Monthly Archives: May 2017

What’s Your Number?

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“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike say a brain surgeon.” – Robert Cormier

Grab your thesaurus! You need a stronger word to convey the anger your protagonist feels.

When reading your completed manuscript, look for apathetic words that don’t show the desire, despair, curiosity, danger, happiness, terror, or excitement you want the reader to feel. You may change a chosen word or phrase after reading aloud what you’ve written because the word just doesn’t fit. Perusing a dictionary or thesaurus helps in finding alternative expressions that work better.

But what about the numbers a writer selects in the titles of his stories. A particular number could hold some connection to the plot or sound better when read aloud. A writer may pick a different number even if it means adding or omitting characters or restructuring the story to fit.

Often a significant number conveys the meaning of a story much better than just words. Ray Bradbury wrote a short, futuristic story titled, The Fireman, where books are burned and reading is prohibited. There’s no spark to that title. However, a longer version published in 1951 with a more provocative title, Fahrenheit 451, worked better. Fahrenheit 451, the temperature of the combustion of paper, sparks more interest in the storyline.

Sometimes a number in an alliteration works. For example, 77 Sunset Strip, was the name of a popular television series from 1958 – 1964. The detectives could have lived anywhere on the Strip, but the address 77, worked better especially in their theme song.

Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, (an alliterative title) depicts the request from villagers asking for protection from bandits and the response of the seven men. The verbalization of that two-syllable number, seven, sounds much better than any other reasonably small number. Eleven might have been a decent alternate number choice, however, that would make for a more involved storyline. Too many characters get in the way of a good, tight story. The movie was remade in America as The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Return of the Magnificent Seven (1966), Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969), and The Magnificent Seven (2016).

The comedy, 9 to 5, tells the story of three women who, tired of their boss’s bigoted condescending attitude, take revenge on him. Dolly Parton’s song, “Working 9 to 5,” from the movie was a catchy tune. The title could have been “8 to 4” but that doesn’t sound as impactful. I had a job where I worked from 8:30 to 4:30. Try putting that time frame into a cute song.

I saw the 1985 French comedic movie, Trois hommes et un couffin (translation: Three Men and a Cradle) which needed no translation. The 1987 Hollywood remake, Three Men and a Baby, told a similar story. Having two inept men take care of a baby wouldn’t provide enough comedic material. Four bumbling men would be too much. Three worked best.

In Les Trois Mousquetaires (translation: The Three Musketeers), Alexandre Dumas’s historical novel, there were four musketeers after D’Artagnan joined the powerful Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. Any remakes never altered the number of the original. Again, the number three worked best for this story.

Which movies and books can you recall that have a number in the title? What is the significance of that number?

 

 

 

First Experience with Dead Rising 4

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Note:  There are spoilers in this article.

 

Though Dead Rising 4 was released in December 2016, I was unable to play it until mid-March.  I had to wait until it was made available for my favorite gaming hub, the Steam Network, before I could download it.  Unlike Resident Evil 7, my resolve to stay spoiler-free until I could experience the game for myself was successful.

Like Resident Evil 7, I was certain that Dead Rising 4 would not run on my computer.  I chose to test it anyway and was pleasantly surprised when it booted up – although the load time for the starting screen took a while.  The only nitpicks I initially had were that shadows appear as distorted, blocky shapes, and there was a bit of a lag in the gameplay.  But that’s nothing that ruined the experience for me.  All I care about is that a game runs without crashing.

After the ending of Dead Rising 3 seemed to guarantee that there would be no more zombie outbreaks and that the story was over, the fourth game added another layer to the overall narrative.  In a lot of ways, Dead Rising 4 goes back to the roots of the series – it features photojournalist Frank West as the lead protagonist, takes place in the town of Willamette after a zombie outbreak has started, and has an intriguing mystery at its core.  It even lends some more depth to Dr. Barnaby, one of the antagonists in the original game who was responsible for starting the zombie epidemic in the first place.

One of the things I liked best about Dead Rising 4 is that, unlike its predecessors, there were no time constraints.  Instead of rushing through the game to solve the mystery before the clock ran out, I took my time exploring and killing zombies to my heart’s content.  I also love that the game brought back the option to dress the main character in a variety of wacky outfits, as well as create combo weapons and vehicles.  To take it one step further, Frank has access to a piece of military tech called an Exo-suit that can amplify his speed and strength.  In this outing, he throws cars at zombies to off them if he wants.  So far, I haven’t made much use of the Exo-suits apart when the game makes it a mission objective to put one on.  It is something to explore further.

While I encountered more than a few game glitches – my PC is old – nothing ruined the overall experience.  The one that really got annoying was when I undertook a mission to take out all the zombies present inside a pool hall.  Toward the end of the fight, the camera panned up to show a shot of some second story windows before a handful of the more aggressive zombies crashed through them; the camera angle remained fixed on the windows all through the ensuing fight and its aftermath.  While I worked out a way to kill the remaining creatures regardless, I was unable to exit the building since I couldn’t face the door.  Fortunately, this problem was corrected by loading the checkpoint given to me at the conclusion of the fight.

Apart from that glitch and the general lag in the gameplay, the other bugs I encountered regularly were seeing one or two zombies embedded inside a wall or walking into a room that is completely black.  I couldn’t see anything even with night vision enabled inside these black rooms.  While I enjoyed the game even with these glitches, I hope a newer, better computer will help eliminate them.

Overall, I liked the story developed for Dead Rising 4, but I also feel there are ways in which it could be better.  For starters, the character of Vick, one of Frank’s journalism students, didn’t live up to her potential.  In the opening chapter, I got the sense that she had a personal stake against the military group called Obscuris that was secretly creating and experimenting on zombies.  Had Obscuris taken someone Vick cared about for their experiments?  I was disappointed when this idea didn’t play out; Vick was simply a budding journalist out to write a prize-winning story.

I was also a bit disappointed with Calder, the “uber-zombie” hinted at during the first half of the game.  I remember feeling a sense of dread as I chased him through a train yard filled with mangled, heavily dented cars and then into the sewers.  I didn’t know what kind of monster to expect, but a highly intelligent former soldier decked out in an Exo-suit wasn’t quite it.  What made it weirder was when Frank caught up with Calder, the latter was, for some unknown reason, hell-bent on destroying the research that created him.

I felt that Calder and his motives could have been fleshed out better.  And if I had written the story, I would have had it so Vick and Calder were blood-related.  That would have made for quite the dramatic climax.

The ending to the main game still had its share of drama.  The final scene had Frank pulled from the rescue chopper by a horde of zombies and supposedly killed.  However, there has been news of an expansion pack called Frank Rising that will continue the story and have Frank striving to find a cure for zombie-ism before he fully joins the ranks of the undead.

I don’t know if there are any revelations that would allow for another game in the series.  Unless the company behind the Dead Rising franchise can come up with an intriguing, believable story for a fifth game, this may truly be the end of the road.  Whatever the future holds, I’ve definitely enjoyed the ride so far!

Despite my enthusiasm for Dead Rising 4, the game got pushed to the side for about a week in favor of Mass Effect: Andromeda – more on that in my next blog.