Impact of the Episodic

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Self-contained, episodic storytelling has fallen by the wayside in a lot of cinematic media, particularly for live-action television shows. Now the emphasis is on long-form story-telling suitable for the new era of binge-watching. The technology allowing one to stream episodes on demand rather than planning out your week by the TV guide and waiting for reruns if, heaven forbid, you missed an episode, has changed the nature of the storytelling format. I don’t think that is a bad thing, especially since I love “novels for television.” I do love long-running arcs that explore repercussions of the choices that characters make, sometimes only showing the full effect seasons later.

But I think that sometimes the power of self-contained episodes gets ignored or brushed off as a relic solely related to the technology that distributed it. Just because a show is comprised of self-contained episodes does not necessarily compromise its impact. A collection of short stories linked by the same characters can be just as powerful as a single giant novel. In some cases, it can be even more effective, depending on the kind of stories you want to tell. This is something I’ve really come to understand and appreciate as my friend Fox and I spend our evenings watching Star Trek: The Next Generation through Netflix Parties.

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Multimedia Star Wars Day Collection

I was going to write something all moody and self-pitying (and still might sometime soon) but then I remembered today was May 4th and therefore Star Wars Day, which is cause for celebration! I’ve written before about how much Star Wars influenced me, both personally and creatively, and at the moment I have nothing new to add to that conversation, other than another long fan-girl squeal. So instead of boring you with a ramble, I’m sharing some fun things around the internet, all Star Wars related, that you might enjoy:

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When Canon & Commentary Collide: What Is “Part of the Story”?

This entry is part of the “Spoiled By Supplements” blog series.

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Some people care about this topic more than others. For myself, I prefer to know what is part of the story and what is mere speculation, fan fiction, or notes on things that didn’t go anywhere. My time is both finite and valuable, so I want to know what is necessary and what is supplemental. These kinds of things can be interesting to know about, like reading a movie script to learn what was originally intended, see how it was actually executed on screen, and understand why it was cut or redone. These kinds of “alternate realities” are intriguing from an academic point of view. And a lot of artistic creation involves a lot of people, so seeing how the final product differs or adheres to the original vision and why it changed or stayed the same is pretty neat.

But how “final” is that final product? In an age where it’s easier and easier to make changes, from releasing Special Editions with CGI edits, changing a character’s design due to fan outcry, or redoing the CGI of an entire movie after it was released in theaters, it becomes harder and harder to call something “finished.”

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Overlapping & Long-Running Stories: Where’s The Entry Point?

This entry is part of the “Spoiled By Supplements” blog series.

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Every story has a beginning, middle, and end.

Or do they?

Stories are carefully crafted illusions that are supposed to make sense in a way that life does not. Most of the time it’s a simple matter of picking up the book, popping in the DVD, or opening up the comic to start the story. You follow it all the way through to the end, and you’re done (at least until the sequel comes out). However, there are some stories and mediums where the lines are blurred and the entry point for the story is not nearly as obvious. The prime example I can think of is comics.

I’m still pretty new to the world of comics and graphic novels, and they can be really hard to get into. I remember after watching the Marvel film Doctor Strange, I wanted to learn more about the character. But when I went to look up the comics, I immediately faced a major problem: where should I start?

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Muddled Multimedia Narratives: Where and How Can We Access the Story?

Welcome back everyone! Sorry it took so long to get this next entry to you. I’d gotten really into working on Ravens & Roses during the original day this entry was supposed to be done and didn’t want to derail myself. Then life threw me a family health emergency curveball during the follow-up date, so I’ve been handling that instead of writing. Things are finally calming down and everything is fine, so here we are with the next installment of my “Spoiled By Supplements” blog series. Enjoy!

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I think that, once a story gets big enough, it’s inevitable that it will start to creep across mediums. Some of that may be due to creative curiosity, to see what kind of take on the story will come out of the medium. Some of it may be from commercial pressure to reach a wider audience or different niches within a potential audience. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that. A feature length film has different creative restraints from a novel, which is different from a comic book, and so on. It can be interesting to see how the medium shapes or highlights different aspects of a story or further explores the world within that story. It also makes marketing sense to try to reach as many people as possible, and everyone has different mediums they prefer their stories to be in, so why not satisfy everyone?

