Wonky World Building and JJ
All storytellers have different strengths and weaknesses. In telling a story, they’ll play to their strengths, and hopefully that compensates for their weaknesses. But what happens when a storyteller’s weakness is storytelling? I can’t fault director JJ Abrams’s ability to make visually stunning movies (lens flares and all). But his storytelling is terrible, which is born from his appalling world-building. Word-building is paramount to me. Get it right, and you can sell me anything. I’ll believe immortals are living among us who can only die if they lose their head; I’ll believe an eccentric inventor builds a time machine out of a DeLorean; I’ll believe an archaelogist is retained by…
Chasing the Magic
It might be surprising (← humour) that (at times) I can be difficult to work with. I take the creation of story very seriously, so if somebody’s screwing around it can frustrate me. That’s not to say that creation can’t and shouldn’t be fun, but there always times and places. When it’s not one of those times and places, I want to get things done because getting things done moves the process forward. The process being advanced invites new ideas. That generates evolution. Evolution realises the vision. That vision is something that can be diluted when the focus shifts, or it can be lost when there’s too much disparate discussion.…