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Posts that deal with subjective content, expressing opinions or providing reviews of other media.

NaNoWriMo Started Today

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) started today, and I’m participating. The goal of the event is to write at least 50,000 words of a first-draft novel in 30 days. You “win” by hitting the 50,000 word total. It’s basically an attempt to spur some people who think they want to be writers to commit to something. The entire event is meant to be upbeat and positive, and the NaNoWriMo organization has many different tools available for current and aspiring writers to join communities, and find support. There are local chapters (there’s one for Calgary) that hold virtual and in-person events.

I’m participating for the first time this year. My project is a science fiction novel titled Ashes of Outpost. It’s set on an old commercial, transportation, and mining facility on an asteroid in the Bohen system in my fictional Unimanse universe that I’m continually evolving. So far, I’m off to a good start, with over 3,700 words (and counting) on day one. Part of what makes writing easier for me, personally, is that I can type quickly and reasonably accurately. It means that my fingers can keep up with my thoughts and imagination as I craft the story, and I’m not fighting with the mechanical work of getting words down on the electronic page. But I’m not so foolish to think I can keep that pace up forever, and I’m going to hit snags and roadblocks. But so far, it’s encouraging.

We’ll see how this goes, but it does look promising. Once it’s done, I’ll have a better sense of whether I would recommend the event to current and aspiring writers (and I still fall very much in the “aspiring” category right now). I like the idea, though, and that’s a start.

The Rings of Power Could Use a Boost

(Spoilers ahead) Season one of the The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power from Amazon Prime has finished. Overall, I enjoyed it, but it could use some improvement. I’m looking forward to season two, and hope they are able to address some of the shortcomings I see in their storytelling.

Spoiler Alert: The following contains descriptions that are likely to spoil key plot points for people who have not yet watched the series. Read at your own risk.

The Challenge

There are complaints that the series isn’t hewing close enough to the original storylines, derived from a combination of The Silmarillion and various notes Tolkien made over the years. I get the complaints, but as the showrunners pointed out, the various stories in the original written work take place over thousands of years. While the elven characters would be continuous, the humans, dwarves, and other characters would be replaced virtually every episode. Either that, or the story would drag out so long that only die-hard Tolkien fans would likely pay attention. And unfortunately, we aren’t a big enough group to sustain a TV show whose estimated costs run close to $1 billion dollars.

As a result, the story has to be compressed. That means finding a balance between telling the stories that make up the foundation for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but keeping them in a timeframe that a large enough audience will want to pay attention. It’s a challenge to be sure.

Overall, Not Bad

Overall, I think the season was reasonably good. The sets, the visual effects, and the costumes are very impressive. They have captured the same sort of essence that we see in the Peter Jackson movies, which is a good thing. It is different enough so we know this isn’t the Third Age from the core books. But it is similar enough that we can trace the lineage and not wonder “well, where did that come from, and then where did it go?” (I’m looking at you Star Trek: Discovery).

The performers are quite good in their roles, and that we (again) get a host of largely unknown actors means we see the characters, not the actors. The only suggestion I would have is for Morfydd Clark is if she could please unclench her teeth when she speaks. Enunciation is very much appreciated by the audience.

Lameness Isn’t Pleasant

The first glaring bit of lameness is the opening credits. Frankly, the dancing sand is horribly lame. After a couple of episodes, I now skip that part entirely. Yes, we get the right music with the right tone to impart the sense of gravity and importance of the events we will see. But the dancing sand takes away from all of that, ruining the mood. It’s as if that sand is trying terribly, terribly hard to look serious and important, and falls short in that regard.

Okay, so we can skip that part each episode. But then the season finale ends with an even more lame, verging on horrible, “song” where they attempt to set the explanatory poem about the rings (“three rings for the elven kings under the sky…”) to music. It doesn’t work. It’s bad. What makes it worse is it sounds like a feeble attempt to mimic a Shirley Bassey version of a James Bond theme. And it fails on every front. The bit of verse Tolkien wrote is structured in an odd way. It works when just read or is spoken aloud. It does not lend itself to be lyrics for a song. Fortunately, in the future I can stop the last episode before that travesty of a tune assaults my ears.

Pacing, Pacing, Pacing

The episodes themselves are very unevenly paced. There are many sections where the dialog just isn’t that interesting, isn’t telling us anything new, at times is beating us about the head on something we’ve already figured out, and seems to be long for the sake of being long. I’ve found myself a few times asking “could we just please get on with it”. Yeah, I get that Nori is taking a big step in going with the Istari that will be known as Gandalf (the “follow your nose” line was an amusing way to make that clear). It’s a parallel to both Bilbo’s journey in The Hobbit, and the one the four hobbits take in The Lord of the Rings. But Nori doesn’t need to spend what seems like an eternity explaining how hard it is for her emotionally to go.

The fact that the penultimate episode felt like the season finale, but nope, there’s one more to go, says something. Here we have things wrapped up in a bit of a bow, with a bunch of open story lines to be continued next season. The Southlands become Mordor, the Numenorians return home to regroup, and Galadriel is going to take Halbrand to get some healing. A potential new hero, in the young man Tyroe Muhafidin, is ready for his own story arc. We know that the mystery man from the sky has more to unveil, and the Harfoots (Harfeet?) are settled for a bit.

