Revisions...again...and...again

I don't have much more to say about revision. Revising allows you to improve upon the germ of the good idea that already exists within your first draft. However, until I actually experience this for myself, the idea of having ONE sole editor is vastly superior to that of having assorted classmates read over your work. And this isn't to knock my classmates. There's just too many people suggesting that the things that they like be applied to what I write. I just want to know if my dialogue sucks, if the atmosphere I'm trying to invoke is there, what could be expanded upon and if I'm rambling on too much.  I do not, however, want to know how you would tell my story.

Pros and Cons of Revision

Revisions help make your writing better. This is fact. The first draft can always be improved upon, and unless you're some sort of pretentious European asshole who died before before any of your work could be published, in which several months after you die, your unpublished work is published as is(i.e. not revised), the first draft usually sucks anyway.

Having an editor helps, as you have one person who really understands what you're doing and what you're attempting to do. This is fine. Revision becomes a terrible experience, I think, in school. You have the professor, who, while maybe not in-tuned to what you want to achieve(because they are dealing with work from about 15 other people), will help you to the best of their ability. But remember those 15 other people? They get to read your work as well, and they get their chance to give their 2 cents, which is, I've learned, not even worth a fraction of that.

You have 15 people all with varying opinions on your work, and they suggest a million things that they want to you do to make the story jive with them. This is frustrating, because when it comes to revise, whose story are you now writing? That talentless loudmouth in the corner's story? The snobby pseudo-intellectual/pseudo-literary snob person who prides themselves over having read William S. Burroughs and Hunter Thompson a million times(and by Burroughs and Thompson, I mean only 2 novels: Fear and Loathing...and Naked Lunch) and hates genre fiction's story? Or are you writing YOUR story?

However, that is kind of an upside to in-class revision, as if you don't get criticism from those people, you get the trivial, incredibly banal criticism from people who don't know any better or the people who don't want to hurt your feelings, so you wind up with a list bullet-points reading "Nice dialogue!" or "This is cliche" or the worst, "I really liked it!" or something equally silly.

Another downside of in-class revision is the time limit. You have a week or 2 days to revise your story. I don't believe you can rush creativity like that. I understand the need for a structured semester and such, but it pains when me when I have a great idea for a revision 3 months after I write something that would have totally benefited the story instead of the forced idea I had to use because I had no choice.

There you go.

Had I a nickel for every story idea I had, i'd have a whole nickel just for me.

So first, we have the five stories I wanna get around to telling:

1. A vampire story in told in flashback from a man about an incident in his childhood. When he was 7, his sister, aged 11, died mysteriously. His mom kind of zoned out of life, and his father tried to hold everything together. As a child, he was very fond of horror movies and stuff. And one night, his sister comes a tap-tap-tapping upon his window sill. This is the one i'm rather partial to, but in a sense it feels like a cheap rip-off of the bit in Salem's Lot in which Danny Glick comes a'knocking on Mark Petrie's window. Ah well, take it for a spin and bring it back as something different.

2. Another vampire story based on a short screenplay I wrote that I turned into a film that, where I like it, could have still been better. And by better, I mean in ways only the written word can allow. A college student at William Paterson University is bitten by a vampire. He must kill her.

3. This is a story that I tried writing in Intro to Creative Writing but never got around to it as I couldn't get the first sentence that I wanted. A devout christian working at a camp owned by a Salvation Army-like organization has his faith and sanity tested when it he discovers that the God the organization worships isn't exactly what he thought it was.

4. Another one of my rip-off stories, this time taking a spin with John Boorman's 1967 film POINT BLANK. There is a very unique kind of chase sequence towards the beginning that just kicks my ass every time I watch it. I started developing it when I took Fiction Writing last semester, but never went anywhere with it.

5. Yet another story I started but never took anywhere. Last semester in Fiction Writing, I decided last minute that the story I was gonna hand in sucked, so I quickly wrote a fragment of a new one about two scientists who discover mummies of an long thought to be legendary ancient civilization off the coast of California on an island. The taking of these mummies unleash a protector of the dead to hunt those that took it, on top of revealing horrifying truths about human evolution.

Now we have 10 stories I've told people over the last three days. The issue with this is trying to remember them. These stories are usually told without importance, and they don't stay reserved within the mind. So i've tried to remember as many as I can.

