Dino-Pirates of Ninja Island

Hardcore Geeking Alert.

I've mentioned dabbling in game design, courtesy of the Open Gaming License movement of D&D 3.0. I find it ridiculously gratifying that they're doing a full-on character write-up for an antagonist I created in Manual of the Planes.

Although I dig D&D 4.0, my favorite systems are True20 and Mutants & Masterminds. I'd like to point out a True20 variant published on the web by Scratch Factory. Dino-Pirates of Ninja Island is an elegant distillation of the True20 rules.

Also: DINO-PIRATES! AND NINJAS!

Love to see Corey convert it to a full on generalist pulp game. One of these days, Corey, I'll finish those damn vehicle combat rules ...

(NOTE: It would be remiss not to mention that Feng Sui was the greatest RPG and gameworld ever created. If there was an online CCG of Shadowfist I'd never get another lick of work done until I died of malnutrition nesting in my own filth in my Aero chair)

Killing the Buddha

How I wound up over there is way too long a story, but I just spent lunch zipping through the archives at Killing the Buddha, a great site discussing faith -- or as they call themselves, "a religious magazine for those made anxious by churches."

I particularly liked this article on the link between Protestant tradition, American exceptionalism, and their co-evolution into modern conservatism. It's an elegantr explanation of some hinks in national character I've spent years trying to explain to Canadian and European friends.

Waid Wednesdays #19: Covers, A Basic Primer

“Artist, please draw more attention to the severed head.”

Probably my favorite part of the editorial job--not co-plotting with writers, not copyediting scripts, not having the interns Google me all day--is working out covers. Part of that is because I’m a particularly visually minded editor, but mostly it’s because I still believe the cover is a key sales tool and sets the readers’ expectations for what’s actually inside the book in a way that nothing else can.

There was a time when the cover’s job was more important than it is today--back when all comics were basically an inexpensive impulse purchase from newsstands and from spinner racks, before fans began pre-ordering their comic books months in advance. Yes, most shops have new comics shelved so you can see the entire cover at once, which is a step up from newsstand displays that, at best, showed only the top third, but that doesn’t make cover art three times as important as it was--in the 21st century, most buyers have already committed to buying the newest issue of AVENGERS (or whatever) before they even walk into the store, regardless of what’s on the cover.

(And if you’ve ever wondered why so many modern covers are pin-up shots of characters rather than story-oriented illustrations, the answer’s generally twofold: pin-ups can be stockpiled in advance, and they can be repurposed for t-shirts and other merchandise at far less a cost than original material.)

That said--and feel free to call me Mr. Old-School--I still believe the cover’s primary job is to catch and hold the reader’s eye on the off-chance someone might actually be on the fence about picking it up. The cover’s not there to be a showcase for the artist, not to be lush or ornate just to show off, but to catch and hold attention amidst a sea of Wolverine comics.

The cover’s secondary job is to, with its frozen-moment single illustration, convey an idea. Extra points if the image makes me laugh out loud (like Nate Watson’s, shown above, even before I asked him to make the severed head bigger to help underscore the balance of comedy and horror of SCREAM QUEEN, about a serial killer who stalks a high school while dressed as its mascot).

When I commission a cover, I first ask for a couple of sketches--not because I feel the need to suggest a million “improvements,” but because I don’t want an artist to waste his time on anything that’s too close to a piece we’ve already done or that’s already in the works. Clever ideas outrank pin-ups, at least for me. A composition that tells me that the artist has a sense of design and isn’t just doodling kewl art onto the paper is critical. And (again, pointing to Nate Watson’s sketch here) the cover has to capture the feel of the series for new readers. Once the sketch has been approved, the artist turns it into a finished piece, remembering at all times (because I am a tyrant about them) my essential rules:

1. I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HATE ILLUSTRATIONS THAT OBSCURE THE LOGO (a.k.a. the title of the magazine). You can get away with that more easily if, like Superman’s or Playboy’s, your logo is already instantly recognizable to a mass audience. “Cthulhu Tales” is not that logo. (A great logo is in and of itself a thing of beauty. And like most works of art, I can’t produce one myself but I know a good one when I see it. One of the all-time best logo designers is the multiple-award-winning letterer Todd Klein (Sandman, Swamp Thing), who regularly runs in-depth studies on what makes logo designs work or not work. I implore you to go visit his site to read the analysis of someone exponentially more qualified than I am to explain the do’s and don’ts.

