A.J. Maguire

Tag: Supernatural

  • Supernatural Re-Watch

    A while ago I started re-watching Supernatural. I started from the beginning and only skipped one episode (Bugs) because I really didn’t like that one. Spiders and me just … no. I suppose if I ever really want to write a horror book I’ll just cram super-spiders in there and let them take over the world, but I digress.

    I just finished with Swan Song last night and, due to the way instant video works, watched the most recent episode of the new season via Amazon as well. It’s amazing to see how Sam and Dean have changed in ten years, and how they have stayed the same.

    Physically speaking I’d have to say that Sam (Jared Padalecki) has changed more than Dean (Jensen Ackles) but in terms of character motivations and what have you, both have been on a roller-coaster. Of course, they’ve both died a bazillion times and visited Hell or Heaven or Purgatory, not to mention the whole apocalypse thing, so you kind of expect them to be different now.

    But as I was watching the show last night (About a Boy, which was wonderful, by the way) I couldn’t help wondering what it was about this show that hooked me. Why do I keep coming back to this story?

    Supernatural is currently in its 10th season, which is amazing in and of itself. Shows don’t normally last this long. I’m not supernaturalcomplaining or anything, I love these guys. I love that it’s not the run-of-the-mill drama you find on television these days, rife with broken romances and people trying to find their place in the world.

    Sam and Dean know their place. There might have been some question earlier on in the show, but when push comes to shove they’re built to “help people” and “hunt things” and while they might take a break from time to time they always come back to it.

    But that’s not why I keep coming back to this show.

    I keep coming back to this show because I would love to just hang out with Sam and Dean. They’re regular guys who make me laugh. Castiel and Crowley can come along too, though if you ask me they’re just as attracted to the very “humanness” of these brothers as I am.

    What it comes down to is character. Dean’s jokes and Sam’s careful observation, the brokenness of both men from crap they’ve dealt with in the past or are currently dealing with today, it all adds to this complex brotherly relationship that is both common and extraordinary.

    And on top of all that we get ghosts and monsters and the occasional apocalypse.

    So … yeah. Supernatural is my favorite running show for all the reasons above. I’ll keep watching, and re-watching, for as long as I can. If you’ve never tried it, I encourage you to look it up. Currently you can find it on Netflix or you can go the Amazon route.

  • Endings and Hate Therapy

    Carver Edlund said it best in Supernatural; “Endings are impossible.”

    You have to tie everything up, bring all of the characters into a place of resolution and no matter what you do it will always feel like you missed something. In fact, on the next few edits it’s very likely that you’ll find one or two subplots that never got resolved.

    Don’t panic. It happens. That’s what editing is for, after all.

    My first published book Sedition went through four different endings. Witch-Born had three and Deviation (due to release in 2014) had five. That’s a lot of re-writing and re-plotting. It was frustrating and I went through weeks of what I like to call my “hate therapy.”

    Basically, “hate therapy” is when I become disgusted with everything I’ve written. From what I understand every writer has this problem at some point. We all come to a place where we stare at our work and can find nothing salvageable about it.

    The inner critic comes out in full force, identifying poorly worded sentences, cliché’s we hadn’t noticed before, and weak characters that suddenly remind us of tin soldiers. You know, identical soldiers made of tin with no inner workings, no motivation, and no reason to exist.

    By now you’re wondering why I call this “therapy.” There doesn’t seem to be anything therapeutic about loathing your own work.

    I learned a couple years ago to embrace this natural period of a writer’s life. When I’m in the middle of “hate therapy” I know I am being too hard on myself and, at the same time, am able to identify some very important things.

    Like tin soldiers running rampant on the page.

    But instead of dwelling on how bad it is I embrace it as a challenge to fix those things I’ve done wrong.  That’s when it becomes therapy. When I turn all that angst into a productive outlet I almost always find myself enjoying the work again.

    Persona is coming near to its ending. For those following it online you’re still in chapter fourteen, but I am in the middle of chapter eighteen. (By the way, I dislike chapter fourteen and will be editing it.)

    I’ve always had a particular place in mind for Persona’s ending. In fact, I have stubbornly re-worked and worked again and altered my outline in order to preserve this ending. Timelines are crazy hard to keep in check when writing fiction, especially if you’re dealing with something as well documented as World War II.

    But about a week ago I had a eureka moment and figured out how my characters get from point A to point B (the ending) without screwing anything up. The timeline is mostly preserved. The actions make sense. More importantly, this ending leaves a profound impact on the characters and, hopefully, the reader.

