Post-Game Writing

So, last night I got roped into playing a couple of hours of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. It’s the current first-person kinda-squad-based shooter for me, though it claims to be a realistic combat action game. (Rich: “Dave, is this realistic combat action?” Dave: “Aside from the part where you cured me of fatal gunshot wounds with a portable defibrillator, sure.”) And I thought that was going to be about it for the evening. I’ve been trying to go to bed around 10, and that’s usually when the game breaks up. But, I still had a little energy, so at 10 I sat down at the laptop and stared at the place where a new scene has to go in a novel revision, and still couldn’t make it come out, despite about a week of staring at the place where a new scene has to go.

A bit later, the wife comes in, reminds me that the alarm goes off in seven hours, and suggests I take the prudent steps. I close everything up, go upstairs, and as I’m taking my contacts out, I think about the stuff that it would be cool for this scene to have in it. And then there, of course, is the scene. And I stand there staring off into space for a while.

“What is it?” the wife asks.

“I think I just figured out that scene that I was staring at.”

“Well, you better go write it,” she says, with that tone that says she’s finally starting to get used to this kind of thing.

Last night I knocked out about 1300 words of a new scene in around an hour, and that’s the second time that happened recently, though minus the interaction with the wife. The time before was a week ago Monday, and that resulted in about 1200 words.

Conclusion: I need to play more video games.

Mirrored from Bum Scoop.

Day 16 of 30 Days of TV Shows

Day 16 – Your guilty pleasure show

So, I struggled with this one until about a minute ago, because I just couldn’t really think of anything that I was in any way ashamed of or anything like that. I mean, again, I just don’t watch enough TV that I either worry about what other people think of my viewing habits, or to waste time trying to acquire the taste for things that people might think out of my wheelhouse, so to speak.

But then, I started thinking of classes of shows. The first one that popped to mind was 1990s TV sci-fi, most of which was produced in Vancouver. Stargate SG-1, Hercules/Xena, X-Files, Farscape, Space: Above & Beyond, and so on. Most of it seems to have the same production values, so the same vague “look,” and it kind of screams to me of a sort of homey Saturday afternoon watching syndicated science fiction on Fox or something. But then, most of my friends tend to love that kind of stuff like I do, so it’s not really a guilty pleasure.

What I came up with, instead was: 1980s detective shows. There’s probably a strong nostalgia element here, because I remember watching Magnum PI as a kid and loving that show, not to mention MacGyver which I tend to think of in the same vein. And later on I discovered stuff that I would consider of the same class: Simon & Simon, Riptide, and so on. (Simon & Simon even had a Magnum PI crossover.) I remember enjoying those so much, being so entertained by the blend of action, mystery, and humor.

And looking around now, it seems like one of those things that’s almost completely gone, which might really make it a guilty pleasure. The only shows I can think of that come close, right now, are Psych and Burn Notice. Nothing on broadcast TV, except maybe Chuck?, really comes close. Instead, the neverending stream of CSI clones and police procedurals. Nothing wrong with those, as such, but that they’ve kind of elbowed out the kind of detective shows I really like. Well, maybe they’ll cycle around.

And as a bonus…

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from Bum Scoop.