I
hope everybody had a great Halloween. It went by all too fast as
always. Maybe that’s why I’m a horror writer, so I can have
“Halloween” year round. Overall, my All
Hallow’s Eve was okay, even though I became dreadfully sick
and I hadn’t even eaten any candy! So I didn’t do anything that
night except stay home and read H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats In the
Walls”, which is one of his best stories and has plenty of Gothic
elements such as a haunted castle and a dreadful family secret. I
strongly suggest reading it. The next evening, however, I attended a
Halloween party that my writers group put on. Each year we get
together on or near the hallow-day and read a story we each wrote
based on a photo prompt. I’m not good writing in response to
prompts, at least when it comes to fiction. So I’ll admit that my
story was crap. But I’m glad I wrote and read it for the sake of
participating. Here’s some more of my post-Halloween activity:
Short Movie Review of I, Frankenstein
The
day after the party I
was sick again. This time jt
was probably
from eating too much Halloween candy and other goodies at the night
before. So I stayed indoors
most of the day. I used part of the time to watch 2014’s
I, Frankenstein that
one of the local TV stations was airing.
I hadn’t seen it before.
Overall, I liked it. It’s a popcorn horror/dark fantasy flick, but
it worked. What
made this movie fairly good was that the story stays relatively
true to Mary Shelley’s
novel. Even though it starts out after the events of
the book, its continuity
between them
and those of the movie was strong. The
movie was loaded with plenty
of suspense and story development and more than enough action. In
fact, the movie was mostly all action, which kind of rushed the
story. The set design was
fantastic, though.
The special effects were okay, the exception being
that when the demons are
killed in battle and explode
the pixelation of the digital
effects give away the
realism. Also, Frankenstein’s
monster (given the name
“Adam” in this movie and played by Aaron Eckhart)
looked too much like a normal human being which was my biggest fault
with the movie. Other than those few problems,
it wasn’t bad.
The Challenge of Writing the Opposite Sex’s P.O.V.
Now
that the Halloween rush is over, I’ve been getting back on track
with my writing projects. I’m continuing editing my current short
story, a sci fi horror about a search engine. It’s been a bit of a
challenge because the main
character is a woman and
I haven’t written many stories with female protagonists.
The few that I
have I’ve fallen short in
developing their main characters.
But the key to writing from
the point of view of the opposite sex is to think of the common human
desires and ambitions your
protagonist has, and so desires and ambitions we all share as human
beings, then give him/her
distinctive traits.
An article by author A. Lee
Martinez at
WritersDigest.com
talks about this in more detail and so if you have problems writing
from the view point of the opposite gendre I strongly recommend
reading
it.
Writing Through the Block
The
other challenge with this story was a
sudden case of writer’s
block. It came
about from myself having inevitably
changed
directions in the course of the story while
revising. I
couldn’t go back to the old direction because the story and
character would’ve remained stale. So what did I do when I couldn’t
find a solution that connected
A with B and therefore one scene with the next? I simply wrote
through the block. Not only did it
help me continue revising
the story but it lead to a new idea that enhanced the
plot! So the next time you
get a block in your writing try writing through it no matter how lame
the words seem.
It’s in writing itself that develops ideas and brings in new ones,
maybe not immediately but eventually.
To Come . . .
The
other project I’ll be returning to is “Circa Sixty Years Dead”’s
variant
cover, the photo realistic cover that I said I would give my newest
published book of horror. [link]
So you’ll be hearing more about that in the weeks to come.
So
what did you do for Halloween? Did you go to any parties? Hand out
treats? Hand out tricks? Did you watch or read any good horror? Feel
free to leave your responses in the box below.
Until
next time . . .
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| Credit: Pixabay.com |
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