2. LOGOS SHOULD BE IN ONE SINGLE COLOR THAT’S COMPLEMENTARY TO THE COLOR OF THE MAIN ILLUSTRATION. Sub-rule: Any drop-shadow behind the logo, conversely, should be in a contrasting color. That would seem to be common sense, but you’d be aghast at how often it’s ignored.

3. LEAVE ROOM NOT ONLY FOR THE LOGO BUT FOR THE "TRADE DRESS," a.k.a. the company insignia, the issue number and month, and (God help us all) that dreaded barcode that began destroying American magazine covers before you were born and that I dream every day to someday see banished--but which, for now, remains a necessary, stinking, zebra-striped evil and I’m off-topic, aren’t I? Sorry. It’s just that, to this day, I still remember the very first comic I ever bought that had a barcode on it--Daredevil 130--and I’m still traumatized to this day. I thought it was gaudy and distracting back then, and my opinion hasn’t changed in the intervening 33 (!) years. I’d love to see barcodes banished, but in an understandable but still vomitous victory of commerce over art, most comics distributors insist that they be on the front cover or else they won’t handle your book. The advantage it gives them in computer inventory-management overrules the fact that it’s a nauseating blight. If you’re a big enough publisher, you can sneak a back-cover UPC every great once in a while, but since no advertiser is keen on having it interfere with back cover ads they’ve paid for, it’s generally not an option. Onward....

4. FLOP IT. Even if you think a cover sketch is a home run, and especially if you don’t, always turn it over and hold it up to the light so you can see what it looks like in mirror-image. A surprising number of times, it makes the mediocre good and the good better.

5. GIVE ME SOMETHING I CAN SEE FROM ACROSS THE ROOM. Bold colors. And/or white space. And/or stark illustrations. Simple is always, always better.

In the comments, if you please: your favorite comic or magazine covers.

Fuck You, Aliens

Yeah. Nice warp drive. Sweet AI. But can you make this?


Playing For Change | Song Around The World "Stand By Me" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

Didn't think so. Yeah, that's right. Get back on the ship.

(h/t Gizmodo)

Interview with Waid

Why, he's positively CHATTY over at AICN. The comics guys at AICN are really great, by the way, knowledgeable, with great taste -- it's genuinely one of my favorite, regular reads for reviews and interviews.

One Bag to Rule Them All ...

Still slightly stunned at the attention the link to The Pen Addict got, so I figure I'll send you to another specialty obsessive's center -- One Bag. I just did nine days in Portland out of a carry-on bag. Granted, I tend to cheat* and buy consumables like toothpaste, etc., once I arrive, but as a former professional traveller and current on-location monkey, I recommend the site heartily.

In the Comments I'd like to hear your travel tricks and favorite travel items, if you please ...








* I also buy some of my shirts online, much to the mocking of my friends. But these can take a beating and are great all-weather on-location clothes.

Old Standup

I'm actually a little terrified somebody found this. (Thanks, Richard.) '99 I think? Nah, got to be earlier, I'm pretty sure that's Montreal ... mid 90's. But there you go -- I had no idea this was online. Let's just say we all need to get used to the idea of our past, identity and privacy being a little more ... flexible in the 21st Century.

Jokes.com
John Rogers - Bridesmaids
dians.comedycentral.com
Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy Free Online Games

Faster Than the Mind's Eye

In this month's otherwise genially awful Wired our friendly Leverage crime consultant, Apollo Robbins, is name-checked in an article on neuroscience and magic by superstar brain dude Jonah Lehrer.

Research Thrills

Courtesy research for the Doomed Pulp Novel: You probably know this, but while they were building the New York Subway, some guys got sucked UP through the tunnel and blown out through the bottom of the East River. And lived. (And Curious Expeditions is a pretty cool blog)

One-Eyed Monster

Warning: Spoilers in trailer!



