Words written: 5414
Stories completed: 1
Rejections: 5
Acceptances: 0
Thought I'd keep a little Bridget Jones-style tally of the year so far so you can see the full horror of writing at the margins...
Meanwhile, I recently posted on the slight embarrassment I often feel in the realm of sci-fi, particularly when it involves dressing up in foam rubber, giving yourself a name by pulling letters out of a scrabble bag lubricated with the odd apostrophe, and spouting hokum.
Well, I realised there's an exception to every rule by watching Armageddon. Yes, old film; no, never got around to watching it before. Like I've said, there's a hell of a lot of sci-fi out there.
Not only have I not watched Armageddon before, this was the first example of the oeuvre of Michael Bay that had take place before my eyeballs. Being an adherent of the Church of Wittertainment I had a more or less fixed view on his output, but I couldn't believe how much shouting there was in the first reel. Where are they going to go? Everything was already turned up to eleven and not in a good way.
With story and subtlety at just as much risk as planet Earth, it struck me that Mr Bay had managed to craft a product without blokes with rubber horns or ridged foreheads, with normal names and a minimum of dilithium-crystal-hyperdrive-antigrav-transporter-beam, but that was so patently silly so as to make you squirm. Even my eight-year old (girl) described it as 'badly filmed', by which I don't think she meant effects and cinematography. And, if you can't get your story past an eight year-old, what hope is there?
Ten-year old boy, though, loved it - target audience.
Stories completed: 1
Rejections: 5
Acceptances: 0
Thought I'd keep a little Bridget Jones-style tally of the year so far so you can see the full horror of writing at the margins...
Meanwhile, I recently posted on the slight embarrassment I often feel in the realm of sci-fi, particularly when it involves dressing up in foam rubber, giving yourself a name by pulling letters out of a scrabble bag lubricated with the odd apostrophe, and spouting hokum.
Well, I realised there's an exception to every rule by watching Armageddon. Yes, old film; no, never got around to watching it before. Like I've said, there's a hell of a lot of sci-fi out there.
Not only have I not watched Armageddon before, this was the first example of the oeuvre of Michael Bay that had take place before my eyeballs. Being an adherent of the Church of Wittertainment I had a more or less fixed view on his output, but I couldn't believe how much shouting there was in the first reel. Where are they going to go? Everything was already turned up to eleven and not in a good way.
With story and subtlety at just as much risk as planet Earth, it struck me that Mr Bay had managed to craft a product without blokes with rubber horns or ridged foreheads, with normal names and a minimum of dilithium-crystal-hyperdrive-antigrav-transporter-beam, but that was so patently silly so as to make you squirm. Even my eight-year old (girl) described it as 'badly filmed', by which I don't think she meant effects and cinematography. And, if you can't get your story past an eight year-old, what hope is there?
Ten-year old boy, though, loved it - target audience.
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