Midnight’s Dawning
I jump around a bit in this blog because it’s interesting to contrast my attitudes of today with that naïve, optimistic, hopeful writer from over thirty years ago. Writing about him, I miss him, and the idealism he nurtured. But it wasn’t all hopefulness. Sometimes, reality snuck in to temper the enthusiasm. As occurred after I finished my novel. I started wondering why a publisher would take a chance on an unknown, untried author who’d only written book one of a proposed four-book series. A big part of this concern was genuine self-doubt. An equally big part was just how clueless I was about what to do next. I decided…
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Films, television series, and books ultimately come down to the same thing: the written story. Something that is beginning to annoy me in storytelling – particularly in film and television – is the use of flashbacks. To the best of my knowledge, JJ Abrams’ television series Lost popularised the use of flashbacks to introduce backstory. Lost has an ensemble cast of characters. In the two seasons I watched (before the constant baiting and switching turned me off), each episode would focus on somebody different. Throughout that episode, we’d get flashbacks about the character’s life before they got on the island. A younger, much-less cynical version of me enjoyed this –…