User talk:Justinmc/Archive 1

From Wikinovel

[edit] Edited out (and whiny about it)

gee...shut down. FortuneK 23:26, 21 June 2007 (EDT)FortuneK Was my character idea/back story so heinous that it had to be deleted down to the trite? Couldn't let it stand up until someone else had an idea? You had someone who cared to put something out there in a serious fashion but it didn't fit into your formula...

Please sign your comments using ~~~~. If you look, several of your ideas are still incorporated into Ed's character. Also, as we've mentioned before-- if you don't want your work edited, mercilessly, then, it's probably best not to submitt it. Thanks. Justin / ^{(Talk to me)} 09:43, 20 June 2007 (EDT)

okay, this is Fortune K. Editing is important, and you shouldn't let the story get away from you, but there is a time to edit and a time to let creative ideas just flow. Short answer to questions reminiscent of a quiz in an English class isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I don’t find it inspiring.

Crazy thing is, I never really had any interest in this story or this project and just stumbled around and after my last message fully intended to go away and not come back, but I found myself thinking about the damn story on my lunch hour walk when I meant to mull over my own novel. So it’s procrastination and avoidance, but here I am.

No one cares what happens to a character if they don't first care about the character. You need the main characters, especially, to be fully developed before you can tell what they will do in a particular situation or why they are there in the first place or what they need to get out of the encounter in order to change. You need to know where they have been and where they are now. Did they start out life on a high, hit a low, and here they are transforming back to a happy medium? Did they start out low, overcome great obstacles, only to lose what they gained as they realize that nothing every really changes? Have their lives been extremely ordinary, and out of this extraordinary experience they find they want more out of life than mediocracy?

Having a backstory, or a series of back stories tell you more about a character than “he says pop instead of soda.” I’m from the Pacific Northwest, and I say pop instead of soda. So do people in California and Oregon. Also Toronto. That’s not really an inspiration that will drive the character.

How can you know the character without finding them through their past?

You’ve made Ed a former state police detective from Pennsylvania. So what? So in order to write about him now everyone has to google esoteric facts about Pennsylvania and learn the jargon particular to the state police? Was that your intent? Why not start with something a bit more generic than that, and as the story develops, see what the contributors can bring to his character instead of forcing it from the beginning. Maybe out there is someone who has a background with the military police and sees this guy as one of his—and can really add some flavor to the character. Maybe someone out there has some other similar but not equivalent background that really seems to nail this guy.

Why does a cop have enough money to retire to Hawaii? Is he crooked? He met the Browns ONCE on a camping trip and now he’s willing to travel from Hawaii? Not coach, I would think, if someone else is paying for it. I don’t believe it because I don’t know why and it doesn’t make sense. Makes more sense that he came out to the wilderness with a case of Jack Daniel to get himself good and lost and never be heard from again…and stumbles into the plot. Otherwise we have to think of what was so special about that last encounter (the only one) that makes the parents immediately think they need to fly this one guy (who does investigative work as a hobby) all that way. Is there no one more local that can help? If they don’t find the boys within the first 48 hours, they might as well consider them dead, don’t you think?

Why make the mom an Art history professor? What does that bring to the story? I know Jack about art history. Is this your area of comfort? That doesn’t really tell us who she is—just what she is. So what? Why not just start with saying she’s an educator—and see why that matters as the character develops? Can’t she be a school counselor who is great with everybody else’s kids but can’t relate to her own? Or maybe a wildlife conservationist, and that’s why they’re out camping at a time when other kids are in school? When all you have are short answers to questions, there’s nothing to work with. Does she have to be an art history professor? Then let’s kill her off in the beginning of the story and be done with it. Dad’s a landscape architect? Do you mean he mows lawns and makes brick walled garden areas for the rich? Or does large scale landscaping for parks and gated communities? What does that add to the story? Who has enough background in the world of landscape architure that they want to try to figure that out? How about a sanitation engineer? (Garbage man) that the kids are ashamed of. Or a guy who wanted to be a rock star but instead plays cover tunes in the local bars and finally agreed to spend quality time with the boys. Or just some Microsoft employee who has just finished the grueling overtime as they put Vista out there in the world, and has promised to leave his cell phone at home? Landscape Architect? Why?

