In case some of you Rizzles folks are stuck at home bored with nothing else to do… I gave in to an itch, and the result is a little fic about Rizzoli & Isles in the times of the coronavirus:
R&I - 14 Days, 14 Nights, and 42 Rolls of TP
When one of her colleagues tests positive for the coronavirus and Jane has to self-quarantine as a precaution, Maura’s house seems like the perfect location to hole herself up for a while. But as “social distancing” has never been part of her family’s vocabulary, Jane needs to find a way to keep not just the virus but also the other Rizzolis at bay.
Liz: You seem calm. Why is that? Diane: I have no choice. Liz: That’s not true. You can panic. You can scream. You can throw something. Diane: Yeah. To what end? Liz: Breaking something. Diane: The world has gone insane, Liz. The news is satire—it’s not real. The people blowing up grizzly bears have been put in charge of grizzly bears. So I’ve decided the only way to stay sane is to focus on my little corner of it.… If I make my little corner of the world sane, then I won’t let the insanity win. That’s what I’ve learned. Liz: It’s one thing to know it. It’s another thing to do it. Diane: But I have to start somewhere. Why not today?
#me when i see people talk about how much they hate a character, celeb, show, ship or whatever everyfreakingday?!? #instead of just blacklisting or staying away from it #and just focusing on what they actually enjoy
Yup. And ironically, all that bitching and moaning keeps those allegedly awful shows/people at the center of attention, while other shows/people that deliver quality work get buried and don’t find the audience they deserve. Hate-watchers are quite skilled at shooting themselves (and everybody else) in the foot.
[..] Most art has a public face—music is played, paintings are displayed, plays are enacted, movies are filmed and often watched by groups. Books tend to be more private, from one person’s act of writing to another’s act of reading. Most mysterious of all is the hidden middle stage, the offstage act of editing. Yet sometimes it can make all the difference.
(Because too many people on here seem to think that edited writing is somehow worse or less pure than raw words straight from the writer’s mind and pen to the reader’s eyes and mind.)
The Flight Of the Fluttering Swallows By Michael Paterniti - Conditions in North Korea had deteriorated to the point of desperation. Whatever lay ahead now, could it be worse than starving or living as a parentless child in constant fear?
North Korea’s Digital Underground by Robert S. Boynton - To smuggle facts into or out of North Korea is to risk imprisonment and even execution. Yet today, aided by a half-dozen stealthy media organizations outside the country, citizen-journalists are using technologies new and old to break the regime’s iron grip on information
North Korea’s Dollar Store by David Rose - Office 39, North Korea’s billion-dollar crime syndicate, pays for Kim Jong Il’s missiles and cognac. Why did the Bush White House choose not to shut it down?
I know the blanket hate for male writers / Joss Whedon is strong among the kindergartners on this site, but the funny thing about haters is that their ignorance-driven agenda can easily be spotted by anybody who’s willing to dig a little deeper.
You say Whedon’s early 2006 draft is a male fantasy. And, to quote OP’s tags: “men pls stop.” Alright. By that logic, a draft written by a woman wouldn’t have similar lines sexualizing Diana, right? It’s too bad we don’t have any– oh… whoops, yes, we do have a draft written by a woman. Let’s look at Diana’s introduction in the 2004 draft by
Laeta Kalogridis:
From the same script, here’s Hippolyta’s introduction:
And here’s how Trevor meets all those women after having washed up on the shore:
Yes, we even get the cliched “Is this heaven?” line.
Isn’t it odd that in this version written by two men Diana is less sexualized than in the version written by a woman? *gasp*
(Side note: Diana’s description still focuses exclusively on her appearance, and you know exactly what kind of shots the writers have in mind with the silhouette etc. But this also comes with the territory. This is a character, a superhero, many people will already be familiar with, so the writers tend to focus on what makes the character iconic. If you were to write about some average Joe/Josephine, you should indeed focus more on their personalities when introducing them.)
For the sake of completion, yes, there is some truly cringeworthy stuff out there, and yes, some of it is written by men. Case in point: Todd Alcott’s introduction of Diana in his 2001 draft (commissioned by Joel Silver):
Feel free to go into full YIKES mode here. “Form-fitting catsuit?” Please.
This is the stuff that was already making the rounds before Whedon came on board – he didn’t write his version in a vacuum, and many people with their very own visions for the movie and the character were involved in the WW development stages. If you feel that two random snippets ripped out of a rough draft are solid evidence for the utter failure of all male writers and of Whedon in particular, I suggest you find another hill to die on with your petty hate.
Last but not least, Whedon’s version wasn’t a finished draft. As he said himself, “I did a draft that had all the big moments but was structurally wonky, then an outline for a much tighter version, but by that time the end was already in sight, so I never got to do the final definitive draft of the movie I would have made.” [X]
Stephen King is an All-Time Great, arguably one of the most popular novelists the world has ever seen. And there’s a good chance that he’s inspired more people to start writing than any other living writer. So, as the Guardian and King’s UK publisher Hodder launch a short story competition – to be judged by the master himself – here are the ten most important lessons to learn from his work.
1. Write whatever the hell you like
King might be best known – or, rather, best regarded – as a writer of horror novels, but really, his back catalogue is crammed with every genre you can think of. There are thrillers (Misery, Gerald’s Game), literary novels (Bag Of Bones, Different Seasons), crime procedurals (Mr Mercedes), apocalypse narratives (The Stand), fantasy (Eyes Of The Dragon, The Dark Tower series) … He’s even written what I think of as being one of the greatest Young Adult novels of all time: The Long Walk. Perhaps the only genre or audience he hasn’t really touched so far is comedy, but most of his work features moments that show his deft touch with humour. It’s clear that King does what he wants, when he wants, and his constant readers – the term he calls his, well, constant readers – will follow him wherever he goes.
