Number 5:  My Old Neighborhood

This one is a bit different, I know.  Up until now this list has been about some of my favorite pieces of fiction as a kid – movies, books, comics – and how they might have influenced Powerless.  But my old neighborhood was certainly not fiction (it wasn’t, right?).

I grew up in a pretty standard middle-class suburb, but we were on the outskirts – on the suburban frontier, if you will.  There were about ten houses scattered over a tangle of streets and cul-de-sacs, bordering a wilderness of still-undeveloped woods and farmers’ fields.  If you followed the creek behind my house for ten minutes you’d reach the lake and rickety old bridge.

It was the perfect place for an imaginative kid to have adventures.  Of course, like any good parents, my mom and dad divided up the place into boundaries – “You can follow the creek as far as the bridge, but don’t play on it and don’t cross it to the lake.  You can play in the woods behind the house but don’t go into the corn field and stay far away from the abandoned (and probably haunted) old barn beyond.”

Needless to say, I spent most of my days swimming in the lake and exploring that old barn looking for ghosts, and I’m lucky that I didn’t end up with any broken bones or worse.  But when I look back on my childhood those are the fondest memories I have.  (I’m a dad now, myself, and I’ll be setting my own boundaries soon.  But my angel of a boy can be trusted to obey, right Will?  Right?)

My world was pretty small – just a few acres when all is said and done – but it was full of excitement and mystery.  And truth be told, I miss it little.

Number 7: The Hobbit

This one shouldn’t take much explanation.  The Hobbit is a classic, but it holds a special place in my heart because of its hero, Bilbo Baggins.  The awkward, not-particularly-brave-and-certainly-not-fearsome burglar.  Around the time that I discovered The Hobbit (thanks to a swell middle-school librarian) I was dealing with my own issues of feeling a bit less-than.  Middle School can be a rough place for the best looking and most socially graceful of us, and I was certainly not either of those things.  So it was a wonderful surprise when I found this book where the unlikeliest of heroes escaped the goblins, rescued his friends from the spiders and outwitted a dragon.

There was nothing particularly special about Bilbo.  He had a bit of luck on his side, and a few powerful friends to be sure, but what made this little hobbit really remarkable was a rather unremarkable trait – persistence.  The little guy just never gave up, despite his grumbling and in the face of terrifying odds he just kept slogging through it all.  He put his head down,  one foot in front of the other and tried his best to be clever.

And in the end (small spoiler warning, here, folks) he won.

Number 8: Escape to Witch Mountain and Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Okay, so I cheated.  Today’s post is two-in-one, but I can explain.  You see, it’s about mountains.  Dark, mysterious mountains that loom over everything else.  There’s no backdrop so dramatic, so imposing, as that.

When I was very little, Disney released Escape from Witch Mountain and though I was little more than a toddler when I saw it, the movie stuck with me (I know there’s a remake but I’m stubborn about these things).  I honestly haven’t seen it since, not in thirty-some years, but I still remember the “boat wreck”, the mysterious box with two suns and, of course, the gifted brother and sister.  And then there was that name . . . . Witch Mountain . . . . it just lingered in my brain.

I was a bit older when I saw Close Encounters, and as an adult it’s still one of my favorites.  While it’s pure coincidence that both of these movies are about UFO’s (I’m not really a sci-fi writer) it’s no coincidence that the mountains in each are directly connected to a mystery from the heavens.  The final images of Close Encounters that take place on and around that mountain, beneath a black and cloudy sky, were forefront in my head throughout much of the writing of Powerless.

You know what?  After writing this entry, I’ve gone and updated my Netflix que.  Hope the family is up for a movie marathon this weekend.

NUMBER 9: Encyclopedia Brown

In the bucolic town of Idaville, a boy with the unlikely name Encyclopedia Brown solved mysteries for a quarter a case.  He operated out of his garage, and his cases usually involved the wrongs of bullying or petty theft (although the kid with the missing bike would hardly call the crime petty).  Occasionally he might help out his father, the local police chief, but more often than not he worked for kids and sleuthed in a kid’s world.

