DVD review: 28 Days Later (2002)

Anybody who follows my blog will know that I love the apocalyptical creature infested movies where there’s very little chance of survival. Other articles including I Am Legend, 12 Monkeys, Zompires, and Cruesoe’s Horror also comes to mind.

Well, 28 Days Later is another movie to add to my favourites list. England is home to a viral outbreak when activists try to set free monkeys infected by ‘rage’. It takes seconds for people to be infected who are they hell bent on feeding off living human tissue, and so the cycle continues. Within twenty eight days, most of England’s population have been reduced to carcass or infected hosts who have similar traits to zombies.

When Jim (Cillian Murphy, aka Scarecrow in the new Batman remakes) wakes up from a road accident, he finds himself alone in a city raped of its inhabitants. He soon discovers that the most important thing to do is to survive. He stumbles across other survivors and they decide to go to Manchester where the military are setting up an encampment for survivors, but little do they know what other insidious plans the military has for them.

I think this is a very good movie, but there are two things I find annoying. At the beginning, Jim wakes up with a scar on his head that looks fresh. Surely if he had been there for 28 days, the hair would have grown back? The movie does not explain why he was alone and untouched. Second, how did Jim go from a meek, mild-mannered bloke to a rampaging killing machine taking out armed army personnel on his own!?

The latter is the most difficult part of the movie to digest and in its own way, ruined the movie for me. Overall, however, it is a very good movie and if you do watch it and like it, you must watch the sequel, 28 Weeks Later.

The Evil: A page turner?

With The Badman finalised, I had the opportunity to catch up with my latest piece, The Evil.

I have always been of the opinion that my novels should not be lazy and drift through lives. It must be a page turner, with excitement, suspense, tension, worry on every single page. After reading back The Evil, currently in first draft and around 65,000 words (not at the end yet), I couldn’t believe the pace. Good old Ancient maestro. Good it. Now stop haunting me for a few minutes. I need to intellectualise this stuff.

With every novel I write, I become much more confident. I have learned important lessons from each of them, and The Evil is no different. There are two main characters who are thrown in to situation after situation, and just when things can’t get worse … they do.

I estimated the novel should come in at first draft to 80,000, but it feels like it is still beginning. I wonder where it will end up. The last one I wrote, The Badman, had too much information and I had to put half of it away for a sequel, perhaps even a trilogy. I am so excited to find out what’s going to happen next in The Evil… there I go again sounding like a reader, but I reckon the hardest person to impress is myself. If I like it in its current form, chances are, it isn’t that bad a piece.

I love writing. I have no plan. I just write and wonder what will happen. It’s also a very cheap way to read novels. The fact I wrote them is a bonus. I love this writing lark.

Where Do Ideas ComeFrom?

A hot topic for aspiring writers is ‘where do ideas come from?’ As a writer develops, the question becomes easier to answer.

I have known and read about different ‘idea techniques’ from the Pandora’s Box theory, where something is released and cannot be put back, to the process of ‘extrapolation’, ie, having a faint idea, if any, and writing it out. Others use dreams, anecdotes, jokes, what-if scenarios, or try and put two things together that have never been married before. Others still use old ideas and create new slants. I am sure on these idea sources alone, you can name hundreds of novels that fit.

Scores, hundreds, of ideas flood my mind in any single day. I used to write them all down, but if I was to do that now, I would never write fiction. Just thousands of ideas.

Extrapolation works for me. I have an inkling where I want to go, then I write until it gets there. My second (I think) novel “Alone” is, like another half dozen, lost to the world. It started as a man waking up and everybody is dead.

I wrote the novel on that premise alone, and the first inevitable questions were where I started. I extrapolated, and simply kept writing until I had 150,000 handwritten words in a lever arch folder. Since then, all my novels are the same (I use a laptop these days). No plan, no nothing. Just a premise and hard work. As you can imagine, my first re-write is more difficult than my first draft, and requires much more crafting.

Extrapolation can work in many ways. I allow my unconscious to write it. I trust it to come up with things I can’t intelligently think about. This article has been be revised, but the following extrapolation will remain in its raw form, right NOW with no practice or clue as to what I am going to write:

“Five minutes ago, it happened. People started jumping out of the window. It wouldn’t be a problem if it was not for us working on the 42nd floor of an office block. Their little arms wave at me as I watch them fall. There are screams, too, but I also hear laughter. I throw a computer after them and wait and see which one hits the floor first. It is a cold day and smells like rain. At least it will wash away the blood.

