Visual Storytelling

Not too long ago, I had a chance to see this movie. An early example of the use of digital sets (much like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow) Casshern in a lot of ways, is a live-action anime. Literally. It's based on an anime from the 1970s (called Casshan in the US), even maintaining the mech designs for the robots that appear in the film.

The version of Casshern I watched was the recent DreamWorks DVD release. It's full of over-simplified subtitles, and missing twenty minutes of footage. But what I saw was something incredible. Full of life and color, even when depicting drab death. It's full of imagery concerning revenge, hate, bioethics--everything typically found in seinen anime, such as RahXephon or Gundam Wing. It's very smooth and epic, yet still maintaining a very personal form of storytelling.

I knew I really was enjoying this film when it ended. The final sequence shows a very dreamlike resolution for each character, a resolution involving no words, only two and a half minutes of visuals involving the various characters.

I would hope that any story that tries to balance the line between action and emotion would learn from the example Casshern makes. Highly recommended.

Beta Plot Twists

As I previously hinted, one of the beta reader received Chapter 14 of Vitamin F today. It didn't take her long to get through it either.

Angie asked me a few questions before she started reading it. "Is Delilah dead?" I said that would be addressed in Chapter 15, which I also gave her. I asked her to mark down anything and everything she could think of about what she was reading. In a previous conversation, I warned her that I'd know when she met it just by her expression, she wouldn't even have to say she'd read it.

I didn't know how right I was. Angie was walking around close to the register I was working at. I noticed that she glanced my way a few times and had a look that said she was thinking about something. When she started coming forward (there were times when the register wasn't busy, even on Black Friday), I couldn't help but say, "I see that you've read it."

"I did not see that coming."

My response. "You weren't supposed to. Although, I did leave little clues in almost every chapter."

"Yeah. The title was a pretty big clue, but I wasn't sure how until I read it."

"That was one thing," I said.

"And," Angie said, "I've been wondering why Bridgett was the main character. Now I know why."

We discussed things about the chapter itself. Little things past that point. In celebration of the chapter doing it's job, we did the whole high-5 thing, and Angie gave me her official comment on the chapter: "Holy Fucking Shit!"

After One Hundred Days

A while back, I gave myself a loose due date to finish a draft of Vitamin F. I gave myself 100 days to finish a draft by. Well, the 100 days ended on Saturday and I still don't have a completed draft. Instead, I've got a few other things that I think will be helpful in the long term.

First of all, I've assembled 21 complete chapters, for a total of 233 pages of completed text. I'm around halfway through the plot, as well as the material I have generated since February 1. I've had to stop no less than three times before now to write an entire chapter from scratch; these chapters have been among the finest I've written.

I've assembled a good group of Beta readers. There are seven of them in total that have provided me with some degree of feedback, if only on the first couple of chapters. Just to reveal the demographics a little, there are two men and five women. The age range starts in the early twenties and goes all the way to the mid-forties. Two readers tear and rip the story to shreds, although they do so in different ways. Two read the story casually, much in the way most readers will read novels. Two have given me only the most basic of feedback, not quite tearing it to shreds, but not reading it casually either. The last has given me a wide range of perspectives to think about while writing.

Being on such a creative track has gotten me thinking about The Golden Hollow again, something I hadn't forgotten about in my mind, even though I'd done little writing on the subject in some time.

I've learned that in order to sell this thing, I don't have to play my hand. Only the men who are reading Vitamin F know the plot twist. One of the women is about to find out, but that's only because of how far she's progressed through the story. Over half of the readers don't yet know what this book is specifically about, but they are still enjoying it.

In about a week or so, I'll probably report on how that plot twist is recieved. I'm definately looking forward to that.

Fulfiling Promises

I thought I would go ahead and introduce you to Kadium, one of the central figures in the mythos of The Golden Hollow. Take a second and I'll fill in a few details.

Aside from the rustic qicture quality, you can see what he wears a large cloack over his armor and sits on a large throne, thinking a lot. Thinking's all he's done for a few hundred years. If you look close, you might also notice that his face is just as silver as the rest of his body. That's because he is the armor he's wearing. He's over seven feet tall, has all the qualifications of a demon, a robot, and a sorceror--even though he's an ancient being sealed inside another dimension.

In other news, one of my Vitamin F readers is on the cusp of reading the big plot twist. Remember? That little bit of information about Bridgett's chromosomes? It's exciting to get to find out a reader's honest reaction to that idea.

Finally, I might start posting a few of my shorter works online. I'm not sure if I will or not, but it's something I'm considering. If I decide to get it set up, I'll let you know.

Catching Up With Commander

I've neglected my oldest creation for too long. He's restless, mad, and ready to kick someone's ass. He'd really like to beat the hell out of a villain I called The Controller, but he can't find The Controller.

A few weeks back, I was fooling around with a phrase translation website and I decided to type in "the controller" just to see what would come up. That, and Controller sounds a bit too much like Commander. I don't want these characters to get confused with one another. When I changed the phrase to "the shaper" I came up with something that stuck out at me: Der Former. I found it interesting because the group of people that I had working for The Controller at one time called themselves "the Formers."

That's why Commander should be hunting down Der Former.

Of course, I should tell you how I've recently redesigned Der Former without redesigning him at all. His look was always meant to include a brown cape, which he uses to conceal his armor from view. He's got long brown hair and wears a gold mask. "Wears" is the wrong word now. You can't wear something that's bonded to your skin, literally hammered into place. His armor isn't just to provide him a place to store all his super powers now either--it's a containment shell for all his replaced organs. I had the thought that he should find people with powers, see who's the best, then harvest the appropriate organs so he can improve himself, shape himself into a more perfected being.

I've yet to finish a drawing of the (re)design, but once I do, I'll post a copy of it. This guy is going to be the result of some masochistic science experiement, one that's always a work in progress. Der Former's goals as of late have been refined from "general antagonistic manipulation" to a specific goal of seeing that The Three Rituals of Kadium are prevented from happening.

By the way, this story I've been describing is a planned revision of the first novel I ever wrote. At the time, I gave it the title Life is Pain, but that's gotten dried out over time and I want something better. I'm thinking about a new title, Mind and Machine, to describe some of the basic conflicts that continuously occur throughout Commander's journeys.

My plan at the moment is to include the concept of The Three Rituals of Kadium throughout The Golden Hollow until Kadium actually shows up. I've always wanted this character to have a powerful presence. I'll try to give him that by having a group of his followers try to complete one of the rituals in Mind and Machine, one crazed rogue disciple complete a ritual in the second book, and Kadium can burst free in the third book--maybe I should call that one The Third Ritual.