    Persona and Saboteur are the only two books I’ve written where I knew the ending before I got there. To be honest, I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing. Knowing the ending still gives me a struggle because I find myself working harder to make sure the entire book deserves the ending that I’ve planned.

    I still have to go through “hate therapy”, it just happens earlier on in the book. But at least I don’t have to re-write several scenes like I did with Sedition, Witch-Born and Deviation.

    So … Yes. Endings are impossible. They’re heartbreaking, irritating, and hard work but if we do it right then it’s all worth it.

     

     

  • Choices

    Well, tomorrow I’m going to have a guest post from RJ Blain, who is another relatively insane author I’ve been stalking on Google+ for a while now.  (I don’t think it’s really stalking when she’s in another country, but … eh … we’ll let her decide where the creepy boundary is.)

    Anyway, you’ll love her.  She’s crazy and likes chocolate.

    I thought about putting the post up tonight but had one of those “writer” moments today that I just had to get out.  Honestly, it’s amazing I can remember this eureka moment since a bird quite literally attacked me thirty seconds after I had it.

    I’m not kidding.  This little black bird flew right into my back.  I thought maybe it was an accident but it came back and proceeded to dive bomb me again.  I nearly swung my sandwich bag at it, but thought I might get bird-crazy on my Italian Subway sandwich somehow and decided to just run instead.

    Yeah.  I ran from a bird.  I’m not proud.

    In my defense, it had beady black eyes and reminded me of those nasty crow things from Snow White and the Huntsman.

    Where was I? … Oh, yeah … the Eureka moment.

    One of the elements that is severely lacking in my fiction (or at least my early fiction, I have been working on this) is that of choice.  What I mean by that are major choices, choices that the character knows won’t end well no matter which direction they pursue.

    ALERT:  The following examples are spoilerific!  DO NOT READ if you hate spoilers. 

    Example #1:  Doctor Who The End of Time.  That’s like the last episode David Tennant was in and he gets to a point where he has to choose between shooting the Master, or Rassilon (Timothy Dalton’s character).

    For a dude who has spent the last several years adamant about not killing anyone, this is seriously a bad decision for him.  We get to see him flipping between aiming the gun at Dalton or the Master and then Dalton again and then the Master.  (And in the end he chooses neither, but … eh … it was the fact that he was put in the position to have to make such a choice that added tension to that climax.)

    Example #2: Supernatural What is and What Should Never Be.  Poor Dean Winchester finds himself having to make a very serious decision in the end of this episode.  He was attacked by a djinn and is in this dream world where his mother is alive and his family is mostly intact while the djinn slowly consumes his blood.

    For a guy who has a history of putting his family (and innocent lives) in front of himself, he is suddenly confronted with a choice; stay and live in the “world” that has been created for him, or gut himself in the dream in order to wake up.

    Of course, there’s no guaranteeing that he’s right and that he’s in a dream at all, so the decision also has the fear of mortality laced into it.

    Sweet, holy tension, batman!

    Dean delivers this wonderful line just before he goes to shove a knife into his gut, too —

    “No, I’m sure.  I’m like … ninety percent sure.  I’m sure enough.”

    ….

    You see what I’m saying here, right?

    It’s all about choice.  In fact, we can sum plot up as being Character A must choose Path A, B, or C.

    All right, so that’s an oversimplified look on plot, but it really does work.  Characters are defined by the choices they make — at least the good one’s are.  So my eureka moment today was when I realized that I hadn’t really given my characters tough enough choices to make.

    Rock, meet hard place.

    And then the bird attacked me.

    There might have been more to that eureka moment but I was busy running.

    You can’t get avian crazies when a bird dive bombs you, right?  It’s not like a freaky bird plague I should be worried about?

     

  • The Importance of Positive Reinforcement

    Dead Magic is officially in the hands of my publisher.  (Woo!  Happy confetti is getting tossed about my apartment right now!)  I’ve also started poking around review sites to see about getting the book out there … and there will probably be Giveaways and all that jazz when it’s time for the release.

    But as a special treat for myself for finishing the edits and meeting the deadline, I totally got my hair done.  First time getting it professionally highlighted and all that jazz.  It was definitely an experience.

    Is it morbid that the first thing I thought about when they put me under the dryer thing was that episode of Supernatural where the lady totally got fried under one?  (Relax, those machines can’t really do that to you.  The Winchester boy’s were hunting a witch at that point.)

    Anyway, that was my positive reinforcement for meeting the deadline.  Rewards are so very important for writers.  Yes, we love good reviews (and by that I mean our hearts flutter) and finishing a book in itself can be a reward, but physical rewards are important too.

