Meme, and a survey.
Q&A MEME
- Leave me a comment saying you want to participate.
- I'll respond by asking you five questions.
- Update your journal with the answers to your questions.
daphnie_1 asked:
1) If you went on Mastermind, what would your specialist subject be?
Iii dunno? There's nothing specific I'm good at; I'm more a general knowledge kind of person. Maybe geography. Or Doctor Who. If I can pick a television show. I have to admit that I've never watched a complete episode of Mastermind.
2) If you could run away with: The Doctor, the Master, the Rani or Romana, who would you choose?
The Doctor. The Master's too nuts, the Rani's too fixated on science, and Romana's a pain in the ass. Yes, I would even run away with Four. I would probably push him off a cliff, though.
3) As a future television producer, which TV show do you think has had the most defining effect on you?
Definitely Doctor Who. Or, to be precise, RTD's era. It was the first television show that gripped me not only on a fannish level, but on a level where I looked past the characters at the production team and decided that yes, this is what I want to do. The confidentials helped--watching them, and seeing how much effort people put in this project, and how many people are involved in creating it, made me realize that this is a process I would love to be part of. So, yes, RTD's Who.
4) You have the chance to say anything to any historical figure. Who do you pick and what do you say?
Even if I could talk to historical figures, I probably would fail to see the point. Nothing I could say would make a difference, since history has already happened. That said, I might go back and tell Gandhi that I think he was a wonderful, smart person, and that I hope that his work and his ideas will continue to be remembered far into the future.
5) What do you think makes a good story?
1) Honesty
As a writer, you need to be honest about everything--your characters, your plot, your story arc and your inter-character interaction. You need to develop every character from yourself; you can't ever use stand-ins: the pantomime villain, the grouchy anti-hero; those are bad characters, unless you've taken them and personalized them. This is what RTD did with the Master when he brought him back--he took the ridiculous, personality-lacking pantomime villain of Classic Who, and he gave him a reason to be the way he is. Yes, Simm!Master's completely insane and off his rocker, but he makes sense to himself, and that's the important thing. A character needs to always make sense in and of themselves; their actions cannot be dictated by plot necessity.
You need to be honest about your plot insofar that you cannot change plot points or previously established facts without an in-story reason. In-story, in this case, means justified within the narrative. If a change happens only because you need it to happen to continue with your story, you're doing something wrong. You need to give the change a justification within the narration. Same with scenes and dialog. If a scene or a line of dialog only happens because you want it in there, because you think it's funny, or deep, but it serves no purpose within the narrative, you need to lose it. You can have funny lines and scenes, but you need to find a better reason to put them in your story than "they're funny". (An example of a writer who neglects this rule is Joss Whedon--his characters constantly snark at one another, to the point where it doesn't seem realistic or IC anymore. That's the kind of thing to avoid, in a good story.)
2) A hook
A good story needs a hook. By this I mean that a good story needs something that will hook the audience, that will address them personally. You could also call it a theme, but that's too big. You can do it in small ways. Just tonight, I rewatched Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways, and in that episode, one of the hooks were the game shows. To a British audience, those shows were personal, they addressed them directly. The reason shows like Big Brother or The Weakest Link are interesting to watch is the competition--who will be voted out, who will get to continue? By actually killing the contestants who got voted out, RTD turned something that all viewers felt was completely harmless--daytime television game shows--into something horrible. It not only gives the audience a big what if--what if the contestants actually were killed--it also gives them the question of "how far are we from a society that would pay to watch people being slaughtered like that?". The actual theme of the episode was something else--loyalty, morality, pacifism--but the game shows provided a hook that made the story immediate for the audience. It let them relate.
Often, characters on shows turn into ideals when they're confronted with extreme situations. In a sex scene, they turn into porn stars, in an action scene, they turn into Lara Croft. If you do that, you take the hook away. By letting people be people, by letting them have awkward, clumsy sex and letting them freeze up when they've got a gun pointed at them, you make the audience relate, whether they want to or not. And if you then provide bigger hooks like the game shows, or like the entertainment system on the bus in Midnight, you not only make the audience relate to the people, you make them relate to the fictional world you've created.
There's more to a good story, but I think those two are the most important ones. You won't always be able to have everything to 100% right, but I think those are the things you need to try for.
Also, if you're a role player; an f-lister linked to a survey an academic friend of hers is conducting as part of her research for her master's thesis. It's about gender and sexuality of players and characters in role play games. It took me about an hour to fill out. If you have Thoughts On Role Play, you can totally knock yourself out in this survey.
