Laura Highcove

Analyzing The Prince of Persia

September 8, 2016September 8, 2016 Laura Highcove

I love a movie with a good title screen.

The Prince of Persia movie is one of the few video game movies that is considered good. It is in my own list of favorite movies, though not because it is a video game movie. This movie does a lot of things well and is overall an enjoyable experience, even if you’ve never played the game.

Here are a few of the things I think this movie does very well from a storytelling perspective:

Characterizing the three brothers

Dustan: “Garsiv, your hand is on your sword again.”
Garsiv: “Where it should be!”
Tus: “Oh, my brothers!”

From this first scene where the three of them interact while talking about whether to attack Alamut, they perfectly portray their personalities as well as their opinions of each other.

When Dustan is later framed for killing his father, the brothers act to type in that Tus is conflicted about what to do and Garsiv just wants to cut Dustan open.

It makes it all the sweeter when Dastan is able to convince both of them that he is telling the truth which leads to the feel-good moment when they come together at the end. I love that the trust between the three brothers is such an important part of the story.

Dustan and Tamina

The relationship between Dustan and Tamina is basically a perfect example of the kind of relationship development I love, down to them calling each other ‘prince’ and ‘princess’ sarcastically at first, which later turn into terms of endearment.

They have no reason to trust each other, each using the other to get what they want, but over time they begin to trust each other, and that leads to respect, and then love. It’s such a natural progression that you have no doubt that they will come to love each other again even after time is rewound.

Tamina: “Please don’t mock me, Prince.”
Dustan: “Oh, I hardly think we know each other well enough for that, Princess.
But I look forward to the day that we do.”

Parkour

The choreography for this movie is top notch and that includes all the parkour elements. Since it’s one of the selling points of the game, of course it’s important in the movie too. Unfortunately it is not easily displayed by screenshots.

I’ll just leave this here.

What I Didn’t Like

This movie is not perfect, and it has a few things in it that I don’t like, and it took a while before I stopped and looked at those pieces closely enough to determine why I don’t like them.

This scene always bothered me, because basically, the Sheikh and all his guys followed our heroes from the desert into the mountains before asking what the heck happened with the snakes the night before, and are about to leave before Tamina bribes them with gold. It’s a rather obvious example of leaving a discussion until a later scene in order to improve pacing, and it’s always bothered me since I’m not sure it would’ve been any worse for them to have that discussion when they were still in the desert.

Dustan makes a lot of leaps of logic. While this basically keeps the plot from being too slow, the boy really does piece together plot elements very accurately from very little information. He is characterized as thinking well on his feet, so maybe that’s where you’re supposed to get it from. Luckily he does draw a few of the wrong hasty conclusions as well.

The Sands of Time just …go away when Dustan and Nazam go back in time. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to assume that Tamina was just wrong about the Sands of Time wiping out the earth, or what, but it’s played up as a huge problem, and then it isn’t one.

Despite the flaws, I have watched this movie over and over again. Generally the only scene I skip is the race to the sandglass, which is pretty good for a movie I’ve seen so many times.

Analyzing Howl’s Moving Castle (And Why I Liked the Book Better than the Movie)

August 11, 2016August 11, 2016 Laura Highcove

Next in my series of analyzing my favorite media is Howl’s Moving Castle. I saw the movie before I read the book, mostly because I watch all of Hayao Miyazaki’s films. I loved the movie and so I went out to buy the book. I also loved the book.

Over time, when I would pull the movie out to watch, I found myself instead watching a few minutes of the movie and then going and getting the book to read instead. Howl’s Moving Castle is only 329 pages, so it’s a quick read.

Reasons I Like the Book

1) Character:
I love Sophie and Howl’s relationship and how it develops so naturally between them as they snipe back and forth. Especially! the tiny bits of care Howl displays between his irresponsibility and arrogance that gradually grow more frequent. In fact, I love this so much about the book, that it’s the biggest the reason I don’t watch the movie anymore, because it is practically non-existent there.

Howl said. “I think we ought to live happily ever after,” and she thought he meant it. Sophie knew that living happily ever after with Howl would be a good deal more eventful than any story made it sound, though she was determined to try. “It should be hair raising,” added Howl.
“And you’ll exploit me,” Sophie said.
“And then you’ll cut up all my suits to teach me,” Howl said.

2) Voice/Plot:
Both of these have to do with the book being well written. The narrator is so delightfully playful and the dialogue is witty and appropriate.