Something hard lands on my shoulder. “What you doin?” It’s Don.

I turn and spray him as I did to some of the others. He is blinded, shrieks in pain, and I pull him by the lapel. For a large man he is quickly unbalanced and I use his momentum to throw him from the window. I laugh as he wets himself as he falls past the 41st floor. I wonder if his urine or his body will be the first to splatter against the tarmac.”

OK, not very well written and probably the wrong viewpoint (I need to write around 10 pages to see if the viewpoint is right or not) but I am extrapolating without thinking about the characters, what will happen next, and so on, but we have a lot of questions such as why are people jumping? Why do some scream and others laugh? Why are some of them doing it of their own accord, whereas the story intimates others are sprayed first? What’s in the spray and does it have anything to do with what is happening? Why is the person telling us the story so calm? He knows Don. There is some sort of relationship there, so why does he intentionally murder him? Is he under some sort of spell? Is he being coerced into doing this or did he just ‘snap’? There are so many questions which is great news!

Actually, what I wrote reminds me of a movie called “The Happening”, so any further extrapolation would have to take me away from that. One good thing about extrapolation is that if one is ever stuck for what happens next, then start answering your own questions. So many things can happen. Let the characters do the leading. Trust your unconscious to follow its own feet. If you run out of questions and places to go, think, “how can I make things worse for my character?” then do it. Extrapolation will come much easier.

As of the date of writing this article, I have written about 18 novels in my life, many of which are lost forever. Some I regret losing, others, I am thankful but each carries with it the same process. Write, extrapolate, get your character to answer the important questions, raise the stakes, make things worse, and when things can’t possibly get worse, find a way. Writer’s block? Never heard of it.

I won’t go into my thoughts on the technical aspects of writing, as I have no clue about how the process actually works. This article is solely to explain my preferred way to obtain ideas. I believe all writing must be presented by tension or suspense, and there should be little else between the two. In practice, it is much harder. Readers read because they want to read more, so give them something to keep reading about.

Something about this process is working. I never suffer from writer’s block, and never run short of ideas. Remember, a poor or simple idea can make a great novel, but only in the right hands.

Review: Acer Aspire One, a Perfect Writing Tool

The netbook is no secret. The market is flooded with many different types of these portable laptops. Gone are the four kilogram bricks, and in are the lightweight machines that pack enough punch for daily use.

My first netbook was the Asus eeePC 7” version (reviewed here). It was fantastic, but as a novelist, it became clear that writing thousands of words a day was difficult on such a small keyboard, and the screen was difficult at times. I needed a screen that was slightly bigger, and a keyboard that was as big as possible without compromising on weight. Suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome is difficult enough without the additional burden of a heavy laptop, so I needed something around the 1kg mark.

After hunting through scores of different netbooks, I kept coming back to the Acer Aspire One (AAO) and ultimately bought one through Officeworks (and as it turned out, Officeworks has a 7-day laptop return policy. Mine needed a replacement on day 10 due to a faulty motherboard, so perhaps Officeworks is not the best place to shop. See here for more info.

The AAO comes in two flavours: the Linux version with an 8G SSD and 512MB memory, and the Windows XP version with a 120GB mechanical hard drive and 1GB RAM. This annoys me because the competition between the two operating systems is based on the hardware specifications. I wanted something that will last in the future, so the XP version was more appropriate, although I wanted to run Linux. My issue is that to get the better hardware, one has no choice but to buy an integrated XP licence. How annoying. Selling XP with the better hardware is not very competitive for Linux, and besides, I would have been able to get the laptop cheaper without buying the additional Windows XP Home licence.

The AAO starts up slower than expected, but fast enough to not be a problem. With integrated wireless broadband, sound, microphone, camera, two SD slots SDHC compatible, it was more than what I wanted. It even has three USB and one VGA port. The screen is clear and sharp and I have no problems sitting with it on the train writing a 120,000 document.