1. When I was doing lighting for a short film project, the angle we had set one of the lights on resulted in the plastic back casing of the light to melt. We then had to shut the light off after every take, discuss each new take in the dark, and then turn the light back to shoot a new one.

2. My Film 3 Project had two producers who didn't do shit. My friend wound up being producer of his Film 3 project. After telling him the hell I went through, I threatened to kill him if he messed up.

3. I had to explain to a bunch of newbs how difficult it is to light a movie. It's the hardest part, and takes forever to set up, adjust and then put away. You will not get anything to look good at all if you don't know how to compose a scene.

4. I told someone how I would visualize my adaptation of Dracula as the most faithful adaptation of the novel yet. It's pretty sweet.

5. I was telling a friend of mine about this whole sprawling narrative that is connected by a bunch of short stories that span back to the Salem Witch Trials through the 1920s through WW2 to now, all dealing with Lovecraftian elements.

6. I totally intend to geek out when Guillermo del Toro finally gets around to adapting Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness. I'll buy the art books, the script books, the movie tie-in edition of the novel, everything. Posters, t-shirts. I'll see it 10 times in theaters and won't even care if it sucked.

7. Including wanting to adapt Dracula, i'd love to do the triumvirate of great vampire novels: Dracula, Salem's Lot and I Am Legend, all as faithful as I can possibly make them. The more times they do these stories, the more they change and they wind up sucking. Time to do some right.

8. I would also love to adapt Kim Newman's Anno-Dracula trilogy of novels. Maybe not as films because he uses so many characters that copyright would become an issue. Maybe as a comic book with either Eddie Campbell(From Hell) or Kevin O'Neal(League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) doing the art.


eeeeh Two short. I can't remember any more. Sorry.

A brief addition and a little thought

The only link included in my blog about Alan Moore is a link to the wikipedia page about FROM HELL. Alan Moore doesn't believe in the internet, so he doesn't have an official website and most fan-sites suck. So here's his wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Moore


and now for a little thought:

Ya know what poem I REEEEAAAALLLLLY don't like? The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. Don't get me wrong: It was cool in middle school when you were trying to find yourself and thought of yourself as rebellious or whatever. But I really don't like how it's been adopted by everyone and their mothers to act as a testament to their individuality. If everyone takes the road less traveled, it then becomes the road most traveled and therefore, individuality doesn't exist.

"There's sex and death and human grime, in monochrome for one thin dime..."

...so sayeth a wild beared wise man by the name of Alan Moore.

Who is Alan Moore you ask? Alan Moore is a famed (and my personal favorite of all time) comic book writer. He is this man:

Aside from having an epic beard, he is also an epic writer. As I said: one of the greatest, and my personal favorites.

In the 1980s, this man was responsible for really changing how the world viewed comic books when DC comics released "Watchmen". He single-handedly proved that comic books, superheroes in particular, were more than just cheesy kid stuff. He introduced a complexity and a realism to them. And it wasn't just due to introducing all that into comics, but it was HOW he managed to execute it. His writing is deep and very penetrating. There's a poetry to his words and how they resonate. Cliche, I know, but his books are mind blowing.

Here's a page from WATCHMEN, at the end:

Not the best example, but it gets my point across, I think. Next time you find yourself in Borders or Barnes & Noble, check out the Graphic Novel(meh)/Comic section and pick the book off the shelf, sit down and read it. There's a reason WATCHMEN is considered one of the best, if not the best, comic book ever written.

Other works by Alan Moore include his notorious MIRACLEMAN series from the 80's. It's famous for issue 15 in which the villian, Kid Miracleman goes on a massive bloody rampage in England, killing thousands of people. It rains body parts. People are mutilated and deformed. Buildings are in ruin. It's ghastly and incredibly disturbing to look at. But you know what? It's so BEAUTIFULLY written. This is also another reason why I like Moore's writing. The guy can write violence like no other.

Then of course, there's his great FROM HELL, which, like WATCHMEN, was turned into a movie, albeit a shitty one. The comic is close to 600 pages, and while about Jack The Ripper, it goes into a plethora of other things, like mysticism, the entire Victorian period, and other sorts of metaphysical craziness. Check out the wikipedia page here. Good stuff.