And still better than every SyFy Sytyrdy Myvy ever made. With the sole exception of Mammoth, of course.

Cutting Kane

He's enjoying that sawmill bit way too much.

DRUMMER Friday

by M A N



Billy Corgan and Frank Lenz
photo by Kateri Forbes


I'm taking a left turn this week to give a guy I know some much deserved props. Frank Lenz is not only a great drummer, but also one hell of decent human being. He just finished auditioning with Billy Corgan this week. You can read about the auditions over at the Smashing Pumpkins website.

You Vote

What's this the promo shot for: my fantasy GF reboot, or 21st century
Holmes & Watson?

Waid Wednesdays #1/2: See You Next Week

Here's this week's column of advice for writers and creative folk: spend the sixty lousy bucks on Quicken and be done with it. Don't just throw all your receipts and 1099s into a big drawer and expect to be able to neatly and effortlessly organize them on the morning of April 15, because you will instead spend that entire day sifting through a gigantic mound of paper and keening for the help of an unattentive God. And you will miss any deadlines you had that day. Like this one. Are you listening, Mark Waid of April 16, 2008? I thought not. You jerk.

Bread and Tea Bags

Quick reminder: today, all across America, thousands of people whose taxes will go down are marching and protesting the fact that my taxes will go up.

By 3 percentage points.

Memo to protesters: I'm okay with that, because I am not a selfish dick. I think I can survive the same crushing tax rates we had during the great economic apocalypse of the Clinton Years.

Go. Home.

(It's only going to get weirder.)

LEVERAGE 2: Hopefully, Aldis is the Last ...

My mom's beginning to get concerned at how I'm portrayed in these. I'm more concerned about the fact that since the actors are writing these, this is how they see me.

LEVERAGE 2: A Strangely Uneventful 2nd Act

John: Where's crafty?
Mark: On the Into the Wild bus.
John: What?



John: Wow, it is like the Into the Wild bus!
Mark: Exactly, except it's filled with snacks.
John: Which, admittedly, would change that movie a bit.
Mark: ... true.
John: "I will pit myself against nature with nothing more than my rifle a compass, and forty-eight pounds of Gummi Bears."

LEVERAGE 2: Welcome to Portland

Out along the river, two geese watch disapprovingly as we beat the hell out of Nate Ford in an abandoned factory.

First day of shooting in Portland. The city and crew are a dream. Seriously, there's a low-key vibe among the crew here -- no high drama, none of the nervous energy on most crews. The weather, on the other hand ... well, we have a saying in the writers' room: "Rain is cheap night." We got all that and more:



Rain to blinding sun to hail all within 45 minutes. Welcome to Portland. Although early hail impressed up on us God's personal grudge against our 1st AD, the weather inconvenienced us not a jot, and we move on --

What happened today? Sophie spoke with a sexy Cockney accent and decided if Nate Ford wound up in Boston Harbor or not. Nate Ford got beaten up by a guy who knew his dad. Parker got used to the earbuds again while seriously rocking the chick-in-a-suit-look, and Hardison yelled "If you want to live, get in!" while bullets sparked around him.

And, of course, Eliot Spencer indulged in his usual hobbies -- in this case at half speed, to break in new stunt-buddies.



Any unresolved questions from Season 1 in the Comments, I'll take a shot at them. For what it's worth, TNT has a Twitter feed, the show should soon have one, and we may well do a writers' room feed under the writers room tag or my name -- still deciding. But we're going to be much more aggressive this year about getting you the resources you need to have whatever conversation you're having on your site about the show.

PS: Fine, I'll bite. jonrog1 is the twitter channel, for my indulgences at least.

Cold Prey

by M A N



Don't let the horrible title or weak tag line fool you. This is a great little horror film. The premise is typical slasher fare and something we've all seen before (isolated snowboarding trip for beautiful teens goes horribly wrong), but the fun of the film is in the execution. It does take a little bit to get going and there are some pretty wooden translations, but once it's up and running, it doesn't disappoint. They even managed to take the telegraphed "reveal" at the end and twist it in an interesting way. Definitely worth a weekend rental.

