With the hustle and bustle of the holiday season ramping up, I’m taking a break from writing short stories this month. Instead, in honor of Thanksgiving, I’m sharing my list (in no particular order) of people and things for which I’m thankful, from my writer’s point of view:
All my teachers from grade school through college who found a way to encourage and inspire me to write. They taught me the fundamentals I use to this day.
My editor Kelly Bixby. Her passion for grammar and the written word keeps pushing me to improve my writing.
Deadwood Writers Voices as a forum for sharing my work. Having this commitment gives me a regular deadline to meet so I actually produce something.
Everyone who reads my writing on DWV as well as people who leave comments. You help me know someone is out there participating in my experience.
Grace Black and Ink In Thirds magazine for publishing one of my poems in the October 2016 issue. It’s a powerful feeling to hear the word “accepted” instead of “rejected.”
My cat Calder. He makes writing not so solitary, especially when he thinks my fingers—typing on the keyboard—are toys to bite or swat at with his paws.
The physical therapists who are getting my shoulder back into shape. Typing and using the mouse for long periods of time is still a challenge, but my stamina is increasing.
The Deadwood Writers critique group. Your support, friendship, feedback, and encouragement are invaluable.
In my August 2016 blogpost, I stated that the 2012 video game, Resident Evil 6, deserved its own list of nitpicks. It’s my opinion that RE6’s developers went way overboard in terms of content, and it resulted in one of the most flawed video games I’ve ever played. Though none of the previous games in the series is entirely perfect, the one thing that they all have going for them is that they operated on a small scale. Generally, each is limited to 1-3 main characters that the player can control throughout the game and take place in areas that are limited in scope.
From L to R – Jake, Sherry, Chris, Piers, Helena, Leon, Ada (photo credit below)
RE6 upped the ante by giving the player their choice of seven separate characters to play – four returning from previous games and three newcomers – and having the action taking place in the United States, China, and somewhere in Eastern Europe, as well as on a submarine, a jumbo passenger jet, an aircraft carrier, and a deep-sea oil rig. I feel that both elements ended up hurting the game since more time was spent on their development than on crafting a solid story. (Photo credit) As if the game didn’t suffer enough with its wider character selection and global scale, I found RE6’s many monsters either annoying or over-the-top. If the developers had spent as much time working out the kinks in the narrative as they did designing the characters, creatures, and environments, the game would be much more enjoyable.
While I have my share of problems with this game, I don’t hate it as much as many players whose scathing reviews I’ve seen. I consider myself pretty open-minded, and one of the things I do like is how RE6 has four separate campaigns that each contain a piece of a much larger story.
Before I delve into a breakdown on what irked me the most about RE6, I’ll start with an overview of each of the four scenarios. Government agent Leon Kennedy strives to expose the mastermind behind a string of outbreaks and teams with a rogue Secret Service agent named Helena Harper who was coerced into committing acts of terrorism. Captain Chris Redfield of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (B.S.A.A.) seeks revenge against a female terrorist who decimated a military team he commanded, while Chris’ protégé, Piers Nivans, strives to keep him from crossing the line. NSA operative Sherry Birkin undertakes a mission to find and protect a mercenary named Jake Muller, whose blood may hold the key to neutralizing a new manmade virus that’s been unleashed on the world. And corporate spy Ada Wong launches her own investigation when she discovers she will be made a scapegoat for these new acts of bio-terrorism. For anyone who may not have played this game but would like to, please be warned that there are spoilers ahead.
And now, on with the list.
10) Leon has an insane amount of patience.
After being forced to kill the zombified U.S. President, Adam Benford, at the start of her and Leon’s story, Helena comments out loud that the President’s death is her fault. Each time Leon questions her for an explanation throughout the first two chapters of their campaign, she continually makes excuses for procrastinating. Even though he was close friends with President Benford and only just met Helena, I can understand Leon letting it slide once or twice. But it’s a wonder he doesn’t lose it after she blows him off a total of five times. What makes the scenario even more insane is that when Helena finally does reveal what going on, her whole character is called into question. At the end of the second chapter, she discloses that she was compromised because her sister’s life was on the line.
9) Psychological trauma, what’s that?
Chris’ story kicks off with him going AWOL after the loss of almost his entire squad, trying to lose himself in a bottle as a means of forgetting. Piers tracks his former captain down after six months have gone by with the intention of bringing him back into the fold. Yet, the immediate response of everyone in the B.S.A.A. is to throw Chris right back in the field without any treatment whatsoever. It’s even more boggling that Chris has any sense left in between coming off a serious drinking binge, suffering from PTSD, and later obsessively pursuing the woman who killed his teammates.
8) Might as well have a neon sign that says ‘I’m up to no good.’
