My Writing Style

I have not yet seen X-Men: Days of Future Past. I so want to, however. You can most likely expect my thoughts on that next Tuesday.

For this Tuesday, I’ve decided to talk a bit about my writing style. I think it’s all weird and stuff. I have never took am official writing class, though I do read a lot about writing. I know a bit proper character progression, character characterization, plot foreshadowing, building up to a climax and all that. I hope I do them pretty well, but of course I’m always up for feedback on it.

I have mentioned it before but one of my favorite types of genres, if you could consider it that, is slice-of-life. It just follows the lives of people and whatever simple adventures they get into. Consider a sitcom without the necessity of being funny. Of course, they usually have that, or drama, because it would be boring otherwise.

That’s a reason why I have a lot of scenes in my stories where the characters are just hanging out together before the important plot happens. I try to have them talk about meaningful stuff, but not always. Since I prefer comedy to dramas, these scenes tend to be a bit light-hearted.

For my general writing, I will say that I write is a lot more like I’m transcribing a movie or video into words. I tend to watch more than I read, so I view things in moving images and pictures.

This leads to me not describing inner thoughts as much, because they don’t come through in video. Sometimes I do give a characters feelings, but I always try to consider if I can’t do the same thing when they are interacting with the world.

Also, I give a lot of minute details about the picture in my head even if it’s pointless. I bounce back and force between broad strokes, letting the reader make their own images and fine lines on things I have a image of. Usually, it’s not important to the story at all. Sometimes it might be. It does make it harder to pick out details that might be important in the future.

My point of view is also an older style third-person omniscient, usually while following one character. This does lead to less “personality” of sorts in the writing, making things more formal. In third-person limited or first-person, the narrative can, and usually does, reflect the character’s personality. It’s really something I want to work on, as I think it definitely makes things more fun to read.

I am always looking for different styles and ways to improve. Though I’m also big on consistency, so don’t expect Feast of the End 2 to have a different style than Feast of the End 1.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully going to see X-Men: Days of Future Past soon!


Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, season finale

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. In the beginning, I thought this show was alright. I like Coulson, so it was great being able to see him on a weekly basis. There will be spoilers for the season here, so go watch it if you haven’t. Or read on if you don’t care about spoilers/have watched it.

Towards the second half of the season, things started to ramp up fast. It sort of started with the Clairvoyant plot, but it was once Captain America: The Winter Soldier was released, things got going fast.

When I first heard about the show, I was decently excited for it. I already knew it wasn’t going to be as spectacular as the movies, that the more superpowers side of things weren’t going to show up. Still, I wanted to see how the normal agents deal with things, and that’s what the show delivered.

They spent a few episodes building up the characters. I am fairly okay with that as most of the main cast was interesting. They have the puncher, the pilot, two scientists (in different fields), the hacker and new recruit and Coulson, the leader. After a few episodes, the characters became pretty fleshed out and they were fun to watch interacting each other. It also turned up the tension on the second half of the season.

One thing I’m worried about is how much the show is tied into the movies. It could either work really well or really poorly. For instance, this season had to push off plot until Captain America happened. If a person watches both, though, the show feels much more complete. I wonder if they’ll continue to be tied down by movie time or will they keep going with their own plot. The cool part is that things done in the show can potentially affect the movie as well, such as the rebuilding of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The season finale, I thought was great. It definitely had the Joss Whedon touch where Coulson was chatting calmly with Nick Fury while facing the big bad of the season. The end bit where Coulson kills the big bad comes from a genre-savviness that Whedon can provide. I also laughed and cheered when George Patton returned.

As a whole, I enjoyed the season, the second part much more than the first. It really felt like the fallout from the movies was showing through. The show also rocked the main characters a bit, potentially changing one for another and permanently damaging one character. I don’t enjoy it when character’s I like die. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. so far seems to not want to kill any main characters either, so that’s good.

The season also introduced some questions while answering a bit of them. We nerly have all of why Coulson survived. The only mystery is what that blue alien is. New questions, though, is how Coulson’s revival is affecting his mind. A big part of season 2 will probably deal with what Skye is and who her parents are.

I believe a second seaons has been confirmed. I will be all on that.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the sequel to the rebooted Spider-Man films. It’s high-swinging fun time in the world of Peter Parker. It has great effects with Spidey swinging around like it’s the best thing in the world (because let’s face it, it probably is).