The Case Against Universal Health Care

One of the pleasures of banging out a show like Leverage is that we hit at the exact same time the economic meltdown laid bare over-the-top executive-level corruption. (these aren't the story starters -- we're not L&O -- but simply examples):

How To Rob a Bank You Own - one of the plots of the 2nd season premiere
Corporations Testing drugs on children and, you know, maybe killing them. - Mile High Job & The Juror #6 Job
Insurance Company claims coverage is experimental and lets your kid die - The Nigerian Job
Contractors defrauding Katrina victims - The Snow Job
Corporate espionage - The Nigerian Job

Like we always say, we're not anti-corporation, we're anti-corrupt corporation. Just like Criminal Minds isn't anti-scraggly white dude, just anti-flesh-eating scraggly white dude. What's amazing is that as we amp things up for dramatic effect and embrace the idea that we're a pulp show -- reality has far, far surpassed us:

Guy fakes his death by JUMPING OUT OF A FRIKKIN' AIRPLANE.
Suit runs ten year $50 billion Ponzi scheme in full view of SEC.
Swiss financier smuggles diamonds in a tube of TOOTHPASTE.

Seriously, I can imagine the forum postings, the hoots of derision if we went for the toothpaste/diamond plot. I'm fairly sure you will see a house-arrest episode this year, however. I mean, for chrissake, the guy tried to mail $1 million in jewelry right out from under the noses of the Feds. Mail. In an envelope.

What I'm circling in on here is that our show Leverage depends on real-life social injustice as fuel for storylines and characters. We particularly depend on the broken health insurance model. Our protagonist, Nate Ford, lost a son to the "experimental treatment" dodge, sending him into his Robin Hood life of crime and functional alcoholism. Many of our victims are financially devastated by the perfidy of insurance companies, or crushed by health costs incurred as a result of other corporate misbehaviour. Redressing these sins, or scamming the bad guys to find the money to help these working-class victims rebuild their lives, is the driving force behind our show. And it's not just us: on Life a few weeks ago, a female coroner acted as an ccessroy to a crime solely so she wouldn't lose her health insurance while pregnant. Financial distress and criminal cover-up directly related to our broken health care system suffuse the American TV drama world.

Listen, fine, so 47 million Americans are uninsured and some 20 odd million Americans are under-insured, and 50% of all personal bankruptcies are caused by health costs, and 1.5 million families a year (a year) lose their homes because of health costs -- if you bring to America the same system of universal health care provided by every other Western nation at half the cost of our broken system -- all that suffering goes away. And as that suffering disappears, so do our plotlines.

Every TV show creates a hundred or so good union jobs, not to mention the downstream income and jobs created by the advertising, broadcast, and secondary distribution markets. Hollywood is one of the few American industries with an overall international trade surplus -- and much of its output is threatened by the current Administration's efforts to provide universal, affordable coverage to all Americans.

Granted, our recent lobbying to make sure the execs who brought about the current economic collapse escaped responsibility was startlingly effective. Without ruling-class villains there's no need for working-class heroes, and thank God that source of storylines remains intact. But this health insurance issue promises to be an even bigger threat. This is why we at Kung Fu Monkey are asking everyone who reads this blog to oppose all efforts to bring about universal health care to the US. Our misery-based fictions depend on it!

Good Dog.

Well, dammit, Scott. Condolences.

Scott has private comments on his site, but if you want to say something nice and pet-oriented, I'm sure he'll wander over here eventually.

Shondie.
Rex.
Rabbit.

Guitar Fridays: Two-Handed Tapping

by M A N

For most of us, the first thing that probably comes to mind when someone mentions two-handed tapping are the words "soulless wanking." Tapping was the technique du jour during the heady days of 80s shred and came to represent the pyrotechnic vapidity of guitar playing. Fortunately, the technique can be used in some very creative and musically poignant ways.

Before we go any further, let's talk about what finger tapping actually is. It's basically a variation of the hammer/pull-off technique, a techinque used by every guitar player on the planet (except, maybe, Al DiMeola who picks every. single. note.). Hammering is simply fretting a note with your finger without plucking it with your pick hand. For example, if I have the index finger of my left hand on the third fret of the high E string, I use my ring finger of my left hand to "hammer" the fifth fret on the high E string. As you can easily guess, the pull-off then is just pulling off the finger from the fifth fret to play the note on the third fret.

