My Turn: The Force Awakens, or How to Clone a Story

You’ve all seen it right? Maybe a couple times by now? Know the dialogue by heart? Even if you haven’t seen it, you’ve heard all about it. Read reviews. Glimpsed the Facebook chat and Twitter feeds.

What? You live on Tristan da Cunha you say?Well, if you haven’t seen it, turn back!!! Spoilers abound. I’ve waited a couple months to post this, and frankly, I can’t wait a moment longer.

My review: I hated it. I loved it. I hated it some more. I hated myself for hating it. I hated myself for loving it. It disappointed on so many levels, but then there were occasional bright and shiny moments that made me feel very, very happy.

It made me pop in the DVDs and rewatch the first three (no not those other three, I pretend they never happened).

TOP FOUR FIVE EIGHT, ok TEN REASONS I HATED IT, but I’ll stick with FIVE for now…

1. Desert Planet. All those Imagineers at Disney and all they can come up with is another desert planet for the primary setting? Tatooine meet Jakku, Jakku meet Tatooine. What? You’re the same planet and we just don’t know it yet? Well, that explains everything.

Hero on harsh desert planet

Hero on harsh desert planet

Heroine on harsh desert planet.

Heroine on harsh desert planet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Death Star 1, 2, and yep, there’s another one. Really? Years of advancement in space weaponry and what do we get? A Supermassive Black Hole devouring everything in sight like a giant space PacMan? A genetically-engineered army of creatures that feed on both technology and flesh? An insidious space vapor that once inhaled makes the brain compliant to all Empire commands? No. We get a third Death Star. With the same weaknesses. Obviously The Empire has a short memory.

3. The Angsty, Misunderstood, AngryTeen with Parent Issues and a Big Light Saber.  Kylo Ren isn’t a villain. He’s a thug who throws a tantrum when he doesn’t get his way. Does he cooly dispatch dissenters with the wave of a hand? No, he whines about them and then orders others to do the job for him. Does he fight his father in an epic battle to prove his superiority? Why, no. He might as well have murdered him in his sleep. Boo. Just boo. I would’ve rather seen a Disney Villain take down Han Solo. Yeah I’ve joined the hatin’ on Ren bandwagon. BTW, he should’ve taken his helmet off for the first time on the catwalk with dad. BBTW, why does every death star have to have a catwalk over a vast abyss?

4. Oh Where Oh Where Did the Chemistry Go?

Maybe if Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher had gone out for a candle-lit dinner a couple times before filming they wouldn’t have seemed like a couple of dead fish in a sack. Han and Chewie still had that ease you love to see when two people “get” each other, but it was no wonder Han and Leia weren’t together any more (even before you-know-what happens to Han). When Leia says, “As much as we fought, I hated it when you left,” she might as well have been saying, “Don’t you have somewhere else you have to be?” And no, age didn’t kill the chemistry. If you think you can’t be old and hot at the same time then you must’ve missed Katherine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier in Love Among the Ruins, or Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin in It’s Complicated.

5. Who’s in Charge Now?

via GIPHY

The Empire? Well how did that happen? Wasn’t the Empire defeated in Return of the Jedi?  Maybe a little backstory to set the political stage would’ve been helpful. ‘Cause if the Empire’s in charge, what’s The FIrst Order trying to accomplish, and if they’re not in charge, why is The Resistance called The Resistance?

So with all these flaws, why does this movie have a place in my heart? Well, that’s a subject for another post, but one reason is:

Doesn-t everyone have one?

Doesn-t everyone have one?

 

Editing Magic

First Try Perfection © Mihail Orlov

First Try Perfection © Mihail Orlov

If only I could spin a perfect yarn as quickly and efficiently as Miss Spider spins her web. Now don’t get me wrong. I can crank out a few thousand words a day just like any other red-blooded writer. Maybe not as many as Rachel Aaron. I still have my day job. But on a good Saturday when The Spouse takes on chauffeur duty and I’m left with My Muse, a cup of tea, and a quiet house, I can hit 3,500- 5,000 words easy.

Mr. Kitty, Writing Muse

Mr. Kitty, Writing Muse

Quantity is easy. Quality is hard work.

One of my recent editing endeavors involved rewriting a Young Adult Sci-Fantasy novel from third-person past point-of-view to first-person present and back again. I honestly don’t know which version I like better now, but I can tell you the “new” third-person version is far more intimate and thoughtful simply from going through the process. So painstakingly, for the last few months, I’ve taken a Middle-Grade Dystopian that I wrote a couple years back and I have edited and re-edited, written, revised, and re-written, gutted and reassembled, stacked, unstacked, and re-stacked, until this,

The mess before the magic

The mess before the magic

Became this,

The middle is looking a little light.

The middle is looking a little light.

Became this.

The beauty of organization.

The beauty of organization.

First try perfection is definitely not my thing. Revising and editing? That’s when the magic happens. Now enough writing about editing. Time to get the job done.