In the Superhero comics world, Moore is famous for his deconstruction of the Superhero archetype. He breaks down characters and examines what makes them tick and flips them upside down, revealing, in a way, how silly they are, but more importantly, how great they truly are and why we love these kinds of characters.

The downside is, once WATCHMEN came out, the effect it had on the comics world itself, in terms of creativity, was kinda negative. Deep and Complex was interpreted as "gritty, bleak, and pissed off". This is something Moore has stated several times as regretting. The current state of Superhero comics revels in this line of thinking and Moore, perhaps since the 90's, has been downplaying his role as the shepherd of gritty crap. Several superhero creations of his, before he gave up on superheroes forever, include Tom Strong, an homage to pulp heroes of old, mainly Doc Savage: The series is light-hearted and fun, but still contains that wonderful prose that really makes the story better than it is. Moore also tackled several stories featuring the legendary Will Eisner's character, The Spirit, writing two of the best post-Eisner Spirit stories I've ever read.

Now a-days, he's given up on superheroes, really. He doesn't like the state of them. He once said Superheroes should never be akin to Hamlet. They were never supposed to be that serious.  Moore has recently been hard at work on the second part of the 4th installment of his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series. That should be cool.

An "ode" poem by H.P. Lovecraft

 Lovecraft was very old fashioned. His style feels like it belongs somewhere in the Victorian period of literature than in the 1930s, which is odd, because many of his stories were set in contemporary times. Lovecraft actually considered himself a poet and felt very strongly that he wasn't that good of a fiction writer. This poem isn't indicative at all of H.P. Lovecraft's output nor is it a a great representation of his work as a whole. What it reveals, however, is Lovecraft's ability as a writer. He wrote sonnets(Shakespearean, if I'm not mistaken. I'll look it up later) and did so in a such a way that, like I said, felt like they belonged in a time long since past.

Ode for July Fourth, 1917
As Columbia’s brave scions, in anger array’d,
      Once defy’d a proud monarch and built a new nation;
’Gainst their brothers of Britain unsheath’d the sharp blade
      That hath ne’er met defeat nor endur’d desecration;
            So must we in this hour
            Show our valour and pow’r,
And dispel the black perils that over us low’r:
      Whilst the sons of Britannia, no longer our foes,
      Will rejoice in our triumphs and strengthen our blows!

See the banners of Liberty float in the breeze
      That plays light o’er the regions our fathers defended;
Hear the voice of the million resound o’er the leas,
      As the deeds of the past are proclaim’d and commended;
            And in splendour on high
            Where our flags proudly fly,
See the folds we tore down flung again to the sky:
      For the Emblem of England, in kinship unfurl’d,
      Shall divide with Old Glory the praise of the world!

Bury’d now are the hatreds of subject and King,
      And the strife that once sunder’d an Empire hath vanish’d.
With the fame of the Saxon the heavens shall ring
      As the vultures of darkness are baffled and banish’d;
            And the broad British sea,
            Of her enemies free,
Shall in tribute bow gladly, Columbia to thee:
      For the friends of the Right, in the field side by side,
      Form a fabric of Freedom no hand can divide! 

As a side note, I mentioned above that Lovecraft was old fashioned. He thought of himself as a loyalist to Britain, despite being an American. Lovecraft was odd, to say the least. This poem, if I am interpreting it correctly, is essentially anti-American. Or maybe it's about how great both Britain and America are. I don't know.

"Hurm" said the Mike

Indeed...


First post ever on a blog. Interesting.

My name is Michael and I'm a senior at Willy P. University. I'm majoring in Filmmaking, which is, to me, the most wonderful pain in the ass one could ever experience. The downside of being a film maker at the student level is that you don't have control. And by that, I mean you can't write a 10 minute short film that takes place in a plague-ridden European village in 1350. You don't have the money or the technology at your hands to pull it off. The other problem is that you have to balance out making films with the rest of your schoolwork, which can become very burdensome.

That said, I'm also an English Writing minor. I like to write for the exact reasons why I don't like film making. I have complete control over the story I'm telling. I'm not restrained by a budget or lack of technology to create something. I also have a tendency to take screenplays I've written and filmed(and wound up being incredibly unsatisfied with) and turn them into short stories instead. As I said, more control...