Sound corny? Well, it was and I ate up every word.

I love mysteries, always have, and long before I discovered Sherlock Holmes or Sam Spade, I had Encyclopedia Brown.  The title said everything you needed to know about him – Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective.  But what I really loved about these books was the setting.  I loved the feeling that these mysteries could happen in a neighborhood, any neighborhood, my neighborhood, even.  Every great detective is defined by the place he inhabits – Holmes is foggy London and wind-swept moors.  Spade is dark and rainy San Francisco.  And Brown is the backyards and creeks of a small town suburb.  The place infused every page of every Encyclopedia Brown book.

I’m a big-city mouse these days, but when I think about childhood I cannot help but see the green lawns and tree forts of the wild suburb.  Streets were entire cities and an empty lot could be ball field one day and a no man’s land the next – the perfect place for a clever kid to hang up a shingle outside his garage and solve crimes for 25 cents a day, plus expenses.

Everyone loves lists, right?  Well, the publication of Powerless is just days away, and to celebrate I present The Powerless Top Ten . . . er, Nine list of the nine biggest influences on the book.  In a lot of ways, writing Powerless was like a walk through my own childhood – many of the things that the 10-year old me loved found their way into the book.

Next week, there will be some great additions and exciting changes made to this website (just wait – it’s very cool!), but in the meantime I will add a new post each day about a different childhood influence on the book. Some are subtle, some are obvious.  My hope is that you’ll read the book, and then come back here and have a nice “aha!” moment or two.

So without any further blather, I present . . . .

NUMBER 10: The Invaders

Full Disclaimer: I’ve never read this comic book.  As a matter of fact, if I had a nice copy of 1946’s All Winners issue 21 I probably wouldn’t be pecking away at the keyboard for a living, or at the very least I’d be pecking away on a nicer computer.  This original comic came and went long before my time.

But the heroes of this World War II era book lived on.  In subsequent years they were dubbed The Invaders by comics scribe Roy Thomas, and he and many others have continued their adventures right up until the present day.  The original Human Torch and his sidekick Toro, the Sub-Mariner, Captain America and Bucky – these were characters that survived wars and witch hunts only to make into the impressionable psyche of a certain ten year-old boy.

It was the pictures of these heroes in their war days that really got me.  I couldn’t read the stories, but I could see the covers in the pages of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide and that was enough to leave a mark.  Here was a group of heroes out of the distant (to a ten year-old) past, complete with their teenage sidekicks, parachuting into the European theater of war, or spoiling the plans of some mad scientist bent on world domination.

I poured over those covers in the Overstreet guide.  I memorized the details and made up stories to fit the pictures.  It was like discovering a history, a secret history, that adults were clueless about.

The All Winners.  The Invaders.  The original heroes.

One of the wonderful things about great literature is its timelessness – good stories stick with us for years and years.  Some of these stories are so beloved that the readers inevitably begin to clamor for more.  When we fall in love with a group of characters it’s only natural to ask what happened next, or what happened before . . .

Peter Pan is one of those great books and, happily, writers Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson have given us the story of before with their series of prequels, the Starcatchers books.  The authors will be joining me at the Thalia Kids’ Book Club at Symphony Space on Sunday October 25th to talk about the latest book in the series, Peter and the Sword of Mercy.

Yours truly will be on hand to moderate the discussion (though I suspect they’ll need little help from me!) and renowned actor Jim Dale (the voice of the Harry Potter audiobooks) will join them for a reading and Q&A.

With those three sharing the same stage, I’m sure this will be a book club to remember, so get your tickets early!

The banner under the title said it all, “The Final Fate of the Flash!”