2. The scariest thing isn’t necessarily what’s underneath the bed
Horror is a curious thing. What scares one person won’t necessarily scare another. And while there might be moments in his horror novels that tread towards the more conventional ideas of what some find terrifying, for the most part, the truly scary aspects are those that deal with humanity itself. Ghosts drive people to madness, telekinetic girls destroy whole towns with their powers, clowns … well, clowns are just bloody terrifying full stop. But the true crux of King’s ability to scare is finding the thing that his readers are actually worried about, and bringing that to the fore. If you’re writing horror, don’t just think about what goes bump in the night; think about what that bump might drive people to do afterwards.
3. Don’t be scared of transparency
One of my favourite things about King’s short story collections are the little notes about each tale that he puts into the text. The history of them, the context for the idea, how the writing process actually worked. They’re not only invaluable material for aspiring writers – because exactly how many drafts does it take to reach a decent story? King knows! – but they’re also brilliant nuggets of insight into King himself. Some people might think that it’s better off knowing nothing about authors when they read their work, but for King, his heart is on his sleeve. In his latest collection, The Bazaar of Broken Dreams, King gets more in-depth than ever, talking about what inspired the stories in such an honest way that it couldn’t have come from another writer’s pen. Which brings us to …
4. Write what you know. Sort of. Sometimes
Write what you know is the most common writing tip you’ll find anywhere. It’s nonsense, really, because if we all did that we’d end up with terribly boring novels about writers staring out of windows waiting for inspiration to hit. (If you like those, incidentally, head straight for the literary fiction section of your nearest bookshop.) But King understands that experience is something which can be channelled into your work, and should be at every opportunity. Aspects of his life – addiction, teaching, his near-fatal car accident, rock and roll, ageing – have cropped up in his work over and over, in ways that aren’t always obvious, but often help to drive the story. That’s something every writer can use, because it’s through these truths that real emotions can be writ large on the page.
5. Aim big. Or small
King’s written some mammoth books, and they’re often about mammoth things. The Stand takes readers into an apocalypse, with every stage of it laid out on the page until the final fantastical showdown. It deals with a horror that hits a group of characters twice in their lives, showing us how years and years of experience can change people. And The Dark Tower is a seven (or eight, or more, if you count the short stories set in its world) part series that takes in so many different genres of writing it’s dizzying. When he needs to, King aims really big, and sometimes that’s what you have to do to tell a story. At the other end of the spectrum, some of King’s most enduring stories – Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption, The Mist – have come from his shorter works. He traps small groups of characters in single locations and lets the story play out how it will. The length of the story you’re telling should dictate the size of the book. Doesn’t matter if it’s forty thousand words or two hundred, King doesn’t waste a word.
6. Write all the time. And write a lot
King’s published – wait for it – 55 novels, 11 collections of stories, 5 non-fiction works, 7 novellas and 9 assorted other pieces (including illustrated works and comic books). That’s over a period of 41 years. That’s an average of two books a year. Which is, I must admit, a pretty giddying amount. That’s years of reading (or rereading, if you’re as foolishly in awe of him as I am). But he’s barely stopped for breath. This year has seen three books published by him, which makes me feel a little ashamed. Still, at my current rate of writing, I might catch up with him sometime next century. And while not every book has found the same critical and commercial success, they’ve all got their fans.
7. Voice is just as important as content
King’s a writer who understands that a story needs to begin before it’s actually told. It begins in the voice of the novel: is it first person, or third? Is it past or present tense? Is it told through multiple narrators, or just the one? He’s a master at understanding exactly why each story is told the way it’s told. Sure, he might dress it up as something simple – the story finding the voice it needs, or vice versa – but through his books you can see that he’s tried pretty much everything, and can see why each voice worked with the story he was telling.
8. And Form is just as important as voice
King isn’t really thought of as an experimental novelist, which is grossly unfair. Some of King’s more daring novels have taken on really interesting forms. Be it The Green Mile’s fragmented, serialised narrative; or the dual publication of The Regulators and Desperation – novels which featured the same characters in very different situations, with unsettling parallels between the stories that unfolded for them; or even Carrie’s mixed-media narrative, with sections of the story told as interview or newspaper extract. All of these novels have played with the way they’re presented on the page to find the perfect medium for telling those stories. Really, the lesson here from King is to not be afraid to play.
9. You don’t have to be yourself
Some of King’s greatest works in the early years of his career weren’t published by King himself. They were in the name of Richard Bachman, his slightly grislier pseudonym. The Long Walk, Thinner, The Running Man – these are books that dealt with a nastier side of things than King did in his properly attributed work. Because, maybe it’s good to have a voice that allows us to let the real darkness out, with no judgments. (And then maybe, as King eventually did in The Dark Half, it’s good to kill that voice on the page … )
10. Read On Writing. Now
This is the most important tip in the list. In 2000, King published On Writing, a book that sits in the halfway space between autobiography and writing manual. It’s full of details about his process, about how he wrote his books, channelled his demons and overcame his challenges. It’s one of the few books about writing that are actually worth their salt, mainly because it understands that it’s about a personal experience, and readers might find that useful. There’s no universal truths when it comes to writing. One person’s process would be a nightmare for somebody else. Some people spend years labouring on nearly perfect first drafts; some people get a first draft written in six weeks, and then spend the next year destroying it and rebuilding it. On Writing tells you how King does it, to help you to find your own. Even if you’re not a fan of his books, it’s invaluable to the in-development writer. Heck, it’s invaluable to all writers.