If you still can't quite visualize what I mean, a fun example of hammers and pulls used to the extreme is the opening to AC/Dc's "Thunderstruck." Though, to me, it sounds like he picked the non-drone notes when he recorded the song, he clearly uses nothing but hammers and pulls in the video.

So, two-handed tapping is the same thing, except now the player is using her pick hand to fret notes as well. This allows for a far wider range of notes to be played in succession than with only one hand.

No one is quite sure who the first player was to use this technique. I've read before that there's footage of Jimi Hendrix using his pick hand to tap a note or two and there's a rumor that Django Reinhardt did so as well (how awesome was Django? Cat could play circles around anyone and he did it with just two fingers on his fret hand). But the player that brought the technique to prominance and doomed an entire decade to devoting itself to fingerstyle gymnastics was Eddie Van Halen.

When Van Halen was still playing smaller clubs, Eddie used to keep his back to the audience when he would tap so that no one would steal his technique. It was really quite revolutionary. His song "Eruption" had turned the guitar-playing world on its ear (hell, that whole album did--from Eddie's playing to his signature "Brown" sound, Van Halen was a seminal piece of work) and everyone wanted to sound just like him. Even to this day there are young players who insist that the first thing they learn how to play is "Eruption."

Sadly, that technique became bastardized and so overused that it became the punchline for 80s guitar excess. But it isn't the technique that deserved the scorn, rather the players who abused it. There are some fine examples of players using tapping in interesting and innovative ways beyond solos that scream, "Look at me!" Here are some of my favorites:

Eddie Van Halen -- "Eruption" What started it all.
Joe Satriani -- "Midnight" This is from his Grammy winning album Surfing with the Alien (Which has the Silver Surfer on the cover. W00T!)
Zack Kim -- "Simpsons Theme " Mark sent this along to me and I was simply blown away.
Stanley Jordan -- "Stairway to Heaven - Live" Stanley is one of my favorite players. He never got the fame or name recognition as a lot of the wankers of the 80s did, but his playing put them all to shame.

Waid Wednesdays #18: Don't Waste My Time

A sister post to last week's about how to energize your plots by letting the characters make unexpected choices. Fair warning--this post is (a) short and (b) generally more applicable to writers of serial fiction than of stand-alone stories, novels, screenplays, etc.--but maybe there's still something here for you.

One of the greatest sins in any story is false suspense. The kind of "suspense" that disintegrates the moment you give your reader one second to think about it. And it's an easy trap to fall into, so watch carefully for it. If your story hinges on the question, "Will Superman be pushed so far in his battle against Lex Luthor that he'll have to kill him?", or if your big cliffhanger moment is, "Wow, is Spider-Man really dead this time?", then I understand Food Lion is hiring. The only reader who might actually be fooled into wondering about the outcome of those questions is one who's never read a single piece of fiction before, and even then, fat chance. If you're going to have a character make a plot-driving choice between two and only two alternatives, at least have it be Sophie's Choice. Try making it a lose-lose, see what that gets you. Remember, the definition of "dilemma" is not "a tough spot," it's "having to choose between equally unsatisfactory options." Or, if you're dead-set on taking the reader down what seems to be an obvious-to-anyone road--"Will he choose the sandwich--or his mother's life?"--try one of these two tweaks, both of which have worked well for me in the past:

1) Follow the "dilemma that I'm not gonna buy" past the point of decision to show us the effect of having to make the choice. Best example: an idea I never got around to using in Fantastic Four but saved for a Flash story. At the story's climax, both of Flash's children were in danger, and even for the fastest man alive, there was time to save only one. Now, I was well aware that every single reader out there knew that, no matter how dire I painted the circumstance, I wasn't about to kill off one of the kids if for no other reason than the story was happening outside Flash's own book. So it was total false suspense. Plus, the solution was a cheat because he figured out a way to save both after all. But I thought it was worth hitting the note of choice because the real payoff, in the story's epilogue, was Flash's resultant emotional collapse. He revealed to us (as Sue Richards would have in FF) that for a second, in his mind, he actually had made that choice. He had picked which child to save, and while he'll never tell anyone (including his wife and including us) what that choice had been, just the nightmare of making it will haunt him forever.