- Leave me a comment saying you want to participate.
- I'll respond by asking you five questions.
- Update your journal with the answers to your questions.
daphnie_1 asked:
1) If you went on Mastermind, what would your specialist subject be?
Iii dunno? There's nothing specific I'm good at; I'm more a general knowledge kind of person. Maybe geography. Or Doctor Who. If I can pick a television show. I have to admit that I've never watched a complete episode of Mastermind.
2) If you could run away with: The Doctor, the Master, the Rani or Romana, who would you choose?
The Doctor. The Master's too nuts, the Rani's too fixated on science, and Romana's a pain in the ass. Yes, I would even run away with Four. I would probably push him off a cliff, though.
3) As a future television producer, which TV show do you think has had the most defining effect on you?
Definitely Doctor Who. Or, to be precise, RTD's era. It was the first television show that gripped me not only on a fannish level, but on a level where I looked past the characters at the production team and decided that yes, this is what I want to do. The confidentials helped--watching them, and seeing how much effort people put in this project, and how many people are involved in creating it, made me realize that this is a process I would love to be part of. So, yes, RTD's Who.
4) You have the chance to say anything to any historical figure. Who do you pick and what do you say?
Even if I could talk to historical figures, I probably would fail to see the point. Nothing I could say would make a difference, since history has already happened. That said, I might go back and tell Gandhi that I think he was a wonderful, smart person, and that I hope that his work and his ideas will continue to be remembered far into the future.
5) What do you think makes a good story?
1) Honesty
As a writer, you need to be honest about everything--your characters, your plot, your story arc and your inter-character interaction. You need to develop every character from yourself; you can't ever use stand-ins: the pantomime villain, the grouchy anti-hero; those are bad characters, unless you've taken them and personalized them. This is what RTD did with the Master when he brought him back--he took the ridiculous, personality-lacking pantomime villain of Classic Who, and he gave him a reason to be the way he is. Yes, Simm!Master's completely insane and off his rocker, but he makes sense to himself, and that's the important thing. A character needs to always make sense in and of themselves; their actions cannot be dictated by plot necessity.
You need to be honest about your plot insofar that you cannot change plot points or previously established facts without an in-story reason. In-story, in this case, means justified within the narrative. If a change happens only because you need it to happen to continue with your story, you're doing something wrong. You need to give the change a justification within the narration. Same with scenes and dialog. If a scene or a line of dialog only happens because you want it in there, because you think it's funny, or deep, but it serves no purpose within the narrative, you need to lose it. You can have funny lines and scenes, but you need to find a better reason to put them in your story than "they're funny". (An example of a writer who neglects this rule is Joss Whedon--his characters constantly snark at one another, to the point where it doesn't seem realistic or IC anymore. That's the kind of thing to avoid, in a good story.)
2) A hook
A good story needs a hook. By this I mean that a good story needs something that will hook the audience, that will address them personally. You could also call it a theme, but that's too big. You can do it in small ways. Just tonight, I rewatched Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways, and in that episode, one of the hooks were the game shows. To a British audience, those shows were personal, they addressed them directly. The reason shows like Big Brother or The Weakest Link are interesting to watch is the competition--who will be voted out, who will get to continue? By actually killing the contestants who got voted out, RTD turned something that all viewers felt was completely harmless--daytime television game shows--into something horrible. It not only gives the audience a big what if--what if the contestants actually were killed--it also gives them the question of "how far are we from a society that would pay to watch people being slaughtered like that?". The actual theme of the episode was something else--loyalty, morality, pacifism--but the game shows provided a hook that made the story immediate for the audience. It let them relate.
Often, characters on shows turn into ideals when they're confronted with extreme situations. In a sex scene, they turn into porn stars, in an action scene, they turn into Lara Croft. If you do that, you take the hook away. By letting people be people, by letting them have awkward, clumsy sex and letting them freeze up when they've got a gun pointed at them, you make the audience relate, whether they want to or not. And if you then provide bigger hooks like the game shows, or like the entertainment system on the bus in Midnight, you not only make the audience relate to the people, you make them relate to the fictional world you've created.
There's more to a good story, but I think those two are the most important ones. You won't always be able to have everything to 100% right, but I think those are the things you need to try for.
Also, if you're a role player; an f-lister linked to a survey an academic friend of hers is conducting as part of her research for her master's thesis. It's about gender and sexuality of players and characters in role play games. It took me about an hour to fill out. If you have Thoughts On Role Play, you can totally knock yourself out in this survey.