The year 2016 ends with yet another tragic celebrity death, one that has left the nerd/geek community in mourning: Carrie Fisher, who famously played Princess Leia Organa in the Star Wars saga. In this video, I share some of my memories of Carrie Fisher, most notably when I met her at Indiana Comic-Con 2015.
What are your memories of Carrie Fisher?
Music: “Funeral Pyre for a Jedi” by John Williams
Fonts Courtesy of www.Dafont.com
“Ankle Pickers”
Hosted by Nathan Marchand, Sergio Garza, and Bill Miller
It’s been a few weeks since PlayStation Experience when Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was announced, but we decided we had to say something about it! Bill wasn’t able to join us, so this time a very excited Sergio and Nate talk about what features and characters they’d like to see in this next entry in the “Vs.” series.
What about you? What/who do you want in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite?
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You’ve probably noticed I haven’t been posting videos as often as I used to. There are reasons for that, which this video explains. Don’t worry–I’m not going away completely.
People often use the words “writer” (or “author”) and “storyteller” interchangeably, but I would argue they aren’t always synonyms.
This goes back to a conversation I had with a schoolmate in college about Stephen King. She made the statement that King wasn’t a great writer, but he was a great storyteller. I knew what she meant instinctively. It required a fairly nuanced definition and understanding of these terms.
To put it simply: a writer is someone who is excellent with the stylings and mechanics of language, whereas a storyteller is someone whose tales can compel and interest audiences.
We’ve all at one point or another read (or seen) stories that excelled at one of these areas at the expense of the other. A book/author may have great “purple prose,” as we in the industry like to call it, but the story itself is boring, trite, and /or cliché. In other words, it’s style at the expense of substance. It’s a common complaint with many modern blockbuster films, which often seem more interested in fancy cinematography and eye-popping special effects than in telling a story.
On the other hand, there’ve also been stories that are irresistible page-turners but are either hampered by writers who lack the talent to tell them well or writers who choose to use cheap tricks in telling them. To put it another way, the stories have great ideas that don’t find full expression because the author is either unable or unwilling to have them reach their full potential. To use a film as an example of the former, I’d site 1986’s Highlander, which had a great world and concepts but was hampered by almost borderline schlocky filmmaking. For the latter, I would cite The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown as an example. It was a fast-paced page-turner, but it relied on things like cheap cliffhangers at the end of chapters (i.e. “He opened the door, and…”) in order to keep people reading.
In order to be a truly great author, one must strive to be both a good writer and a good storyteller. This, admittedly, is a difficult thing to achieve, especially when improving each area requires different exercises. Style and mechanics can be developed through education and practice. Reading books like The Elements of Style and studying other authors’ writing styles can help one become a better writer (just make sure you don’t copy other authors to the point you become a watered down version of them, which will get you nowhere). However, becoming a better storyteller is a bit more difficult. It requires learning how to generate ideas and/or looking for new spins on old concepts. This is the sort of stuff editors are looking for when they hear pitches from authors. Perfect grammar and poetic prose will only get them so far; what truly matters to them is, “What is the story?” This, as my schoolmate hinted at, is probably what propelled Stephen King through most of his career. He has an uncanny ability to dream up compelling concepts, most of which involve making everyday objects terrifying.
In the world of speculative fiction franchises, there are often creators who fit into one category or the other. People like Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, and (more infamously) George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, were incredible world-builders and visionaries, but they weren’t the best writers. They needed to surround themselves with other people to help fill in their gaps. It was when they tried to overstep the bounds of their talent that things would go wrong. That, too, is another way to help yourself as an author: have people around you who can help fill in your blind spots. These usually come in the form of beta/alpha readers and fellow writers. It’s also a great way to build community, and God knows writers need as much community as they can get, what with their penchant for working in solitude.
Am I splitting hairs with this? What do you think is the difference between a writer and a storyteller, if any? Which end of this spectrum are you on? What advice would you give about filling in your gaps as a creator?
My Grandmother lay in that open casket like someone sleeping. She was peaceful, serene, even beautiful. It was picturesque, and I had my iPhone out to snap a few photos. But I could not bring myself to step within a few feet of her, even if it’d get me a better photo composition, because I knew the awful truth. What I saw before me wasn’t slumber—it was death. And it repelled me.
Grandma Ruth’s funeral was difficult for all the typical reasons, but also because it reminded me of a truth I’d pondered several times before: death is repulsive. While there are exceptions to this rule (like medical examiners, who’ve become desensitized to it because of their work, or certain weirdos who take perverse pleasure in it), most human beings find death to be a revulsion. It is a great mystery, a tragic loss, an unwanted end. It frightens us. We don’t usually like talking about it because it forces us to grapple with our own mortality. That’s why there are about as many euphemisms for death as there are for sex (which, ironically, involves the creation of life): “the big sleep,” “passed away,” and “bit the dust,” to name a few. We don’t even like to utter the word oftentimes.
Personally, as a Christian, I believe this revulsion is because deep down in every human’s heart, they know death is an intruder. Despite the fact that it appears to be a part of the natural world (or the “circle of life,” as a popular song once said), it was never meant to be part of God’s design. In the Garden of Eden, there was no death. Does that mean Adam and Eve were immortal? The answer to that is beyond my paygrade. Regardless, God warned them that if they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would die (Genesis 2:17). I take this to mean there was no death (or at least death as we know it) before then. It was when Adam and Eve succumbed to the wiles of the Serpent in Genesis 3 that death became part of the natural order. It was a corruption of what God created as good.
So, though many human beings deny this, deep down they know it to be true. They can dress it up or joke about it, even say death can be dignified, it doesn’t change the fact that it is unnatural. Perhaps part of why death is feared is because it is an irrefutable sign of God’s existence.
I think this is why, to put it in a storytelling perspective, why many comic book readers both love and hate resurrection stories in the funny books. On one hand, there’s the thrill of seeing a beloved character return (i.e. Superman in the famous ‘90s storyline) because it shows someone defeating death (which is itself an echo of Christian theology [Revelation 1:18]), but on the other, it cheapens death. What’s the point of killing a character if they’ll just be brought back later? It kills (no pun intended) the suspense, and makes their sacrifice hallow. The joke used to be that nobody stays dead in comics except Uncle Ben, Bucky, and Jason Todd. Now only the first third of that statement applies.
Regardless, this, too, is a reflection of this idea: we want there to be meaning in death. It is an inescapable intruder, so we try to find purpose in it, even if that purpose is only to celebrate the life of the deceased or glory in their passing (I’m looking at you, Fidel Castro). That’s one reason why we have funerals: they’re occasions for us to come to grips with how we think and feel about death.
These are but a few of my thoughts. Whole books have been written on the subject. I’m an amateur philosopher at best, so I won’t pretend to have it all figured out. Indeed, I’m still trying to figure out myself. Death is a subject too large for a little blog entry here. However, I do hope I’ve inspired you to think more deeply about the subject, whether it relates to your life or your writing.
What are your thoughts on death? It is repulsive to you? Why do you people are afraid of it?