Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out
Posted on | March 27, 2006 | No Comments
Okay, so last time I wrote about the difficulties I was having trying to write stories for anthologies when I didn’t have ideas, let alone stories to write. Nothing to say, in other words. Just forcing words down onto the page.
I received a set of guidelines for a (no-entry-fee) contest on Friday. Very nice monetary prizes for the top three or four tales. I printed the guidelines out, intending to stick them among my stack of markets. The amalgamation of genres intrigued me. I came up with an interesting way to turn one of the genres upside down. All I had was a set piece, though. A certain kind of character meeting up with another kind of character. With this scant impetus, I started writing on Saturday morning.
By the time I finished for the day, I had a complete first draft of a 3500-word story. What’s especially strange about this is that I didn’t understand what the story was about until about the 3300-word point. Then it all fell into place. With this clear vision of the tale, I went back to rewrite the whole thing, only to discover that I had to change very little. It’s like I knew all along what I was doing and only woke up to it at the last minute. The foreshadowing, the subtle clues, the ambiguous statements that I intended to thread into the tale to create the finale were, for the most part, already there.
I love it when that happens…I hate it when that happens.
The former because it inspires a sense of awe in me over the nature of storytelling. The Michelangelo concept of chipping away all the parts that aren’t the statue.
The latter because it leads me to think things are going on inside my mind I’m not aware of.
I received a review copy of the upcoming ABC TV movie Desperation on Saturday. Mick Garris nailed this one. It will be interesting to see how it is received by the general public, because it doesn’t shy away from the religiousness of the novel, the debate between David Carver’s unflinching faith and Johnny Marinville’s lack thereof.
If there’s a star in the movie, it’s Tom Skerritt as Johnny. A terrific performance. The rest of the cast is decent: Charles Durning as the town drunk is another notable. Steven Weber is okay–he gets better as the movie progresses, Kelly Overton makes a good Cynthia Smith though she doesn’t match my visualization of the character, and Ron Perlman is a hoot as Collie Entragian, vacillating between lucidity and insanity. Matt Frewer is uncharacteristically restrained as David’s father. The actress who plays his mother is bitchy and strident and I wasn’t sorry when things didn’t work out so well for her.
The film doesn’t flinch from violence, either. There are some shocking scenes and gross out moments the likes of which I don’t think I’ve ever seen on broadcast TV. It gets a little talky in places when characters dump a ton o’information, but the way the history of the China Pit mine is conveyed is clever and effective.
I won’t say more at the moment, but this one had me glued to the screen. Commercials abound of course, which might dilute the impact (my screener DVD had brief gaps to show where they will come), but hold on for a heckuva ride.
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About
Bev Vincent is the author of The Road to the Dark Tower, the Bram Stoker Award nominated companion to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, which was nominated for a 2010 Edgar® Award and a 2009 Bram Stoker Award.
His short fiction has appeared in places like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, From the Borderlands and The Blue Religion. He is a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine and a member of the Storytellers Unplugged blogging community. He also writes book reviews for Onyx Reviews.
