Charmfall finds 15-year-old Lily Parker picking through the pile in [her] palm, eating the raisins and the other dried fruit first to get them out of the way before moving on to the nuts and – last but not least – chocolate chips. As she says: There may not be an order to the world, but there was definitely an order to trail mix.
But her sentiment’s not quiteaccurate – her world does have an order. No, not the St. Sophia’s School for Girls in Chicago world; that one has classes and schedules, sure, but the social game there is a minefield of unmarked safezones and bombs that de- and re-activate at will. Oh, wait – that’s all high schools, actually.
Anyway, I think Lily was referring to her other world – the newly-discovered magical realm that she’s trying to navigate between trig quizzes. And that world definitely has an order.
There are two metaphorical camps: the Adepts (Lily’s side) and the Reapers. Adepts, in short, are teenagers with magic, their powers ranging from psychic abilities to controlling elements to casting spells. Reapers are also magic-wielding teens, but they use their free time to suck the souls out of vulnerable kids to feed aged-out magical folk. The adepts try to stop the reapers and save the common folk.
So clearly adepts and reapers ride opposite ends of the moral teeter-totter. But their playground still has rules. Both sides hold meetings in marked locations – adepts in enclaves marked with encircled Ys, reapers in sanctuaries designated by quatrefoils. And a scale model of the city showing all assigned areas is conveniently located in a basement room of the school for the magical students’ reference.
There are even rules for arranged adept/reaper cross meetings:
Cease fire means no magic will be used during this meeting. South side rules means we’re fair game after we leave the bridge, but we can’t snipe hunt – so only the people on the bridge can work the magic, not the folks we brought with us.
See? Lots. Of. Order.
Now, with all that said, in this 3rd installment of the Dark Elite series, there is a disruption to the order – a loss of magic. For both teams. With the playing field equal, will the adepts and reapers call a truce until they can figure out what’s going on?
Good thing trail mix is high in protein…Lily’s gonna need it. ;)
**spoiler alert**
So I saw the movie SKYLINE this weekend. It was dissappointing, to say the least. SKYLINE is a bad movie that could have been great.
As I watched the big screen, I couldn’t help but see the movie as a semi-solid first draft. It was as if they took a freshly written NanoWriMo piece and filmed it. If only the screenwriter, director, and producer had put more work into polishing the movie, it could have been EPIC. If only they’d revised as any good NaNoWriMo scribe would.
What revision lessons can writers learn from SKYLINE?
1. Prologues (usually) stink, so start where the story starts.
Don’t begin with the alien invasion and then backtrack to the day before. Build in bits backstory as the action unfolds. Or simply anchor the beginning of the story in the ordinary world, just before the action explodes.
2. Cut. Cut. Cut.
Only include scenes that matter. Don’t include irrelevent subplots. For example, don’t spend an ungodly amount of time developing a love triangle between a hollywood player and his two vapid mistresses if you’re just going to have an alien snap off each of their heads off midway through the story.
Edit out any characters who don’t pull their weight and bulk up the ones who do. In Skyline’s case, we needed less rich-girls-we-don’t-care-about and more *cough* hot and angsty, alien-punching ERIC BALFOUR.
What can you cut from your novel?
3. After editing out the fluff, deepen and develop the good stuff.
Skyline had a great premise, but it played out like a disjointed sequence of special effects scenes. It didn’t quite gel. (ME GRIMLOCK EAT A DELICIOUS VFX REEL AND POOP OUT SKYLINE.)
But if the creators of the movie had cut out some of the extraneous story arcs, they could have really focused on the characters that count, aka Jared and his pregnant girlfriend, Elaine. Their conflict, their relationship,was a great thread. But because SKYLINE squandered so much energy on other subplots, the movie ran out of time. At the story’s most climactic moment, SKYLINE just sputtered out. The film had a non-ending–no satisfying conclusion was offered, only the worst kind of ambiguity.
Boo, hiss. Don’t do that with your NaNoWriMo novel. Revise it to the point that it: 1.) has a satisfying, complete story 2.) has interesting, compelling characters and 3.) has an actual, HONEST-TO-GOD POINT, for crying out loud.
Hungry for more? Whip up some alien-apocalypse-proof trail mix and then check out A. Lee Martinez’ most recent post, in which he writes the ending of SKLYINE so you and I don’t have to.
Binge!
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