I was twelve years old when this comic came out and I have to admit that, at first, it was way under my radar.  The DC line of characters seemed a bit silly at that age, what with all that Truth, Justice and the American Way stuff.  At that point even Batman had yet to recover from the camp-fest of the 70’s Batman television show.  Superman was a goody-goody and Batman was a shark-repellent wielding goofball.  I was a Marvel Zombie through and through, and the angsty mutants of the X-Men were my heroes.

But I’d always had a soft spot for the Flash.  I think it was the costume – the big splash of primary color, the iconic lightning bolt.  He just looked cool.  Plus, every boy wanted super speed.  Of course I dreamed of flying, but super speed was a strong number two on my superpowers wish list.

I’d pick up the occasional Flash comic here and there, or steal one of my brother’s.  I knew the basic facts, that the Flash was really Barry Allen, police forensics scientist and he had a sidekick named Kid Flash.

So it was a bit of surprise when I came across an oddly-titled comic that claimed to reveal “The Final Fate of the Flash!”  The final fate?  Why, this wasn’t even a Flash comic book, it was something called “Crisis on Infinite Earths” (worst title for a comic ever, by the way).  It was written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated by George Perez, whose excellent Teen Titans would eventually cure me of my X-Men single-mindedness.

But at the time all I knew was that the Flash was on the cover and he looked in trouble.  So I picked it up, expecting a another Flash-finds-himself-in-a-tight-spot-and-speeds-to-the-rescue-just-in-the-nick-of-time-only-to-be-late-to-dinner-with-his-girlfriend story.

I was wrong. As it turned out, dead wrong.

I didn’t understand much of the plot since this was the last act of a twelve-issue story, but it had something to do with a universe-spanning threat – no a multi-verse spanning threat and it involved every hero and villain in DC comics.  This issue put Flash at the forefront, fighting to save everything, literally, from oblivion.  In Flash fashion, he managed to save the day, but in doing so he sacrificed his life.

He died.  Barry Allen, the Flash, died.

I bought the rest of the Crisis issues, anxiously awaiting his return, the big reveal where he had faked his death to get an upper hand on the villain, or the discovery that he dead Flash was really Barry’s evil clone or . . . nothing.  Bary stayed dead.  A new Flash, the former Kid Flash, picked up the costume and continued the legacy but Barry Allen, my Flash, was dead.

This was a first.  Over in my Marvel books, characters had died but they were all C or D-listers.  Ask your parents who the Phoenix was and you’d get a weird look, but the Flash?  You don’t kill an icon.  The main character can never die, not really.  The fans won’t stand for it, just ask Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Well, Barry managed to stay dead for nearly twenty-five years, and only now is making his return.  That has got to be a record in comics.  Nobody stays dead forever, but the Flash was as close as they got.

I still have that issue.  It is one of the few that survived the various, painfully regrettable collection purges that I went through during my teens and early twenties.   I’m a more of a DC guy these days and I probably have that comic to thank for it.  And in the end, I’m sorta glad that no one stays dead forever.  It’s a nice counterpoint to our real world, an accepted convention and a cozy escape.

So welcome back, Barry.  But watch your back.  They got you once and they can get you again.  But just know, I’ll be rooting for you all the way.

As the publication date approaches, this wonderful Powerless review popped up on the Borders site written by none-other-than their head kids’ book buyer:

How would you feel if you could fly, but knew you’d soon lose that ability? How would you deal with a town bully so strong he can pick up cars? How can kids keep a secret from a whole town for generations?

These are some of the questions posed by Matthew Cody’s fantastic new middle grade novel Powerless which goes on sale on 10/27/09. Fan of comic books, super-heroes, and plain old good mysteries will love this book of friends banding together before they are overcome by a terrible fate.

But here’s my favorite part – a bit of a teaser:

I don’t want to spoil anything, but the villain in the story is one of the most interesting characters. While he is creepy, he may actually be doing good…

Are you hooked, yet?  Then go pre-order it today!  Otherwise some playground jerk will just spoil it before you have a chance to get a copy!