The AAO weighs in at a little over a kilo. It has a small battery which lasts around 2 and a half hours, plenty for me. I love the aesthetic appeal of the AAO with its piano finish in a variety of colours, the better being blue, then white. It is slender and comes with a slip case that fits easily into a backpack. It also comes with a hidden partition to re-install the operating system (but no backup disks).

As a writer, the best part of the AAO is the design, specifically, the keyboard. The AAO impressed me so much, I bought a second one as a backup in case one of them breaks for whatever reason. Again, I went for the XP version because the hardware specifications with Linux are not what I wanted. Trying to install Ubuntu was easy, but I had difficulties with the Atheros wireless adapter every time a kernel upgrade happened. The only way to fix it was to hook up to a wired line to re-install the drivers. There was also an issue when coming out of suspend mode, but a simple reboot seemed to fix it.

The AAO mouse is difficult to use, but turning off all the jazzy functions made it easier to operate.

Best of all, I understand that OpenSuSE (a popular Linux distribution) installs perfectly on the Acer Aspire One, and I am looking forward to trying it after fiddling about with it on a virtual machine.

Overall, the AAO is a very good, cheap, sturdy machine, and one I will be using for a very long time to come, so good in fact, I bought two. I recommend the AAO. Acer’s service is great. Under warranty, they will send a courier to your door to pick the laptop up, fix it, and courier it back within 10 days.

DVD Review: I Am Legend (2007)

Will Smith, playing Robert Neville, is superb in this fantastic and apocalyptical remake of the Richard Matheson’s novel coming off the back of its previous two movies, The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man. There is a large difference between the novel and the movie, but both are superb.

Neville and his dog, Sam, appear to be alone in a desolate world dominated by animals after the Krippin virus, suspected to cure cancer, mutates and infects people, creating night creatures somewhat different than Matheson’s vampires. At night, these creatures hunt down the living for food, and Neville must not only survive, but find a cure at his “ground zero”. The novel worked without the dog’s companionship, but the movie worked because of the dog.

When Neville abducts another creature to test his latest experiments to try out his potentially new cure, he lets off the leash an alpha-creature bent on finding and destroying him. But even if Neville can find the cure, how can he bring it to the world when surrounded by monsters who are inches away from killing him? The answer is his legend.

This movie, as great as it is, is not without flaw, one of the most notable being how on earth did Anna get in the city, and how the hell did she get back out again when all the bridges were destroyed? I may be a little biased glorifying this movie as Will Smith usually brings with him memorable movies such as Independence Day, Hancock, I, Robot, and Enemy of the State, making him one of my favourite actors.

(I heard on the grapevine that he has signed on the dotted line for a sequel to the movie as well as a Hancock sequel, and a new type of bogeyman film).

My biggest complaint about this movie is the character Anna, played by Alice Braga. I felt she brought very little to the movie, and as such, the second half was severely undermined. It wasn’t the acting but the scripting. It also felt like there had to be a substitution for Neville’s dog, Samantha. When Neville goes out in his car to run down the creatures, it seemed too out of character to believe. As one gets to know Anna and the fact she has a direct line to God, it severely dilutes the film’s impact and gets worse when Neville himself starts to believe her after three years of isolation.

I highly recommend this film. There are few movies I watch frequently, but I Am Legend is one of few I have seen time and time again, and many times yet to come.

A Background: Pain Both Sides

Most of my stories (both novels and short stories) have a background or setting that is not included in the story itself, but forms a background to it. I thought I would review some of these stories and provide information where these stories were derived. Today, I will look at a recent story called ‘Pain Both Sides’, kindly published on The Specusphere. I rarely submit elsewhere, as short stories are a small project of mine.

If you haven’t read ‘Pain Both Sides’, then click here. If you have, feel free to read on.

One can clearly read from the story that it is derived from Alice Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll.That is why the girl’s name is Alice. The name Stephen Bottler is twofold: Stephen is the name of the editor at the Specusphere that I deal with, and Bottler is the second name of a school in my home town in England.

I used the names Mark and Amanda as a play on Mork and Mindy (ie, Mark and ‘Manda) and yes, I know it sounds silly but I do things like that. I wanted them to be unhappy with what they have, yet make it clear that they are not educated enough to think themselves out of their situation.