The problem is that sometimes it can become too sprawling, too widespread, and too muddled for anyone to follow the story properly, or even access it. This can be a real problem for new or more casual fans.

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Caught Between Worlds

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Once again, I find myself in an odd position where I have too many different fictional universes filling my brain, none of which is dominant enough to drive out the others and leave a clear path for inspiration.

I just finished reading the anthropological science fiction Foreigner series by C. J. Cherryh, so my brain is filled with alien politics and the awesomeness that is Bren Cameron.
I just finished watching The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance television series on Netflix, so my brain is filled with magic and fairy-folk and my YA novel Faylinn.
I’m currently participating in the writing challenge Story A Day, so my brain is trying to stay on task with writing and reading short stories, which is not my native element.
National Novel Writing Month is coming and I just got in my Page One notebook from Write Gear, which I want to use to get ready to work on an urban fantasy novel (which I think I’m going to set in Portland, Oregon because I’m sick of hearing about New York City and Chicago).
Ravens and Roses is back to lurking in the rear of my brain again, but it turns out that having “just a few scenes left to write” was a massive underestimation and I’ve got a ton of military research to do before I’m ready to tackle the rest of it.
Good Omens from Amazon Prime STILL has its demonic/angelic claws sunk deep into my psyche and it is going to take a massive amount of willpower not to watch it during NaNoWriMo because it’s being released on DVD and Blu-Ray early this November and like a fool I already preordered it… I’m doomed, aren’t I?
As a side effect of David Tennant’s presence in Good Omens, I have a powerful hankering for Shakespeare productions that feature him. (I’ve seen his Hamlet and now I’ve got Richard II, Much Ado About Nothing, and Shakespeare Uncovered lined up. Not Doctor Who because I cannot take having my heart ripped out by Ten’s regeneration again. I just can’t.)
I’m also still trying to get and keep regular life in order, which includes better incorporation of exercise and some serious calorie counting to bring my weight (and hopefully depression) back under control.

So, as you can see, I don’t know what (if anything) I’m going to get done, which is a little concerning with NaNoWriMo on the horizon… I do have a little time, so we’ll see how things go. (But seriously, I cannot wait for my upcoming week of vacation. Kat desperately needs a recharge before winter hits.)

Til next time…

Serendipitous Encounters

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It’s very difficult to know how, or even if, a story will affect you.

We think we know what we like and why we like it, but a lot of the time we actually don’t. Sometimes you pick up something you think you will like, something that you should like, and it leaves little to no impression on you. Perhaps you even dislike it! By all accounts, I should love Game of Thrones. It has high fantasy, political intrigue, complex characters, and dragons. And yet I have never warmed up to it. Other times you pick up something on a lark and are surprised to find out much it moves you, how deeply it sinks into your psyche and plays upon your heartstrings. How was I to know that tagging along with my friends to the theater on May 4, 2012 would send me careening head-first into the world of Marvel comics and superheroes?

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Nothing Wasted

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Since making my declaration about getting back into The Mariner Sequence, specifically Ravens and Roses, I haven’t actually written anything. And yet I feel like my mind is more in “writer mode” than it has been in a while.

Looking back over the last two weeks, it doesn’t seem like I’ve been writing, yet two morning walks spent talking to myself have solved some major plot problems that had troubled me for years. It just goes to show that, while a writer may not always be putting words on a page, when we have a goal in mind, we can feed everything we do into the compost of our subconscious and see what happens. It’s a weird and diverse process, one that is nonlinear and sporadic. Many of the things don’t seem to relate to writing. After all, what do the following contribute to the writing process?

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Passing Judgment, Part 2: Readers, Viewers & Fandom

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There have been several instances lately of works of art and media being torn down or otherwise endangered because of association with an artist who did or said something negative. I’ve decided to explore this issue in two parts, first looking at the production side with those who create or perform the media, and then looking at the consumers of that media, a.k.a. fandoms.

While there have been many news stories about artists being slammed for their personal views or lives that had a negative impact on the work itself, there is another just as insidious and pervasive negativity radiating from the opposite end of the spectrum. I’m talking about the consumers of media: the readers, viewers, and fans.

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Passing Judgment, Part 1: Artist, Actor & Creator

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