Follow the link here for the rest of the review, (just click on “Customer Reviews”).

Yesterday I turned in the New Book.  I sat at my keyboard, my finger poised over the “send” button, awaiting my fanfare or at the very least a hallway lined with hand-shakers and well-wishers.

What I got instead was a queasy stomach and an early pepto-bismal bedtime (but was it the book or the street falafal?)

It’s a hard thing to do, to put your baby out there into the world. Now, granted, “the world” is currently just my editor and my agent – both lovely people who want nothing but the best for me – and if it’s a bunch of 12-point, double-spaced junk they will let me know and we’ll shiny-up the messy bits long before any of you get a peek at it.

But it’s still hard to let it go.  Truth be told, I’ve been sitting on it for at least a month – making little tweaks here and there, only to go back the next day and tweak the tweaks back again.  Basically I could have and perhaps should have turned it in then, but there is just always that little Goblin on my shoulder telling me that inspiration, like a bolt from the blue, could strike tomorrow and illuminate all the hidden problems and untapped potential.

Shut up Goblin, I’m on a schedule here.

The book is done.

Now comes the hard part.

One of the very nice bits of good news for Powerless has been Random House’s decision to include it in their “It’s a First” promotion.  This is where they pick a few first-timer titles every season and give them a little extra love.

There are some great looking books on this year’s Fall list and here’s the link to the site if you feel like checking them out.  PLUS you can download a pdf brochure with little excerpt from each book!

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the marketing team at Random House for a little Powerless pre-publication pow-wow (alliteration, anyone?).  They were gracious, enthusiastic and made me feel like a real honest-to-goodness author.

And they fed me cupcakes.

I suspect that this is a privilege reserved for only the select few.  I suspect there are a whole host of authors out there who, upon reading this, might place a frantic early-Monday morning call to their agents and editors demanding to re-negotiate their contracts to insure a cupcake clause.  But I am sorry to share the following, daunting publishing facts with you:

• Of the percentage of writers who garner the majority of their income from writing, less than 5% are given cupcakes.

• Of that 5% (let’s call them the cupcake class), less than 3% are offered a choice of vanilla OR chocolate, and their quantities are severely limited.

• This leaves a minuscule 1.5% of published authors who are provided a choice of cupcake flavors and encouraged to eat their fill.

Them’s the tough facts, folks.  So what I’m saying is – don’t quite carrying around your own snack cakes.

I want to give a big thanks to all the great campers I met this week at the Thalia Kids Book Club Camp!  I knew it would be a good time, but I had no idea that I’d be meeting such a talented group of young readers and writers.  I am SUPER impressed with all of them.

On Wednesday we went to the Random House offices where my fantastic editors and designers met with the kids and gave them a little lesson on book publishing 101 (I learned a few things, too!)

But by far the coolest part came on Friday, when I got to read stories and poems the campers had been working on all week long.  Together with actress Bernadette Quigley, we read the stories out loud on stage for an audience of staff, campers and parents.  Haunted houses, superpowers, time travel, dogs and homelessness . . . these stories touched on so many different genres and subjects, that I couldn’t begin to pick a favorite.  But I am sure that some of these kids will grow up into the authors of tomorrow and I can’t wait to read their stuff.  I’ll be able to say “I knew them when . . .”

Here’s a quick pic from the visit to Random House.  Take a jump over to the Book Camp Blog for a lot more pics from the week.

I attended exactly 3/4 of a summer camp when I was a kid.

The first was a soccer camp that my best friend was attending.  Granted, he was two years older than me and he’d been playing little league soccer for years but I thought I had the skills to compete with the big boys (Note: I spray-painted my soccer ball silver and pretended it was the Death Star, so you see where my skills really lie).  I lasted a day and a half.