I used a silver medallion in the story because the novel I am working on has them as well. I finished my last re-draft of the novel on the same day I wrote the short story. Triangles are used because there are three person in this relationship: Mark, Amanda, and Alice. It’s a bit of a play. The fact that Mark remembered the symbol as being on his Grandmother’s gravestone suggests he frequents her site often.

I used the name ‘Woodgate Cemetery’ because I always imagine a cemetery to have either wood or cast iron gates, the latter being a cliché. Another cliché is the use of velvet curtains, especially with vampires. I thought wrapping the mirror up in velvet was good because curtains close out the world, just as the velvet cloth closes out the dimension that the mirror opens.

Some of the writing in the story tries to parallel Mark’s future, ie, I wrote “…weaker leaves from their branches…” to imply that Mark is a weak leaf. I used the word branch rather than tree to fulfil that train of thought.

Pushing the velvet curtain idea, when Mark arrived at the address from the bracelet, the windows were black. Why were they black? Even an abandoned house doesn’t have black windows. Why? Somebody blacked them out. Was it his grandfather, and why?

Alice is waiting for him. For how long? Who knows. Alice is standing in a field of buttercups because I wanted to portray how innocent she is without telling the audience. Buttercups had the effect I wanted, instead of poppies or sunflowers. Now, when they converse, it appears that Alice already knows that Mark is unhappy because she can make him ‘happier’. What if his grandfather had forewarned Alice that Mark would come to her?

The medallion, or coin, is the key to shifting between worlds and when Mark drops it, inadvertently, the portal – being the mirror – closes, splitting him into two distinct pieces, one in this world and one in Alice’s world. Yet she is not upset. She asks if he knows Stephen Bottler ‘in a soft voice’. The part about Mark being a ‘mirror image’ was a simple joke I wanted to put in.

Alice is unemotional, and as Mark dies, he realises one important fact of life: it doesn’t matter what you haven’t got. It is what you have that counts.

There are a sequence of complex issues Mark has to deal with before he dies. The moral of the story is that we are all seeking something, but sometimes, what we are seeking, is not what we are looking for. Simply by looking into the mirror, we already have everything we need. We need not go beyond what is already obvious and in front of us, regardless of our appreciation for it.

Are Writing Courses Suitable?

I have one more assignment to go, when I can afford it, then I finish my Diploma in Writing and Publishing.

Before I started, I thought that a writing course will enhance the way one writes, find flaws one is unaware of and generally, make people better writers. Now, as the course nears the end, I see an entirely different perspective.

Why are there writing courses? Some associations offer one-on-one sessions with established writers for a small fee. At peer level, both parties have a genuine interest in the outcome of the collaboration which is great. No below-the belt shots intended here, but why teach a diploma course on how to write instead of using that time to write one’s own novels? I suggest that the peer collaboration model is much more effective.

Writing is subjective. Stephen King is one of today’s most popular writers, but I am not much of a fan. Writing tutors are like readers and writers: they are subjective in their opinions, too. What one tutor likes, another may not.

‘Show don’t tell!’ and ‘too much showing!’ were my most popular feedback terms. Not one assignment has what I believe to be the single, most important aspect of writing: tension. Some of these assignments, many some years old due to illness, are terrible. I should not have passed, but somehow, I received distinctions. What does this say about the standard of the tutor?

Would I recommend a writing course? That depends on you. It may suit some people. If you want a piece of paper saying you have a Diploma, then go for it. What harm can another qualification do? A course may help you network and point you in some directions, but not necessarily the right one. Courses do not a writer make.

I mentioned in a previous article that somebody once said that three million words is a good benchmark before becoming a serious writer. A diploma course will see much less. I expect some people may not complete the novel, only the assignments. They may write 10-15,000 words maximum.

The diploma course has not made me an efficient or effective writer, but it has made me a qualified one. With a course in teaching, I can also be a tutor, stop writing, and get paid to assess others work. Perhaps yours.

My point is this. If you are considering a course, be very careful and research it - especially your tutor - as thoroughly as possible. Qualifications do not a writer make.

Good on you Manly!

Just a quick post to say WELL DONE MANLY for putting Australia back into the #1 position after a great win over Leeds in the World club Challenge!

I can't recall when the Aussies brought it home - it's been a while, and after whipping the Storm last year, it's good to know Orford brought his team to victory.

If only the competition itself was fairer with respect to location and timing.