All of the bad guys seem to be a bit pyschotic, even before they get super powers. No wonder their mental state got even worse after them. I did like watching Electro (Jamie Foxx) throughout the movie. From the beginning, you can feel he’s slightly off after being put-down all his life. He clings to people and develops an unhealthy obsession with anyone that’s nice to him.

One thing I think the movie could have done was Electro meeting Gwen Stacey again. The two of them met each other in the elevator, and she even recognized him in his blue form. But they never met again, even when Gwen went to help Spidey fight him.

The Rhino was built up a bit in the trailers. I was both kind of relieved and disappointed that the Rhino didn’t appear more. His character would have taken time away from characters like Peter, Gwen, Harry and Electro. When Paul Giamatti does show up, however, he goes full ham in the acting making the Rhino memorable without a lot of screentime. I was disappointed because I thought the Rhino would have been a great Spider-Man fight with Spidey needing to slowly dismantle the suit while dodging everywhere.

Overall, the character interaction was great and the driving force of the movie. I felt that Harry could have used a bit more time. He certainly found out abou the genetic disease and got sick from it awfully fast. It might have made it strange for the first movie, but Harry could have been introduced earlier or made into a villain later.

Spider-Man and Electro’s talk was great, however. And it shows that Spider-Man has a pretty good memory of the people he saves, given how many of them he saves throughout the days.

I enjoyed the movie and felt that Electro was a good character. He’s probably among the top character’s in the movie for me, actually.

The action is good, and the special effects are great. It’s a superhero movie that continues the thread from the first movie of Peter and Gwen’s relationship troubles over him being Spider-Man.

Resurrection, Season Finale

Resurrection, a story about people that have returned from the dead in a small town. It’s always the place where this kind of stuff happens. There might be spoilers depending on how much plot I need to talk about, but really, very few stuff happens. There are a ton of questions and few answers.

A short summary of the plot, Agent Bellamy is tasked with returning a child to his home. It turns out that the child has been dead for 32 years and has come back to life. Then more strange stuff happens as he tries to figure out what happened along with the town’s medical doctor.

The other characters are more divided about whether the people returning from the dead are a good thing or a bad thing. Several people see the returned as less than human. the primary conflict in the first season comes from just that. I’m glad that it never devolved into a mob with torch and pitchforks mentality, though. No one is presented as being entirely unreasonable about the entire situation.

The main problem is that the season is only 8 episodes. That’s even shorter than half a normal season or 22-26 episodes. I don’t have a huge problem with the pacing. They actually have a quiet, sort of slow and somber pacing. There are quite a few shots of people staring at each other or contemplating. The episodes certainly aren’t action packed most of the time.

Even in the action scenes, there’s a strange sort of quietness that permeates it. The show almost has a strange feeling going through it all the time. I think that’s intentional, and it does add to the atmosphere going on. Though I don’t feel they ever completely go through with the contemplations they put forth.

Being only 8 episodes, though, they spent pretty much no time answering any questions of who or what the returned are. And when the plot finally for to a high tension part, the season’s suddenly over. It could really use a bit more episodes to actually explain some stuff.

Well, I’m hoping they don’t want to reveal the information on the returned as a series finale type thing. I don’t know if the character interactions and moral musings can carry the series for too long, especially if there were more episodes in a season.

So, yes, I am simultaneously complaining about the season being too short and too long at the same time. Let me rephrase my earlier statement about the pacing. I think it’s alright for the first season, though I don’t know how much longer it can continue. Resurrection seems to be focused on the characters and their decisions and thoughts about loved ones returning. That’s alright for me up to a point.

With the way season one ended, I’d hope season two will provide some answers, because someone should be asking something. Or maybe a great coverup will be used on the one person outside of the town that actually knows what’s going on.

I’ll probably continue watching season two. I like how the characters aren’t just pointlessly obstructive, such as the sheriff. Well, that sort of ended in the season finale where he got a bit emotional about his dead wife dumping him. I do like how the outsider doctor, the one guy that was likely to treat the returned as experiments did not do so. At least not yet, anyway. I hope it stays that way.

This is a deliberately slow-paced series with a lot of contemplative moments, and I will watch a few more episodes at least. If it comes.