One of the things I found most puzzling about Resident Evil 6 were the gargantuan humanoid creatures called Ogroman in Chris’ campaign. For the sake of argument, I will say that RE6’s villainess, Carla, was the one who manufactured the enormous beasts encountered by the protagonists. I will also assume that she wanted to keep her activities hidden from the game’s other villain, Simmons, so he wouldn’t swoop in and shut her down. Yet she still tempts fate and blatantly throws several creatures that are larger than a two-story house at the military, as well as spearheads a bio-terrorist organization called Neo-Umbrella. Since Simmons is a character who has government connections, likes to maintain order, and stay on top of things, it’s a wonder that Carla is able to operate unhindered for at least a six-month period.
7) The villains who wield far too much power.
I can understand the need for RE6’s game designers, after the apparent death of the series’ supervillain, Wesker, in the fifth game, to come up with a bad guy or two worthy of filling the void. Yet both Carla and Simmons are able to get away with an awful lot. Between the two of them, they lay claim to a total of three or four enormous secret facilities or bases, orchestrate a presidential assassination, destroy a U.S. city with a guided missile, cause not one but two massive outbreaks that kill at least half a million people, put a big dent in the forces of a global militaristic organization, manufacture one of the most destructive genetic-altering viruses present in the Resident Evil series, and almost bring about the end of the world. On top of all that, either Carla or Simmons has an aircraft carrier, an oceanic oil rig, and a nuclear sub in their possession. Dead or not, I imagine that Wesker has to envy these two for greatly outdoing him in the very game that marks their first appearance.
6) Daddy issues.
I consider Sherry and Jake’s campaign the most polished and straightforward out of the four, but I also feel that it held a wasted goldmine of dramatic elements that could easily have been brought into the story. Midway through their campaign, Jake discovers that the father he’s never known is none other than the late Albert Wesker. If it were up to me, I would have put more emphasis on how Jake deals with the revelation that his absentee dad was the world’s most wanted bioterrorist. It would have been interesting to see more of Jake’s transition from a selfish, greedy soldier of fortune at the start of the game to a character who aims to be the antithesis of everything his father stood for. Even the scene between Jake and his dad’s greatest rival, Chris, toward the end could have been better written and a much more defining moment, for both of them. Instead, Jake, who has shown hatred toward his father through interactions with Sherry, is inexplicably angry at Chris for having killed Wesker.
5) Carla shares Simmons’ obsession with Ada?
The source of the conflict between the two villains in RE6 has an interesting basis, even if the plot itself was not well thought out. More than a decade prior to the events in the game, Simmons was deeply infatuated with Ada, to the point that he didn’t take it well when she left him. He spent a great deal of time experimenting with genetics and harming countless people in an attempt to create a doppelganger. He ultimately succeeded with his devoted lab assistant, Carla, who he brainwashed to behave like the real Ada. This scheme backfired when Carla regained her memory and went mad with thoughts of revenge. The one thing I find the most unbelievable about this whole scenario is that Carla makes no attempt to change her appearance once she remembers. Throughout an entire game that takes place over a six month period, both Ada and Carla have hairstyles that are a perfect match. One could argue that Carla made sure she’d be indistinguishable from the real Ada when it came to framing her. But given that Carla’s master plan was to destroy the world, why bother?
4) Time for a career change.
From the time of her first appearance in Resident Evil 2 in 1998, Ada has never been known as anything other than a freelance spy. One can assume that she enjoys what she does or she wouldn’t still be at it by the time the sixth game rolls around in 2012. While it’s puzzling why Carla even attempts to pin the latest string of terrorist attacks on her, there is a plot element toward the end of Ada’s campaign that makes even less sense. A peek into Ada’s thoughts reveals that she intends to destroy any evidence that would prove she’d played no part in instigating the attacks. Unless being labeled as a bioterrorist is some weird way of increasing her notoriety or deepening the pool of people looking to hire her, Ada must really be begging to spend the rest of her days behind bars if any law enforcement agency or the military ever catch her.
3) Zombies on a plane.
My explanation for the plane crash that occurs in chapter 4 of Leon’s campaign is that the game developers must have really wanted a grand spectacle to mark Leon and Helena’s arrival in China. But the events leading up to it are just plain idiotic. The buildup to this scenario is as follows. Leon learns from one of his allies that Simmons is en route to China, and Leon and Helena book a flight in pursuit. Sometime during the last leg of their trip, the heroes discover that the pilot has fallen victim to a virus and has mutated into a horrific creature that is infecting everyone on board, except for the protagonists. The game’s biggest mystery is that it never explains how or why the pilot is targeted. By this point, Simmons had just been made aware by Ada that Carla is on a rampage, so his focus had to be primarily on dealing with her. And it’s doubtful Carla would set her sights on eliminating Leon and Helena out of nowhere since she pretty much ignores them throughout the whole game. Unless there was an unknown third villain in play operating from the shadows, it would have been impossible for anyone to start an epidemic aboard a specific jet that had been in the air for roughly twelve hours.