“Go to bed, you fool,” Calcifer said sleepily. “You’re drunk.”
“Who, me?” said Howl. “I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober.” He got up and stalked upstairs, feeling for the wall as if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with it. His bedroom door did escape him. “What a lie that was.” Howl remarked as he walked into the wall. “My shining dishonesty will be the salvation of me.” He walked into the wall several times more, in several different places, before he discovered his bedroom door and crashed his way through it. Sophie could hear him falling about, saying his bed was dodging.

I also appreciate how well the plot is explained to Sophie in the end. Howl does a lot behind her pov and the Witch of the Waste’s plot is rather complicated, but at the same time I never remember feeling confused about what was happening and why.

Reasons I liked the Movie

1) Bishounen:
Bishounen is a Japanese word that literally means ‘pretty boy’. I grew up watching a lot of anime and this is a trope that is quite prevalent in anime. I love men who are classified as pretty over handsome. Howl is a bishounen.

2) Sense of Wonder:
Hayao Miyazaki knows how to add wonder to his movies by just showing the beauty of nature. It’s probably why I like most of his movies.

Why I Like the Book Over the Movie

1) The movie plays Howl up as noble, with his ‘saving’ Sophie from the soldiers at the beginning and his rampant disapproval of the war. This overshadows his being an irresponsible, arrogant womanizer. I can see why I liked the movie so much at first, because who doesn’t love a beautiful, noble character? Then I fell in love with the flawed Howl. I read the book to watch Howl become a better person through his interaction with Sophie.

2) Sophie does not have any magic. At least not that’s obvious. The one bit of ‘overt’ magic that she does do, in returning Howl’s heart, is in no way foreshadowed, so it’s easy to say Sophie can do it because she loves Howl. I suppose this is rather petty, but I feel like the magic was so naturally a part of who Sophie was that its absence gives her a different feel.

3) The whole war, which was there to create conflict instead of the Witch of the Waste …perhaps because her plot was too complicated? In the end the war didn’t mean anything except there were bombs dropped during the climax. (That and it reveals that Suliman was apparently covertly creepy/evil what with her mini-Howls and the implication that the war was just an excuse for her to gather and strip the powers of witches and wizards.)

4) The Witch of the Waste being horribly ineffective. She curses Sophie, admits she can’t undo the curse, can hardly walk up stairs, gets her magic taken away, and then turns into a senile invalid.

Now I’m sure a lot of parts of the movie suffered because, well, it was a movie and not a book. Books just have more time for detail and character arcs. What I can’t forgive is just how different the Howl from the book felt than the Howl from the movie. I could have been fine with the war subplot if Howl could have just been himself. But since one of the things I enjoy the most in my media are the characters and their relationships, I’ll just continue reading the book and using the movie for character designs.

Getting Ready for a New Draft

August 6, 2016August 6, 2016 Laura Highcove

This past week I spent most of my time going through and making changes brought about by feedback from my beta readers. So there were a lot of non-connected pieces that I worked on, but I do feel like I’m moving forward well.

I think my plan after this is to finish making a few minor changes and then I’m going to shift to the next draft number, meaning I will go through and read, smooth, and make a whole new set of notes.

Analyzing Speed Racer

July 31, 2016July 31, 2016 Laura Highcove

So I said in a previous post that I wanted to look at my favorite media and analyze what about my favorite movies, books, TV shows, etc is so appealing to me. I decided to start off with what is arguably my favorite movie of all time: Speed Racer.

1) Stylistic Graphics

I am a huge fan of the graphics. I tend to like the aesthetic choices of the Wachowskis. Most of their movies are not great, truthfully, but their style, mixed with the feel of the anime I grew up with, made this world, and thus the movie, feel so beautiful to me. I understand this particular look is not something that a lot of people like (I think it may have been one of the reasons this movie did so horribly, but that might have also been the anime style that not many Americans appreciate), but reality that looks like a brighter, somewhat cartoonish version of reality tends to grab my attention right away. I also especially enjoyed the separation of the characters from the background, which allowed the background to move, blur, or even have different filters to change scenes or add emotion.

2) Fight Scenes

I really enjoy good fight choreography, and the races basically were fight scenes. In the Casa Cristo Speed and Racer X team up to fight off all the other cars in the dust cloud and it’s pretty amazing. Also when Speed gets Snake Oiler guy on the rail, bearing down on him with his tire. Or especially when Speed fights Jack ‘Cannonball’ Taylor and then leaves him behind.

