitoring my breathing while I read, but the general point is important. When I was in bands, I realized that one thing which separated the worthwhile bands from the ones which had no hope was control of dynamics and tempo.
4. And Sonje finished the first draft of her novel!
February 6th, 2012
So, there's a new story starting, and it's called Stevie One. More should be coming soon, I have quite a bit of the first part written, and some of the second part. After that, your guess is a good as mine. I'm really hoping to keep it to a reasonable length, ideally around as long as A Sane Woman (~45,000 words). I make no promises.
I'm fairly happy with the look of the new site, but I'm sure I'll tweak it as I go along. There will be an "About" page soon. I'll probably do my own printable-page script at some point.
You can scroll down to read another new post.
January 30th, 2012
Philo Vance is another of my non-guilty pleasures.
Philo Vance was a detective. He starred in a series of twelve mystery novels written by S. S. Van Dyne (the pen name of Willard Huntington Wright). The books were very popular, and Van Dyne was the top-selling writer in the 1920s in the United States. (In fact, I’ve read that it was the profits from the Vance novels that helped the publishing house Scribner’s take a chance on some unknown young writers named Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wolfe.)
Vance is mostly forgotten these days. Scribners made an attempt to republish the books in paperback in the 1960s or 1970s, but they only made it through the first half dozen books or so (which was probably just as well – see below). But the books were influential as well as popular at the time.
In Ellery Queen’s earliest books he was a pretty obvious Vance imitation. The Tragedy of Y (a Queen book written under the name Barnaby Ross) was heavily influenced by The Greene Murder Case. The Three Coffins (AKA The Hollow Man) by John Dickson Carr, often cited as one of Carr’s best and one of the best locked-room mysteries ever, took its central gimmick from The Kennel Murder Case (it’s a great gimmick, and I’ve used it myself). The Bishop Murder Case is often cited as the first mystery where a serial killer murders according to a pattern (in this case nursery rhymes). This idea appeared in several Queen books (Ten Days Wonder uses The Ten Commandments, for example), in Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, and in other places as well (the movie Seven comes to mind).
So, with all this popularity and influence, why has Vance been so forgotten? Probably the style of the books. Vance was an upper class dilettante and a fop, usually wearing a monocle, always willing to halt an investigation for a few pages to lecture on Chinese porcelains, dog breeding, Egyptian archeology, horse racing, or whatever else struck his fancy (sometimes relevant to the case, sometimes not, but always heavily footnoted). There never seemed to be a language that Vance didn’t know or a topic on which he wasn’t an expert.
The poet Ogden Nash wrote a two line poem:
Philo Vance
Needs a kick in the pance.
This was a fairly common sentiment at the time (the poem is even mentioned in one of the books).
The other thing that probably operated against the books’ longevity is that there is a steep drop-off in quality halfway through the series. The first three are all strong, and were written at the same time, as Wright was recovering in a hospital (I’ve read various reasons for his hospitalization). They form a series-within-a-series, with the first (The Benson Murder Case) being about a man, the second (The “Canary” Murder Case) about a couple, and the third (The Greene Murder Case) about a family. The next one, The Bishop Murder Case, is the seminal serial-killer mystery I mentioned above, and the great locked-room mystery The Kennel Murder Case was #6. The next, The Dragon Murder Case, is somewhat ridiculous, and the rest are uneven at best. In the early books, Vance usually tries to apply psychological and aesthetic theories to the solutions of the mysteries. In the later ones, he looks for physical clues like anybody else.
But the best books are very good indeed (if you can stomach Vance himself, of course). Many of the books were made into movies, including several where Vance was played by Basil Rathbone, but the only one I’ve found was The Kennel Murder Case, with William Powell, Mary Astor, and Eugene Pallette. It was directed by Michael Curtiz (who later directed Casablanca), and it’s very good.
One thing that’s very noticeable to more modern eyes is the very unusual treatment of race in the books. Most of the detective fiction from that period (and later) has rather cringe-worthy treatment of Black and Asians (and others), but Vance always annoys (and even sometimes shocks) the official police with whom he is working by the way he treats people of other races. He treats them as he treats everybody else.
The other interesting thing, to more modern eyes, is the fairly obvious hints that Vance is gay. He certainly has nothing to do with women (in fact, the regular cast are all male, and none of them ever mentions a wife or a girlfriend or anything like that). Van Dyne (the narrator, Vance’s Watson) is his live-in lawyer – something which is probably fairly unusual even among the upper classes. Vances’ friend Markham, the District Attorney, even has a male secretary.
There is only one case where there is any indication of an attraction between Vance and a woman (and she is always described in very masculine terms, including her body language and clothes), and at the end Vance tells her that it can never be, because of his other interests and commitments (including his “intimate masculine friendships”).
I think Vance was an influence on Jan Sleet (Van Dyne was definitely an influence on me, but I’m talking about the influences she drew on to create her persona). Her reliance on tobacco can be traced to several fictional detectives (Holmes, Vance, and Queen come to mind), but her extravagant way of dressing is probably traceable to Vance and to Nero Wolfe. Thank goodness she dresses a lot like like Wolfe and not so much like Vance.
January 30th, 2012
Emerald Barnes over at Dreaming Awake has graciously allowed me to write a guest post on her blog. It's called "Anthony Lee Collins talks about Indie authors and Self-published authors."
So, check it out. I think I already know somebody who will disagree with me.
January 27th, 2012
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