2) Just die already!
Generally, I’m someone who likes a challenge and to square off with any game’s final boss that takes extra time and effort to triumph against. But RE6 sets the bar ridiculously high when it comes to Leon and Helena battling against Simmons. Within minutes of being exposed to Carla’s specially-made viral cocktail, Simmons mutates into an oversized canine-like creature and is seemingly stopped when he gets dragged underneath a bullet train that subsequently derails. But it doesn’t stop there. For Round Two, he transforms into a mutant T-Rex and seemingly dies again after getting pumped full of lead. Round Three sees him go back to his first stage mutation and supposedly bite it when Ada stabs him in the side and drops him into a raging inferno. For the final round, he becomes a giant housefly – God,I wish I was kidding about this – and is ultimately defeated after several lightning strikes courtesy of a metal antenna that gets stuck in him and getting shot by a rocket launcher. And yet what finally kills him is that he reverts to his human self, gets impaled on an obelisk, and bleeds out. To say all of this is overkill is a vast understatement.
1) If the monsters don’t get you, the camera angles will.
One thing that annoyed me the most about RE6 aside from the many plot holes was a certain game mechanic that got me killed more than once. Sometimes, when my character was running from something dangerous, the tendency of the camera view to shift by a 90 or 180 degree angle without warning often resulted in said character sprinting in the wrong direction. This aspect was never more frustrating than when I was playing the last chapter in Chris’ campaign and had to run up this inclined spiral walkway to get away from a giant creature that was after me. The game keeps track of how many times you’re killed, and in all other chapters, my death count averaged from 3-5. For Chris’ final chapter, I got killed well over a hundred times before I got it right. To give an idea, here is a video recorded by another player of the scenario in question.
For a game that has this many flaws, you might ask why I’m in the minority of people who don’t flat out hate it. I would say that as a writer with a very vivid imagination, I see ways in which those imperfections can be corrected. I have even done so through writing my own What-If fanfiction stories. I am currently working on an alternate take of the events in the fifth game, a story titled Tangled Web. And I have some ideas in store for a sequel to said story that will borrow the best elements from RE6.
And, whenever I get around to writing my planned fanfiction sequel to Tangled Web, I can guarantee a cooler climax than battling a giant insect.
In the United States it’s football (not the soccer version) season. The final preseason games are played and the first games of the season start in a week. As the coaching staff and players get ready for the season, the millions of leagues are ramping up with drafts and strategies for the season launch. As I participate in this pastime, my draft is tonight, I’m reminded of how this manic high energy experience is like writing deadlines.
There is a planning and flow to writing. It’s easy to be immersed in the process. The writing work is hard and mentally taxing as you push forward to perfect that phrase, clarify a meaningful section, or rethink the character motivations. Everything has to be in its best shape for the deadline.
The editor or publisher want to receive a finished copy. The days, if they really existed, of the author turning in a manuscript that needed much revision or editing are over. Get it as clean as possible as if you were about to self-publish. This is true of a blog article or book.
In the world of fantasy sports, football in particular, the time for reading endless articles on players, listening to pundits debate about the sleepers and busts, and checking last minute information on injuries and disciplinary actions is over. Tonight my draft starts.
Fortunately, my upcoming book, “So All Can Learn: A Practical Guide to Differentiation” is with the publisher. Deadline checked off.
Now I can relax–
Oh, wait, I’ve got to prepare for the 1st week lineup against my first football opponent. And, I have to prepare all of the marketing for my upcoming book! The work is never done, but well worth the experience. 🙂
Most people will never pitch a book to an agent, because the experience ranks somewhere among swimming with sharks, getting naked in front of strangers and driving in Detroit with your doors unlocked. I planned to keep my pitches to the baseball field or the horse barn. Yet, outside conference room C, I paced and worried about a few words, a few minutes and a great big manuscript on my laptop at home.
Nothing To Lose
My writer friend, Kathy (real name), suggested the writing conference. For the opportunity to pitch, the conference charged a small extra fee. Kathy asked, “Why don’t you pitch one of your manuscripts? What do you have to lose?” She offered lodging at her house in a cool college town, invited other writers and splurged on food and drinks. I almost forgot I had an appointment the next morning with special literary agent X.
Right-Hand on a Keyboard Confession
I avoided planning my pitch. And I visualized different scenarios where magical literary agent X said, “Yes, I love it. Send me everything you have. I’m your dream agent for life.” Or he said, “Naw. I’m gonna pass. Do you have anything else? No? Next writer!” I wanted to be ready and wrote a trial pitch for all of the manuscripts collecting digital dust in my flash drive pile. I even designed writer business cards to slide across the table to potentially intimidating agent X.