Next was Cub Scouts Camp.  Now this time I was really excited – Cub Scouts!  Wilderness!  Hiking! Camping!  While a poor sportsman I was a pretty darn good outdoorsman, I loved scrambling around in the woods, building forts and catching snakes (catch-and-release only, I promise.)  I looked forward to Scouts Camp all summer long – two weeks in a national park exploring, adventuring.  Maybe I’d learn to whittle.  I’d always wanted to whittle.

But the first day of camp arrived and with it so did the rain.  So we sat in a shed behind a church and painted paper fish to go in our imaginary aquarium.  The next day the sun came out, but the humidity was so bad that the den mothers decided to cancel the scheduled hike and spend an extra hour on arts and crafts.  On the third day . . . well, I really have no idea what they did on the third day because I wasn’t there.  I quit.

So if you add up my total summer camp attendance it makes just under a week.  Roughly 3/4 of a single, short summer camp.

But I will go out on a limb and say that my spotty camp record is because I never had a camp as cool as this:  This summer I’ll be a part of Symphony Space’s Thalia Kids’ Book Club Camp!  What a great time this is going to be!  Follow the link and take a peek at the line-up of activities they have planned and I bet you’ll wish you were a kid again.  As a matter of fact, I may see if I can snag an extra-large camp tee shirt and disguise myself as Matty the Giant Twelve-Year Old, just so that I can hang out with Brian Selznick!

And that is by far the coolest thing I’m doing this summer!

(but interviewer ain’t so bad himself!)

Following up on yesterday’s post about exciting blurbs by bestselling authors, I came across this nice, affordably-priced item on audible.com.  It’s a recording of an event featuring Jonathan Stroud, moderated by yours truly.  Over the course of 90 minutes Jonathan and I talked about his latest book Heroes of the Valley, and fielded questions from a very astute group of young readers.

There’s a bit in the middle where the kids are working on their own stories, and Jonathan and I cleverly covered our microphones so that we could share writerly secrets in the Secret Language of Children’s Authors (sorry, but if you heard it we’d have to kill you).  But do fast forward through the dead air and get to the part where the kids read their own stories out loud – really fantastic stuff!

Then spend some time crawling around the kid’s audible site as they also have some really good free downloads of classic stuff.  Free, unabridged Tell-Tale Heart anyone?  Really spice up that summer car trip . . .  thump-thump . . .  thump-thump . . . thump-thump . . .

So cool, yes? I’m thrilled at the new look of the place – designed and built by the extraordinary Denise Biondo.  Powerless is just around the corner (well, November is still a few months away so let’s just say that it’s lurking near the corner and down the street a bit.  Maybe even stopping for cup of coffee and a doughnut first, but it’ll get there!)

What I love about the site is its pulp/comic book feel, presented in a clean, modern design.  Mystery and adventure and a big old “Kaboom!” – what more could you want?

But there have been a lot of exciting developments over the last few weeks and I’ll be posting them here soon.  But to start I’d like to give a HUGE shout out of thanks to Jeff Smith and Jonathan Stroud for their kind words about Powerless.  Their exact quotes are up on the site, but I’ll leave it to you to find them.  (See, it’s like a treasure hunt!  We even have games at matthewcody.com!)

So take a look around and let me know what you think!

The new website is being built as I type (can you hear the hammering?)  I promise that it’ll go live within a few weeks and I’ll have plenty of news to share on Powerless and various other writerly projects that are brewing!

Stay tuned to this url!

The new website is being built as I type (can you hear the hammering?)  I promise that it’ll go live within a few weeks and I’ll have plenty of news to share on Powerless and various other writerly projects that are brewing!

Stay tuned to this url!

I don’t normally listen to music when I write.  I find that the story of the song often interferes with the story I’m trying to grab hold of and headlock onto the paper.  Occasionally I will put on an instramental - classical or jazz, but rarely.  In fact, when I’m at the office (ie. the coffee shop) I usually put in my earphones and listen to a white noise track to drown out all the chatter.