2) Lean into the shallow expectations of false suspense and then immediately hit the readers with a moment of genuine suspense that spins directly out of it. Example, again from FF: I ended one story arc with the apparent death of Ben Grimm, the Thing, which is pretty much the textbook definition of false suspense--no reader would believe I was really killing off one of the Fantastic Four. So I did that with two pages left to go. Then, two pages later, I hit the readers with the real cliffhanger--that Reed Richards, superscientist, was so mentally distraught by Ben's death that he vowed to break into Heaven to get Ben's soul back. Continued next issue. WhaHuh? Presto. False suspense becomes real suspense. No one was supposed to even believe Ben was really dead; not my goal. They were supposed to wonder if Reed Richards had gone insane, which sounded a lot more intriguing.

Bottom line: don't waste my time by asking questions with obvious answers or posing "suspenseful" choices with only one real option. That's just marking time. People (and characters) (and situations) are only interesting when they surprise you.

Ephemera 2009 (8) - The Mostly TV Edition

-- Castle has steadily improved since the somewhat cloying pilot. The characters are unfolding in interesting ways -- I totally buy Fillion as a good Dad. The clue paths are smarter than most of the crime shows on air (the elevator video and the Bluetooth for example). Just smart, smart series choices. A little heavy on the pop music openers, but that's me. Special shout-out to the costume designer.

-- No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency: man, I could watch Jill Scott do that allll day long. I have a particular weakness for localized procedurals, and the fact it's shot in Botswana is amazing. Particularly like Anika Noni Rose.

-- Kings: Dead show walking. Well, shit. It's wildly uneven, but when it's good it's filthily good. One is tempted to blame the folks at NBC, who have literally decided that they will never be the number one network again, so "hey, instead let's become a glorified AM radio station". However, I'm willing to be irresponsible and generalize this fiasco out to indict Hollywood marketing's general cultural cluelessness.

If you watched the promos for Kings, what you saw was either a cryptic "butterfly" campaign, or more recently a series of ads focusing on the soap opera around a king's family -- very Dirty Sexy Money, with red-tinged shots of sexy beautiful people dancing in a club. What you have not seen is Ian McShane and Brian Cox acting a smoking hole through your television. What you have not seen promoted is the fact that this show is based on the biblical story of King David. God and faith are discusses reverently and seriously in every epsiode. And the "sexy" clips taken from the eps for promos are relentlessly cherry-picked. This thing is more sexless than almost every other drama on TV.

After years of the cultural Right bitching and moaning about how Hollywood doesn't provide for them, NBC could have gone to every evangelical church in America and said "We're serializing the story of King David in a modern, very relatable way. Here you go, a multi-million dollar series, in prime time, based on a Bible story. You're frikkin' welcome." But that sort of cultural outreach, guerilla marketing would never have occurred to most of us here in LA. Mock Fireproof all you want, they got the job done.

No, the guys who were probably two doors down from the "SyFy" geniuses came up with a campaign that brilliantly made sure no one who might like the show would even know what it was about. They took the most unique show premise on network television and did their damndest to make it look like every other show on television. Rock on.

-- " ... a bigger gun." Whew. Despite a dip in mid-second season, it now looks like Life becomes my American equivalent of the British Life on Mars. The meta-plot is unfolding beautifully, and you can't watch the last five minutes of the latest episode and tell me that isn't some of the finest TV directing (and DP-ing) being done right now. I mean, don't get me wrong -- the British LoM is 16 eps of perfect TV, as far as I'm concerned. But I'll go back and rewatch Life again, for its own sake.

-- Better Off Ted made a really subversive choice last week. The two female leads are Portia del Rossi's Dick Cheney-like Ice Queen and Andrea Anders as the free-spirited dreamer trapped in the soul-crushing corporate world. Using Ted's daughter as the lens, the show (I assume intentionally) implied that given the choice, an Ice Queen with a belief that a little girl should be empowered is a better role-model than a weak character who feels so trapped in her world that she rebels through childish misbehaviour and fantasies of escape. They took the Butterflies Are Free paradigm out into the alley and double-tapped it. Aces.