    Let’s face it, the act of writing is a solitary event.  It requires that we agonize over verbs and nouns and fighting between active versus passive voice, and it’s really frigging hard.  And most of us never really think what we’ve written is worth the paper to print it out, even if the marketing people insist that we pretend it’s incredible.

    So after weeks and months of self-imposed solitary confinement, staring at words until they burn into our retinas, struggling to make a clear statement out of messy plot complications, and fighting tooth and nail to make a believable character arc appear on the page … we writers really do deserve a reward.

    It’s all about the positive reinforcement, people!

  • “Swan Song”

    As with all the shows I watch, I had to pick out my favorite episode of Supernatural.  For Doctor Who it was Midnight.  For Quantum Leap it was the last episode — though I haven’t watched that show in ages so I might change my mind after a re-watch.  And for Supernatural it has to be “Swan Song.”

    I’m not going to give any spoilers — I hate spoilers — but I might hint at some things.  If you catch on because of my hinting I sincerely apologize and give you permission to revoke all my Netflix rights for a month.

    Now then, let me tell you why I loved “Swan Song” the best.  If you’ve already seen the show then you know all about the whole Apocalypse problem Sam and Dean (our two intrepid heroes) were struggling with.  The writers of the show managed to take a global threat — the end of the world — and turn it into the most intimate of problems by pitting Sam and Dean against each other.  (Kind of.  Watch the show and you’ll understand.)

    But the reason I love that episode the most is because of one line delivered by Dean.  One simple, heartbreaking line:

    “It’s OK, Sammy.  I’m here.”

    No, Sam’s not dying at that moment.  You’d expect that line to be delivered by someone holding their brother’s guts in with a towel or something, but that’s not what happened.  Not remotely.  In fact — mild spoiler alert — the line is delivered while Dean is getting the snot beat out of him.

    It was beautiful.  Everyone told me I’d start to cringe at the show when Angels showed up, but they were wrong.  The path the writers put these two characters on sort of required the other end of the spectrum to come into play (i.e. Angels and the God question) so it made perfect sense.

    (By the way, we can thank that nasty flu bug for me getting through all 7 seasons of Supernatural in the past three weeks.  I couldn’t concentrate to get any writing done and I barely managed to keep up on my homework, so that left a lot of hours to kill whilst bedridden.  I’m better now, so don’t worry.  Edits on Dead Magic are progressing at a steady rate.)

    So!  Swan Song is my favorite Supernatural episode ever.  It’s not one you can watch without seeing the road leading up to it, though.  If you’ve never seen the show, you should.  Start at the beginning and plow right through.  (It’ll help if you’re sick or something and can’t do much else.)  I promise, it’s worth it just to get to that moment with Sam and Dean.

  • Supernatural — The TV Show

    All right, so it seems I’m really late in coming to the scene with Supernatural.  It’s been running since 2005 and, if you’re not familiar, follows two brothers as they fight … well … supernatural forces.  Now, if you’re a critic or a fan of the show then I’m asking you not spoil anything for me.  I think I’m still in the first season and I’m enjoying it.

    As with everything I enjoy, I zeroed in on what could help me as an author.  And in this case, it’s the relationships on the screen.  Both Sam and Dean are very strong characters and engaging on their own, but when you put them together … Yeah, that’s when the really fun stuff happens.

    Yeah, they run around fighting ghosts and demons, and that’s interesting — if not creepy every once in a while — but watching them interact as brothers is what really keeps me glued to the screen.  I like them.  Not just Sam and not just Dean, but Sam and Dean together.

    Now, as an author this might pose a problem.  Because every book tends to require at least one “MAIN” character that we follow and root for.  One of the first questions that I have whenever I start reading a book is; “Whose story is this?”

    And then; “Why do I care?”

    But really, let’s just focus on that first question.  Or rather, I’m going to propose that we throw that rule out the window.  Because sometimes the more compelling story isn’t given by the “main” character, but a couple of characters and their relationship with each other.

    Supernatural could very well have gone and followed the father figure in the story, who runs off on his own hunting a particularly nasty demon.  Then we’d be focused on the one character and the fights he has.  But because they chose to focus on the brothers the show has an emotional depth that wouldn’t be there otherwise.

    We see Sam and Dean as vulnerable people with real issues.  Issues that are expounded by the fact that they are hunting the supernatural, but in the end they always get back in the car together.  Their relationship as brothers pushes them forward.

    So, as an author I’m happy to have finally started watching this show.   Seriously, no spoilers.