But I have noticed that though I don’t listen to music while writing a particular book, there are specific albums that I find myself playing again and again while daydreaming about the book.  I think any writer would admit that there is considerable time spent just thinking about the plot, the characters etc. and this usually happens away from the keyboard.  At the gym, on a walk, in line at the shop.  And I’ve noticed that I gravitate to certain albums for each book.  The might be thematically linked, or maybe the beat matches the tempo of the book, I don’t really know.

For example, for Powerless, I listened to Sufjan Stevens Illinois over and over.  Not every track, but certainly most of them made the cut.  And for The Last Explorer I keep going back to Coldplay’s Vida la Vida.

Strange, but there it is.  Anyone else have music that creeps into the creative process?

I don’t normally listen to music when I write.  I find that the story of the song often interferes with the story I’m trying to grab hold of and headlock onto the paper.  Occasionally I will put on an instramental – classical or jazz, but rarely.  In fact, when I’m at the office (ie. the coffee shop) I usually put in my earphones and listen to a white noise track to drown out all the chatter.

But I have noticed that though I don’t listen to music while writing a particular book, there are specific albums that I find myself playing again and again while daydreaming about the book.  I think any writer would admit that there is considerable time spent just thinking about the plot, the characters etc. and this usually happens away from the keyboard.  At the gym, on a walk, in line at the shop.  And I’ve noticed that I gravitate to certain albums for each book.  The might be thematically linked, or maybe the beat matches the tempo of the book, I don’t really know.

For example, for Powerless, I listened to Sufjan Stevens Illinois over and over.  Not every track, but certainly most of them made the cut.  And for The Last Explorer I keep going back to Coldplay’s Vida la Vida.

Strange, but there it is.  Anyone else have music that creeps into the creative process?

The New York Times has added a list of bestselling comics to their book section.  Of course, they call it The New York Times Graphic Books Bestseller List, but who’s quibbling?  Comics, Graphic Novels, Trades, Graphic Books - it’s all good.

The New York Times has added a list of bestselling comics to their book section.  Of course, they call it The New York Times Graphic Books Bestseller List, but who’s quibbling?  Comics, Graphic Novels, Trades, Graphic Books – it’s all good.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Doctor Who. Which is funny, considering it’s on a hiatus here in the US and isn’t even on the telly (like that? I used ‘telly’. How ‘posh’.) I’m a fan of the show, both classic and modern versions. I wanted a Tom Baker scarf when I was in Junior High, and the episode “Blink” is one of the best hours of entertainment you can find. “Don’t blink. Blink and you’re dead. Don’t turn your back. Don’t look away. And don’t blink. Good Luck”. (Anyone who recognizes that line knows exactly what I’m talking about.)

But this isn’t meant to be a Doctor Who fan post, it’s meant to be a post on writing for all-ages. When I was at the Clarion Writers Workshop I remember one of my fellows, a Brit, told me how funny it was that Doctor Who was taken so seriously here in the States, because back in the UK everyone knew that it was a kids’ show, it was Britain’s highest rated bit of family programming.

For some reason, this floored me. Doctor Who was scary, I said. Yeah, she responded, and kids like to be scared. So do parents.
This was, I think, a tiny revelation for me. Kids like to be scared. So do parents. The entertainment value is the same for both.  The experience is the same for both.  I think this is the key, and, for me, what is missing from so many works of fiction intended for all-ages.

In broad strokes, I think that so much all-ages work falls into two traps (and my own work is not excepted from this) They are:

1) Writing down to “kid’s entertainments” and staying there. Overly simplistic plots, obvious jokes, flat characters etc. Sometimes (but not often) appeases the kids but the adults want to shoot themselves.
2) Trying to write on two levels at once so that the work is full of lots of number 1, but also enough inside jokes and subtext for the adults so that they don’t get bored. This can be fun, but eventually it becomes obvious that the kids and the adults are laughing at different times. They are, in effect, enjoying two different stories. They are not really sharing the experience (or at least not as much as they could be).