Moving on, I'm a big comic book reader and a really big fan of pulp fiction, which, with the exception of two of my former English professors, is met with disdain by academics. I guess I'm a fan of what academic snobs call genre fiction, though for the life of me I don't know what the hell the difference between that and "literature" is. For those who don't know, pulp fiction magazines were kind of like the prose predecessor to comic books, called "pulp" magazines for the cheap pulpy paper they were printed on. They were full of lurid, seedy stories of crime, horror, action and adventure, etc...and some very well known writers came out of this: Dashiell Hammet(The Maltese Falcon), Raymond Chandler(The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye), H.P. Lovecraft(The Call of Cthulhu, At The Mountains of Madness) and Robert E. Howard(creator of Conan The Barbarian and Solomon Kane).

Lovecraft is my favorite of the bunch, and probably my favorite writer period. He wrote these incredibly horrifying novellas and short stories about unfathomable cosmic horrors. The driving theme behind his stories is that man is merely an ant on the cosmic picnic blanket. And when they face "the beyond", their complacent minds shatter and they go insane. What I love is how these horrors force their way into the world. And it's Man's quest for knowledge or their extreme ignorance of the world that is usually their undoing.

Check him out at: http://www.hplovecraft.com

However, two of my favorite pulp characters, probably the most notorious(and for good reason), are The Shadow and Doc Savage. The Shadow was a heavy influence on the creation of Batman(hell, the first Batman story is basically a Shadow story with the names changed) and many other grim crime-fighters. Decked out in a black suit and fedora, with black flowing cape lined with red and armed with two .45s, The Shadow menaced the underworld with his horrible laugh and the ability to "cloud men's minds". Unlike Doc Savage, eh Shadow was more grounded, taking out mob gangs and the occasional evil opium peddling psychic China men with elaborate death trap in sub-basements. There was that crappy movie with Alec Baldwin made in the '90s. Ignore it.

Doc Savage is essentially Superman without the costume and ability to fly(Savage's first name is Clark, his nick name is the Man of Bronze, and he has a fortress of solitude). He's a regular man who was trained since birth to become the first human speciman. He's a genius, a brilliant inventor, a fighter, an adventurer, you name it. He would discover ancient amazonian civilizations and fight evil tribes, dinosaurs and all sorts of other stuff. There was a crappy movie made in the 70's. Ignore it.

My second favorite writer is crime novelist Richard Stark(aka Donald Westlake) whose writing I just recently got into. I'd been familiar with his novel "The Hunter" through it's two cinematic adaptations, POINT BLANK(1967), my favorite movie of all time, and PAYBACK(1999; The director's cut is way better than the theatrical cut.). And recently, one of my favorite comic book writer/artists, Darwyn Cooke(darwyncooke.blogspot.com/) started working on comic adaptations of Stark's novels, starting with "The Hunter". It was awesome, and it inspired me to go out and read the actual book. The Hunter marks the first appearance of Stark's master thief, Parker. He's a cold, cunning son of a bitch, and you can't help but cheer him on anyway. Stark's writing was a revelation to me, in terms of style. Unlike crime novel masters Hammet, Chandler and Spillane, Stark's writing was devoid of flowery metaphors and language. It's hard, straight and the point. It's as cool and brutal and calculating as Parker himself is. As a review for Cooke's adaptation stated, it's "like a shotgun blast to the chest". And it is. For more info, check out The Violent World of Parker

And while I'm at it, I'm really excited that Kim Newman's Anno-Dracula novels are finally being re-released by Titan Books starting in May. Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron and Judgement of Tears are three of my favorite novels. They detail an alternate timeline in the Dracula universe where instead of losing, Dracula kills his would-be destroyers mid-way through the novel and proceeds to become Prince Consort to the throne of England. In doing so, all the vampires come out of hiding, including literary cousins to the character. Other period-appropriate literary characters are there, too. It's a wonderful blending of pop. culture and all three novels make a for an incredibly satisfying read. Even more exciting, Newman's fourth entry to the series, "Johnny Alucard" will finally be released as well. Check Mr. Newman out here

I was also assigned to talk about my Advanced Creative Writing class, but I don't know what to say at the moment. As a class, we've met only once and got a list of our assignments. Once we get further into the semester, I think I'll be able to talk about it more.