Creative Journey - Ballard Street

Every year? Well, it's description discussion time again...

Follow me, if you will, to an invitation to supper at someone’s home.  I sit down at the table and I begin to drool in delight as the host brings out a big circular pizza platter.  Mmm...pizza!  I have a momentary concern about what toppings the host might have chosen, but, hey - pizza is pizza.  As long as it’s not some kale and kumquat on gluten-free...never mind.  

To my surprise, the host places a triangular piece of flat pizza bread on my plate.  By the sheen catching the light, a splash of oil was added in the baking.  My nose detects a whiff of, in all likelihood, a sprinkle of some pre-mixed “Italian Seasoning” dashed over the surface.

But nothing else.  Not one topping one would associate with “pizza”.

Seeming to anticipate my puzzlement, the host jumps in with an earnest and exuberant explanation.  “I think food is a team effort between chef and eater.  I don’t want my efforts to get in the way of your experience.  Take a bite of the crust and imagine all the marvellous pizzas you’ve eaten.  Remember the wonderful homemade sausage you once bought at a farmer’s market.  Let your memory glide over that smooth, top-shelf mozzarella cheese you loved on a trip to Little Italy.  Dream on that rich, thick sauce they make at your favourite pasta place.”  He sits back, beaming with anticipation, urging me with eyes and body language to...  “Eat!  Eat!”

I pick up the slice of bread.  It’s kinda limp, so I have to bring in my second hand.  I have a bite.  I follow the host’s advice and recall all the glories of pizzas-past.  My imagination is more than sufficient to the task.  

All these memories do, however, is starkly highlight that all I am currently chewing is a mouthful of vaguely seasoned baked bread.  All this talk of imagination and memories is doing is making me ravenous and grumpy.  All I’m thinking about is how soon I can politely leave and where I can score a decent real pizza on the way home.

AND that is lengthy analogy of how too many writers out there currently craft their “stories”.  They refuse to waste words on describing a spaceship because readers have seen Star Wars or Star Trek and will just fill in the blank canvas.  They try really hard to justify a total lack of character description because it will “spoil the reader’s immersion.”

What a pile of horseshit.

This nothing but lazy, hack excuse-making.  They would be better served transferring the creativity used in making these stiff rationalizations into their actual wordsmithing.

If any of this held any water at all, then why do people go to movies?  If these halfwit “rules of writing” had validity, we’d all be keenly anticipating this summer’s radio play blockbusters.  No panoramic vistas of glorious scenery harshing our buzz.  No bulging beefcake heroic actor or svelte sexy villain spoiling our immersion.  Nothing but our own imagination doing all the work!

A great writer is a tour guide.  They know how much detail, how many facts, what serving of setting to provide to you for your visit and then they know when to shut up and let you drink in the moment.  A good book is team effort between author’s words and reader’s imagination.

These slack-jawed scribblers think “team” means, well, making a thin flat of bread and calling it a pizza.

Character substitution

My tastes in film run to the fantastical.  And when those types of movies turn epic, with aliens invading or asteroids on a collision course or a zombie plague spreading, the plot visits the White House.  Well, these movies are often made in the USA and, arguably, a lead responder to a global threat would be the White House.

Even in less fantastic movies, where the international danger is rooted in reality, if no actual protagonists are in the government, there will still be scenes informing the audience with how the White House is reacting.

In the last few months, I’ve rewatched some old favourites.  When the President is briefed on the Bad Thing, when a table of uniforms and top people assemble for strategy, when the nuclear option is considered, these films and shows are giving me a new level of horror and chills.  I’m swapping out the characters and replacing them with President Drumpf and his Capering Gang of Incompetents.

If you want an anus-clenching experience, watch anything with the Oval Office and substitute Drumpf making the hard decision while advisors debate which is the best choice.  It’ll breath a whole new dynamic of terrible excitement into your movie choices.