There’s a third option, and I think it’s the better choice. Fiction can entertain adults and kids at the same time. The jokes can be funny for everyone, the action exciting for everyone and the scares scary for everyone. It’s the way Doctor Who aspires to entertain. Mostly it succeeds, sometimes it fails but it always reaches for that admirable goal.

I’m going to turn it into a mantra - “WWDWD?” or “What Would Doctor Who Do?”

It’s what Pixar’s Wall-E does. It’s what DC Comics’ Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the Eighth Grade does. It’s what Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book does.

But it’s not easy. Not by a very long shot.

End Part 1. Next time I’ll be even more long-winded about the nuts and bolts of what I perceive this process to be and my conclusions will be just as useless. Stay Tuned!

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Doctor Who. Which is funny, considering it’s on a hiatus here in the US and isn’t even on the telly (like that? I used ‘telly’. How ‘posh’.) I’m a fan of the show, both classic and modern versions. I wanted a Tom Baker scarf when I was in Junior High, and the episode “Blink” is one of the best hours of entertainment you can find. “Don’t blink. Blink and you’re dead. Don’t turn your back. Don’t look away. And don’t blink. Good Luck”. (Anyone who recognizes that line knows exactly what I’m talking about.)

But this isn’t meant to be a Doctor Who fan post, it’s meant to be a post on writing for all-ages. When I was at the Clarion Writers Workshop I remember one of my fellows, a Brit, told me how funny it was that Doctor Who was taken so seriously here in the States, because back in the UK everyone knew that it was a kids’ show, it was Britain’s highest rated bit of family programming.

For some reason, this floored me. Doctor Who was scary, I said. Yeah, she responded, and kids like to be scared. So do parents.
This was, I think, a tiny revelation for me. Kids like to be scared. So do parents. The entertainment value is the same for both.  The experience is the same for both.  I think this is the key, and, for me, what is missing from so many works of fiction intended for all-ages.

In broad strokes, I think that so much all-ages work falls into two traps (and my own work is not excepted from this) They are:

1) Writing down to “kid’s entertainments” and staying there. Overly simplistic plots, obvious jokes, flat characters etc. Sometimes (but not often) appeases the kids but the adults want to shoot themselves.
2) Trying to write on two levels at once so that the work is full of lots of number 1, but also enough inside jokes and subtext for the adults so that they don’t get bored. This can be fun, but eventually it becomes obvious that the kids and the adults are laughing at different times. They are, in effect, enjoying two different stories. They are not really sharing the experience (or at least not as much as they could be).

There’s a third option, and I think it’s the better choice. Fiction can entertain adults and kids at the same time. The jokes can be funny for everyone, the action exciting for everyone and the scares scary for everyone. It’s the way Doctor Who aspires to entertain. Mostly it succeeds, sometimes it fails but it always reaches for that admirable goal.

I’m going to turn it into a mantra – “WWDWD?” or “What Would Doctor Who Do?”

It’s what Pixar’s Wall-E does. It’s what DC Comics’ Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the Eighth Grade does. It’s what Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book does.

But it’s not easy. Not by a very long shot.

End Part 1. Next time I’ll be even more long-winded about the nuts and bolts of what I perceive this process to be and my conclusions will be just as useless. Stay Tuned!

My lovely and talented better-half will be interviewed on the Leonard Lopate Show tomorrow!  She’s been chosen as one of the winners of the six-word memoir contest they ran in conjunction with Smith Magazine.  She’ll be on sometime between 12 and 1pm.  If your in the NYC area you can listen at 93.9 Fm.  Otherwise you can stream or download it here.

My lovely and talented better-half will be interviewed on the Leonard Lopate Show tomorrow!  She’s been chosen as one of the winners of the six-word memoir contest they ran in conjunction with Smith Magazine.  She’ll be on sometime between 12 and 1pm.  If your in the NYC area you can listen at 93.9 Fm.  Otherwise you can stream or download it here.