3) Trust

I like the strong relationship between Speed and his family (which includes Trixie and Sparky). I like stories where there is a sense of trust between characters. Pops was willing to do business with Royalton if Speed wanted to, even though he knew big companies were not to be trusted. Trixie was willing to help Speed sneak away from home to go to the Casa Cristo because it was important to him. Mom kept everyone together when they tried to fall apart when they found out about Casa Cristo. And how Pops was willing to let Speed go when everything seemed to be spiraling out of control, but made sure to tell Speed how much he loves him.

4) Bromance

I like the brotherly love between Speed and Rex/Racer X. Rex means everything to Speed and Speed is likewise crushed when his big brother turns ‘dirty’. When Speed tells Racer X they made a great team while driving in the Casa Cristo and how much Racer X probably wanted to tell him the truth. Then Speed accuses Racer X of being his brother, and how disappointed he is when he’s ‘wrong’, but how Racer X encourages him like only a big brother would be able to.

There is even romance and a world that feels huge with all the details and backstory they bring up (Which I appreciate as a fantasy author). I go back to this movie again and again, and there are really no scenes that I regularly skip over. Even the scenes with the monkey (I hate monkeys) are not long or drawn out enough to be an annoyance. This movie just hits a lot of sweet spots when it comes to what I enjoy.

Back from Beta Readers

July 30, 2016July 30, 2016 Laura Highcove

So this past week was a delightful collection of both wonderful and completely horrid moments. As you may have guessed, I got my story back from my beta readers! It ultimately ended up going pretty much as well as can be expected from sending your baby out into the world for the first time. All of the comments were positive or the helpful kind of critique.

However, there was a misunderstanding about part of the story, and the comments regarding that section left me in three days of misery. Both beta readers jumped to the same conclusion and since it was an emotionally charged scene, it left a rather deep emotional impression on them that was not what I was going for. It took some dwelling on comments and reading between the lines to figure out that they had reached a conclusion that was not the one for which I was aiming.

Once I figured out the misunderstanding and had talks with the both of them, things turned out much better and all of the critique they gave me was entirely manageable. I mean, sure I’d love for it to have already been perfect, but then making mistakes is how you learn.

This is the first time I’ve ever had a person besides my alpha reader husband, read through a whole story of mine, and it was an amazing experience. One of my beta readers had trouble with names, since different characters call each other different names. It didn’t occur to me, since I live with these characters. The other was much more in tune to how information was parsed out to the reader, pointing out places I had done it well and places I had done it poorly. After reading the comments and seeing the way both of the beta reader’s minds worked through the story I feel like I was able to see the story in a new light.

Anticipation

July 24, 2016July 24, 2016 Laura Highcove

I spent last week working through some things with my story, ‘The Colors Of’. It started off as a pokemon fan fiction back when the first pokemon movie came out in 1998. It has changed a lot since then. I spent some time on brushing off the world building. It is set on a planet that was ravaged by war, such that the world started to turn metallic and the only animals are computers that are built to look and act like animals, some of which serve people, and some of which have escaped into the wild. The story is about what it takes for people to survive in this world.

However, I knew I was only going to work on that long enough to get back my story from my beta readers, and the first of those came in this week. I’m scared, but I’m trying to convince myself to be excited too. Hopefully this will help me to get a better insight on how others see my story and thus be able to improve the book. Also, chalk it up to a new experience. This is the first time someone who is not my husband has gotten to see one of my stories in its entirety. (Unless you count the really bad version of Shifting Winds, which technically didn’t have an ending, I just didn’t know it at the time.)

I’m not sure what I am expecting. I know points of the book are weak. I know some of the prose is messy. I think I’m more scared to find out about things that are wrong that I don’t know about yet, that I may not be able to fix? I’m not sure if that’s possible, for something to be unfixable, but then most of the time we worry about inane things anyway.

Looking to the Next Project

July 19, 2016July 19, 2016 Laura Highcove

I finished going through the story and adding in Wildrose’s cards. I only had a few hiccups in the three major arcana cards that get used in the story, as I really had to actually come up with names for them, and having their powers somewhat work with both what I needed done, and (even if loosely) with what they actually mean in the tarot.

With that done, I changed one scene with the Archer and I’m kinda …like done until I get the feedback from my beta readers. I’m not sure how to reconcile that. Now if I got back and read through the story again I’m sure I could find things that need to be fixed, but there’s little point changing them until I get my feedback.

Now my plan is to go through a few of my favorite old drafts and see if they speak to me as my next project. If any of you are following along in the sidebar, I’ll be looking at The Trickster, Blessings of the Nerial, The Colors Of, and Demonslayer. Though it occurs to me now that I go look over there, maybe I should update that page a bit. Look for that to happen in the next week or two.