For that matter, why a carnival? What do you or any potential contributors know about a carnival? They watched a series on HBO? They’ve read about the carnival or seen one in a movie? Certainly Tam and Ethan have no idea what a carnival is or was. Might as well me a mummers festival to them. Carnivals are old-school, like having an actual experience being told or read stories like the Three Little Pigs or Little Red Riding Hood or Snow White instead of growing up on caricatures and parodies like kids see in Shrek but don’t really understand why they are funny. How can you expect enthusiastic and knowledgable and more importantly interesting writing about something that no one has first hand experience with. It’s a major character in this novel, it would seem.

You appear to be a fairly young man. Ever been to a carnival and seen the strong man or the bearded lady, or the dog-faced boy? I grew up in the 70’s and the closest we came was a field trip to see the circus in an actual Big Top. It was pitiful. It seemed cruel the way they prodded the animals and even the popcorn was stale. They stopped sponsoring this event the year after I went. The closest thing now a days is the Fair, and while there are “carnies” there, those are the people who provide the rides and the games of no chance with the cheesy prizes. We don’t gawk at hormone-challenged women, and aren’t impressed by feats of strength by some Guy when we can watch the strong man competition on TV. How non PC. At 10 years old, surely Ethan as well as Tam have been taught not to stare at the special needs kid in the classroom. Kids are more interested in the fanastical things they see their heros do in the movies than watching even talented ordinary mortals exhibit their physical skills. Otherwise a lot more kids would go to the ballet, and a lot more people would watch the Olympics. Ho hum. So why a carnival? What does it represent? A home for the guy on the lam from the law. A place for the outcast whose only talent is burping the Star Spangled Banner? A theoretical destination to run away to when life is unfair and you just want out? One time, maybe. But only your PI would have ANY idea what a carnival may have been. I don’t buy that there is a carnival. No kid dreams of a carnival. It may be interesting. It may remind them of the county fair, or the lame “Carnival Night” the PTA put on as a fund raiser. I see these kids as having a fairly jaded attitude toward a true carnival. What?! No Arcade? Lame! So, it can’t be a carnival. There’s something else there. It is masquerading as a carnival, andiconic carnival with what a carnival is expected to have, but it isn’t a carnival. Who’s in charge of this? What allows it to exist? Is there some sort of quantum effect in which the observer changes the nature of the observed? Who is the carnival there for? The PI—the only guy old enough to know what a carnival is? Or is little Ethan actually a foundling whose mother placed him on the steps of a hospital, and now the carnival is calling him back—as a servant? as the heir apparent? What is Tam’s contribution—is he doomed to spend the rest of his life in the garb of a clown, always vying for the attention of others but never taken seriously again? Has this carnival appeared before? Did their mom or dad have some here-to-fore suppressed experience during youth? Is that why they are so frightened but feel they need extraordinary help? Who’s in charge of this carnival? The Elephant is the biggest creature, and requires a lot of care…is the Elephant really a malevolent creature that is in charge, collecting the lost around her to do her bidding? Step not on the shadow of the Elephant, Unclean One, lest you pollute her Greatness… By the way--I'm not use to this format, and I messed up the order...forgive me--I am old! FortuneK 23:28, 21 June 2007 (EDT)Fortune K

Like it says at the bottom of every edit page, "all contributions to Wikinovel may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then don't submit it here." Again, if that's too hard to take-- then maybe this isn't the place for you. Justin / ^{(Talk to me)} 06:38, 22 June 2007 (EDT)

God what a basket case this guy is. Don't you understand what a wiki is? YOU ARE ALLOWED TO EDIT OTHER'S WORK. Instead of whining about what you don't like on the editor's talk page, go and make the changes yourself. And besides, if you're read the talk pages about the characters, you'd see that no on like the "burned out private investigator." It was a cliche. It was bad. It needed to go. And, oh yeah... telling someone that you sense they are young is insulting because you mean to imply that you know better because you're old. Obviously, you meant it to be insulting. Finaldraft 08:55, 22 June 2007 (EDT)

Agreed. Scotter 19:46, 25 June 2007 (EDT)