-- This poster is currently up on the board in the Leverage writers' room, and in my office at home. (grab it here, h/t Smarterware)


-- Skype is proving to be invaluable in coordinating with the Portland production office, but Google Voice makes me weak in the knees.

-- In the Comments, the book or series of books you think would make a great transition to TV. Miniseries/Brit format (6-8 hours) allowed.

Leverage 2: Welcome to the Future

First week of prep for Ep. 201 -- we laugh at the need for a hiatus. And a writing staff. Once I get the blue pages in on the season premiere, we should be back to regular postings.

But in the meantime, this is cool.



I was on Skype so I could give notes on a production meeting in Portland, thru Dean's computer. I had to change offices, so I yanked my Macbook Air off its power cord -- pain in the ass to unplug it under the desk -- and wandered down to the conference room, still talking while I did so.

Using a computer thinner than a deck of playing cards, unplugged and on wifi, I was looking at and participating real time on video with a roomful of people in a different city. While going down a set of stairs.

Hey Warren, where's my goddam jetpack?

Waid Wednesdays #17: Wait, What?

Wherever you were yesterday at about 10:00 a.m. PST, if you heard the distant sound of a scream, that was me. I'd gone to bed the previous night having finished the most recent script for IRREDEEMABLE and feeling very good about it--

--and then I sat down the next morning to polish it and realized that it was crap, because I'd forgotten to deliver on one of my fundamental rules of storytelling. Structurally, the script was fine, and the dialogue was good. Everyone served the plot quite well, thank you, everyone acted consistent with his or her established personalities, and there were little moments of shock peppered throughout the story and at least one moment in there that feels like I turned over a rock to show you some squiggly things, so, yeah, check, check, check, but it still felt hollow...

...because, upon re-reading the script with a fresh eye, I found that no one in the story had surprised me.

It was easy to overlook in its absence. I mean, the plot moved, and people were doing interesting things. But overall, the story felt very binary, if you will; in every scene, the characters could have gone in one of two directions, but really only two--and the most arresting moments in stories, the ones that make them unforgettable, are the moments where someone makes an outrageous third choice that you never in a million years could have seen coming.

My all-time favorite example is from the excellent movie Se7en: up until the final few scenes, the plot's pretty much a straight-up police procedural. Yes, there are enough twists and turns throughout to maintain the suspense, but as with all procedurals, the only real question in the back of the audience's mind is "How will they catch the criminal?" because everyone's doing what they're supposed to be doing--the detectives are detecting, the murder is murdering, etc. And that's fine. Thousands of compelling, suspenseful stories have been woven around the simple question "How will they catch him?"

And then, near the end of Se7en, the murderer the detectives have been chasing all this time makes an amazing choice that seems to come out of absolutely nowhere. He simply walks into the station, confesses, and surrenders...and tells the cops he can take them to two final bodies if they'll just get in the car and let him navigate. And they just start driving.

Up to that moment, we in the audience kind of knew where the story was ultimately headed. We didn't know how it would happen, but we knew the cops would eventually catch and punish the criminal, the end, because that's what happens in a procedural. And, suddenly, boom, one character kicks the game board over, and now, for the first time since the opening credits, no one in the audience has the slightest clue where this story is going.

That's what you want as a writer. At least once in your story, maybe more, just when you think the readers might be getting a little too comfortable, you want a character to zig where they were expected to zag--to make a surprising, unexpected choice, the more out-of-the-blue the better. (See also The Frighteners, the most criminally underrated screenplay of all time, for a thousand other examples.) As long as it's a choice that's ultimately in character, then the more shocking, the more it works. I can think of no better way to maintain suspense and keep the story energized, and it's one of my favorite tricks. Try it at least once per script. Make a point of having either your protagonist or your antagonist make a hard, hard left at some juncture where convention and tradition would dictate they turn right, and see where that takes you; you can always undo it. But in my experience, you probably won't want to.

Next: the sister post--the trap of False Suspense and how to avoid it.