What’s Your Favorite Type of Story?

July 17, 2016July 17, 2016 Laura Highcove

Another prompt from the DIYMFA.com. To find out more, you can check out the DIYMFA.com’s instigator, Gabriela Pereira’s new book DIY MFA.

QOTW 15: What’s Your Favorite Type of Story?

My favorite type of story is one that has a theme of camaraderie, either a pairing or a team of some kind. This does not (necessarily) mean an ensemble cast. I am a fan of characters interacting with each other in a place of teamwork and/or trust. It can be romantic or not. (I am always a fan of a good bromance.) I also like it when it starts out as hate or reluctance.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Examples across media include:

Castle: The four main characters are willing to do anything for each other, even if it’s sometimes outside the law.

Psych: Shawn and Gus seem to know what each other is thinking and are always together, have each other’s backs, and the jokes they pull off together are amazing.

Suits: In the cutthroat lawyer world, the two main characters are seriously loyal to each other.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (TV Show and Movie): In the TV show, the two main characters are partners and work very well together. In the movie they start out hating each other and come to a sort of grudging respect.

BBC’s Merlin: The two main characters start out hating each other and eventually develop into friends AND in later seasons get a whole team that works together on trust.

Speed Racer This movie has a theme of family, and plenty of times when everyone has to work together to get stuff done.

The Avengers: More an ensemble cast, but they all have to learn to work together

Blue Exorcist: Team of students that bond through their adventures enough to keep them together when they find out the main character is the son of the devil. (This one’s an anime.)

The Legend of Eli Monpress: The main character and his team are already established at the beginning of the books, but it’s their bonds to each other that keep them from failing.

Brandon Sanderson novels: He likes to have a tight knit team that works well together and gets along (fairly well) in most of his books.

As you can see, it’s a wide variety of different types of relationships and teams that gets me interested, but it’s no surprise that I have a similar theme in all of my own stories.

Why does this archetype appeal to me so much?

Because I inherently want to trust people.

Because these are the kinds of relationships I want to have.

…it’s something like that I’m sure.

I don’t like books where everyone betrays everyone else all the time and are just out for themselves. I like to see people willing to go to the mat to defend a friend. I like to see people throw it all on the line for something they might not even understand because it’s important to the person they trust. I never get more teary eyed than when two people (especially who hated each other previously) go back to back. It’s about that connection. It also tends to result in some pretty awesome dialogue as friends snark at each other.

Out of this I am planning on doing a series of blog posts going into more depth with what I like about my favorite media, and what I didn’t like about media I consumed and didn’t like. I expect I’ll find that a lot of the things I like about the media I consume end up in my own stories, like this one, but there may be some that I’m not even aware of right now, and if I become aware of them, then I can manipulate them to better effect in my own storytelling.

Limits

July 10, 2016July 10, 2016 Laura Highcove

I finally managed it. I figured out what Wildrose’s artifacts are. For a long time (while writing the story basically) I wanted Wildrose to just have a whole bunch of random artifacts that would do random spells that he would use cleverly. I have come to realize pretty hard, during writing this book, that unlimited options is the worst thing you could possibly have. With too much variety, there is no focus. I finally decided I had to sit down and figure out what the common element was for Wildrose’s artifacts. I knew three things:

1) He works at range. Ie, I kept wanting it to be something he could throw into melee from a distance and then have it do the thing.

2) He is very precise.

3) He has a larger variety of things he can do than the others.

I wrote a few scenes with different ideas, brainstormed several times with my husband. and eventually came up with his having a deck of tarot cards that are each an artifact and each have a spell in them. There are a few rules for the cards*:

1) The maximum number of cards in the deck is set, as are the spells for those cards. (I actually haven’t figured out what either of those are yet. I want the number of cards in the set to be a multiple of three as opposed to clinging faithfully to the actual tarot, and no, I have not spent the time yet to figure out what every spell he has is.)

2) He can have duplicates of a specific card, but he still can’t have over the maximum number of cards. For those of you who know D&D it’s like the 3.5 wizard with his spellbook and prepared spells.

3) It takes a certain amount of time to re-imbue a spell into a card once spent. Time it takes is effected by the strength of the spell. If he happens to lose a card, the process of recreating the card is far more arduous.

So now comes the step of going back and retro-fitting this into all the fights. As I said before I really should not have let myself get this far into the story without figuring this out, as it’s going to require a lot of rewriting, plus my beta readers don’t have it to give me feedback, but that’s where I am.

*This is the disclaimer that I’m still working on this story and ideas are bound to change, so nothing here is set in stone.