Apparently they felt the need for a “just one more thing” moment, as if they didn’t trust that we would be back for another season. The first three rings, for the elves, are made. Halbrand is revealed to be Sauron. The stranger from the sky is revealed to be Gandalf (after briefly and poorly flirting with him actually being Sauron). And a hobbit predecessor is “going on an adventure”. Really? This could have waited until season two? It’s not like there isn’t a lot more to come, because we know there is. There are still 17 more rings to be made and handed out. Gandalf needs to develop his powers, and there are four more wizards (Saruman, Radagast, the two unnamed blue wizards) still to arrive (or be found). The Greenwood needs to transform to Mirkwood. The harfoot need to evolve to become hobbits. That’s a lot to cover.

The last episode felt more like a filler, a need to make sure they had an even eight episodes. It contains nothing that couldn’t have waited to season two. But since they had a requirement to make eight episodes (and filling them was apparently already a challenge, given the pacing), we get eight. Plus so much is wrapped up in a bow in the episode that if they cancelled the series, we wouldn’t be left hanging all that much. It was almost as if they were afraid to leave things too open-ended.

Definitely More To Come

There is a lot more to come in the story. The question will be how many seasons have they planned, and how far do they take the story. Will it go as far as the war where Sauron is defeated (leading into Third Age)? Will it only go as far as the forging and distribution of the remaining rings? There is so much that can be covered. What happens to the dwarves after they get their rings, and how are they lost? What about the nine rings given to the nine human kings? We’ve seen nothing of those kingdoms at all at this point. The founding of Osgiliath, Minas Anor (which will become Minas Tirith). and Minas Ithil (which became Minas Morgul). The appearance of the Rohirrim. The construction of Orthanc and the Ring of Isengard. There is so much yet to be covered.

Part of the question is how much will be included in the next seasons of The Rings of Power. There is a lot, and even leaving out big chunks will make for a substantial story. Hopefully they can improve on some of the issues the first season has, and continue to tell a compelling story.

The Beautiful Consistency of Corner Gas

Corner Gas is, to me, an amazing show. It is simple, fun, completely unpretentious, and thoroughly Canadian. I also think it sets a high standard when it comes to creating an episodic television series.

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Finally, Actual Star Trek (Spoilers)

[Spoiler Alert!] I have been a Trekkie since I was a child, having watched the Original Series shortly after it entered syndication in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s. It was a Saturday evening tradition at my grandparent’s house (along with The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Hour and Land of the Giants). But I haven’t always liked everything made in the franchise, and lately it has been less than enjoyable for me. But I have renewed faith with Strange New Worlds.

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The Problem with Machete Order (Spoilers)

(Warning, Spoilers ahead). There is a recommendation about the order to watch the Star Wars movies in, called Machete Order. It comes from a blog post on Absolutely No Machete Juggling, and it arose because of a dissatisfaction with the prequel Star Wars episodes. It attempts to tell a better story, but after viewing it a couple times, it has some problems.

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Creating In An Existing Universe

There are plenty of creators (writers, directors, composers, etc) who end up creating work within a existing universe. Think making Star Wars movies, or writing a Star Trek novel. Often the desire for the creator to put their own stamp on the work bumps up against the “rules” and history of the universe. But how should you approach creating something in a universe that already has rules and history?

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Prehistoric Planet Review (Spoilers)

The BBC and AppleTV+ released their 5-part series on dinosaurs called Prehistoric Planet this week, featuring the voice of Sir David Attenborough. It focuses on 5 different general biomes at varying times in the cretaceous. It’s visually stunning for the most part, but it has some rough spots. Before you begin this, please note that this review is NOT spoiler-free, so proceed at your own risk.

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The Drabble

First, yes it has been over a year since I last put something here. Things happen, but I’m now in a place where I’m getting active again. Thanks to friends and family for their support.

A few months ago, I stumbled on a form of fiction writing called “drabbles”. A good friend pointed out, after I had posted my “vignettes”, that there was a whole class of writing called microfiction, very short stories. I hadn’t thought about it much since he mentioned it, but I came across an article in a writing magazine I had recently subscribed to that covered the drabble. After doing some digging via Google, and reading some examples of the form, I decided to give it a try.

But what is a drabble? It is a form of microfiction where the work is exactly 100 words long. It is a middle-ground of sorts in microfiction, with the addition of a small bit of formal structure. There are other forms of microfiction. One involves writing a story incorporating a daily topic word posted on Twitter, and the work itself must fit within the bounds of a single tweet. Others include works that are less than 1,000 words, or around 300 words, or even as small as 50 words. The name is a play on the word “dribble”, but since the story can be somewhat more expansive, the name “drabble” was coined.

The idea of microfiction was driven, in part, by an exchange involving Ernest Hemingway. He was challenged to write an extremely small, but complete, story using as few words as possible. He came up with six:

For sale, baby shoes. Never worn.

Those six words can form the core of a host of different stories, some sad, some hopeful and positive. But over time it has become a challenge to other writers: can you write a meaningful story using a modest number of words?

To get myself back into writing, I decided to give this new form a shot. I have a few works I have written that will appear on this site shortly, and I intend to post more over time. I expect many of them will not be very good, but it is through practice that we get better.