On Friday afternoon, I tested my pitch on the other tag-along writer invitees. With a cat curled in my lap, I read my multiple pitches to writer friends, Jacqui and Mamie (also real names). They liked everything except the book I planned to pitch. The pitch was all wrong. While they relaxed with a bottle of wine and managed a few plucks at their keyboard, I revised and expanded my pitch to several sentences and then several paragraphs.
Expect Success
Kathy had attended an afternoon session with information about pitching. Turns out, my new pitch was all wrong. So while the others talked, made dinner, and opened more wine, I shortened my pitch and made the essence of my story obvious. Beware plotters everywhere: the pitch is story and not plot. “Not to worry,” Kathy said. “Agents request from writers who pitch.” Without memorizing a word, we went to sleep dreaming of a request for our cherished manuscripts.
Memorize Your Pitch
In the morning, practice coach, Mamie, encouraged rehearsing my pitch until I was sick of it and had it mostly memorized. Jacqui buoyed my spirits with support for my relentless (borderline neurotic) writing and rewriting of the same material a hundred times. We all laughed at the silly exercise, because of course, we were destined for print. Then we heard from other writers who pitched and were not asked for requests. My nerves rocketed from zero to sixty in less than ten seconds.
Outside conference room C, I met a very friendly writer waiting for the same agent. She had pitched at another conference, and this time, brought a query letter for the agent to critique. I asked the conference coordinator if she had any tips. She said it’s more about you. If you believe in your story, then the agent will want it. Okay, maybe that was intended to help, but now, success or failure was because of me–oh great! When I sat down across from the agent, I forgot my memorized pitch in mid-sentence (nervous laugh) and had to start over, but I survived. That doesn’t mean it was a cakewalk. Agent X voiced concerns. I countered her “objections” with answers from the day before when I sorted through themes, conflicts and characters. With the agent’s card in my hand and a request for a partial, I felt successful and decided my earlier notions about the pitch experience were maybe a bit overblown but only slightly. I would rate a pitch on the same level with a job interview. The writer must prepare, deliver and be ready to move forward to the next step in the process.
Outside it’s rainy and chilly and it seems like spring might not make it this year. There’s not much I can do about the weather. What I can do is stop wasting time and start focusing on what I’m going to write about for this month’s blog.
I just finished reading Istanbul Passage: A Novel by Joseph Kanon. It’s an international spy thriller that takes place in Turkey at the end of World War II. It kept me mostly sitting on the edge of my chair afraid to breathe. I kept wondering: What was going to happen next?
One of the most interesting things Joseph Kanon did, from a writers’ and readers’ perspective, was make Istanbul, the city itself, come alive. It’s a character in the story and a very important one. This is an example from the beginning of the book. Notice how the city gradually comes to life, like a person almost:
“During those first weeks they didn’t see the old wooden houses, listing and creaking from neglect, the backstreets with clumps of garbage and mud, cracked fountains seeping moss. They saw color, heaps of spices, everything that wasn’t Germany and water everywhere, a city where you took ferries just to be out on it, looking at domes and spires, not the crooked, dirty streets. Anna wanted to see everything, the famous sites, then things she found in books, the Camondo Stairs, twisting down Galata Hill, the cast-iron Bulgarian church, the Byzantine mosaics out near the old city walls where they could eat picnics on the yellow grass, looking up at the giant stork nests in the ruins.”**
Reading the book was like stepping back in time, into the Istanbul that existed in late 1945. Joseph Kanon makes it possible for you to walk down streets, up hills and through back alleys. You feel the rush of flagging down a taxi or running for the tram. Coming down a steep hill in the funicular took my breath away.
“They caught the ferry back to Eminonu and wandered through the spice market like tourists, looking at the tall cones of ground spices and piles of dates. At a nougat stall . . . But then the man turned, eating candied pistachios, just another fat man, and Leon realized he’d been staring and looked away. They went out the side exit, past the bird market, cages noisy with song and fluttering.”***
I loved visiting the mosques, the bazaar and out to dinner to a nice restaurant. I became fascinated by constantly having to take a boat from the European to the Asian side and then back again.
What I took from this book is that it’s possible to make a city, any city, a character in your story. If you do, it could be a lot more interesting! Have you tried this technique?
*Istanbul Passage: A Novel by Joseph Kanon, Atria Books, 2012.
With the hustle and bustle of the holiday season ramping up, I’m taking a break from writing short stories this month. Instead, in honor of Thanksgiving, I’m sharing my list (in no particular order) of people and things for which I’m thankful, from my writer’s point of view:
