I got the greatest laugh ever when longtime ABC drama General Hospital pulled a terrific piece of characterization out of its trick bag last week for Harbinger of Death and longtime villainess Helena Cassadine.

You see, a veteran GH viewer already knows that Helena is one of the deadliest women on daytime TV, a crown she wears proudly. She not only constricts and devours her own young on the regular, but everyone else’s young as well. Any man, woman, or child breathing is at risk, whether they purposely cross her path or not, and her own family has always suffered the most (not that any of them have been paragons of virtue, mind you).

And so, when Mrs. Cassadine slithered into the scene wearing this…

… I cracked up and found myself applauding.

The beauty of this is that the newbie GH viewer who doesn’t know Helena yet will only see a very rich woman in her palatial manor dressed to the nines in a designer outfit from somewhere on Rodeo Drive. Only later, after they see this Burmese python in action, will they realize–to their horror–that they weren’t looking at her clothes, but at her SKIN.

Bwahaha.

Love it.

I’m sitting here watching one of my favorite episodes from one of the best classic shows ever — “The Sixth Finger” (1963) of vintage Outer Limits fame — on the Chiller Channel. And one of my favorite examples of foreshadowing just happened.

David McCallum’s poor, tragic character, disenchanted by the hopelessness of manually toiling day in and day out in the oppressive darkness of the town coal mine, takes on a job as the town scientist’s guinea pig. The project propels his human brain THOUSANDS of years into the future and evolves him from this…

To this:

And finally, to this…

… where he’s not only grown a sixth finger but can absorb text at crazy speeds, read minds, spew out intelligence a normal brain could never hope to understand, and even physically repel anything that threatens him.

THAT BRILLIANT MOMENT OF FORESHADOW: Very early into the episode, David’s character has a “hopes and dreams” moment and tells his girlfriend, “If only I could find work where I could really use my brain. I’d show them.”

Of course, he was talking about a desk job. Haha.

Carry on, peeps. Conquer your Thursday and conquer it well.

The argument concerning legacy publishing (with the Big Publishing Houses Across the World) versus self-publishing and which is the better road has been raging for so long, I can’t even remember when it started. (I’ve always thought that there was NO best road, just what worked best for each individual.) And for a long time, legacy easily won out.

I have noticed, however, that across the Writing-verse as a whole, the wind is changing direction. Not just with writers I don’t personally know… but with some writers I DO personally know. Unless I’m just delirious. (Don’t get me wrong. I still have a lot of publishing house-minded friends. It’s just that the seesaw seems to have magically balanced out while I wasn’t looking. It’s not leaning towards either side.)

I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. I never begrudged anyone who self-pubbed—but it simply hasn’t been the road for me. I felt that quite strongly and have been very comfortable with that. What surprises me though is that as I sit here, I find myself actually giving the subject more thought than I ever thought I would.

Wow. Hm.

Here is more on the subject from author JA Konrath of A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

Are You Dense? — 4/15/2011

What the hell is wrong with you?

I’m talking to you. The writers who are still thoughtlessly defending legacy publishing.

Unless you’re making over a million dollars a year with the Big 6, continuing down the legacy path is a crazy bad idea.

I see the same tired, lame arguments, over and over again. They include:

It’s hard to make decent money self-pubbing.

Guess what? It’s even harder to make decent money by legacy publishing. Legacy publishing requires a lot of waiting, and a lot of luck. If you’re lucky enough to get an agent AND lucky enough to sell the book AND lucky enough that the publisher doesn’t screw it up, you’ll have a 1 out of 10 chance at earning out your advance. Maybe….

You can read Konrath’s post in its entirety on his blogspot here.

So what is your take on this volatile subject that writers have nearly come to blows over? How does it affect your own situation?

Would you like to know the five ways a journalist’s training can help any novelist or short fiction writer improve his or her work?

Ask and ye shall receive.

Just lope on over to Rogue writer Shari Lopatin’s post, 4 Ways a Journalist Can Help Creative Writers. (That be FOUR ways, plus one additional way. Which makes five.)  I’m digging it.

Good luck! And don’t let your blank page mock you. Show it who’s boss.

[Excerpt] “You’re Doing It Wrong” by K. Mark Hoover @Apex Book Company:

But what about writing? Writing is a profession, too. All the great authors who sell books through Apex can tell you that much. So, what are the protocols for that? How does one go about writing, and doing it correctly?

Well, I’m glad you asked because it’s high time we codify a few rules for writing. First, there’s, um….there’s….Huh. Well, naturally, first you have to….Uh. Mm. Whuh?

That’s right. There are no protocols for writing, I’m sorry to say. There is no Right Way to Write. One of the questions I get from new writers is “How do I do this?” I tell them, “You write.” They look at me as if I have frogs coming out of my ears. They want a Golden Path. Funny, I’ve been writing professionally for over ten years and I too, still want a Golden Path.

Except there isn’t one. There never was one.

Interested?  You should be, whether you’re a struggling newbie or on your way to becoming a veteran. This article has VALUABLE INFO! READ ME! written all over it.

So go on. Head on over so that author K. Mark Hoover can help you not do it rong wrong. You can read his article in its entirety on the ABC site HERE…

…and thank me later.

Sometimes that age-old problem “How in the world do I find time to write?’ can be solved by the simplest solution ever.  Perhaps it’s not an easy solution, but SIMPLE nonetheless.

Olivia Tejeda starts off her recent post on the subject thusly:

“You write by sitting down and writing.” — Bernard Malamud

And so, I’m of a mind that we all need to read her advice… and heed it.  Jump on over to her Away with Words… blog and take a gander at “Making Time To Be Quiet and Write.”

It certainly can’t hurt.

Ah-ha!  Check this out:

“I hate seeing a ‘run-down list:’ Names, hair color, eye color, height, even weight sometimes.  Other things that bother me is over-describing the scenery or area where the story starts.  Usually a manuscript can lose the first 3-5 chapters and start there. Besides the run-down list preaching to me about a subject, I don’t like having a character immediately tell me how much he/she hates the world for whatever reason.  In other words, tell me your issues on politics, the environment, etc. through your character.  That is a real turn off to me.”
– Miriam Hees (editor), Blooming Tree Press

Thank goodness someone else has said this.  I’m a writer, not an agent, but one of my worse peeves IN THE WORLD is running into a grocery list description of the character as I’m reading rather than that description being sprinkled in.  When I see it from a good writer who’s been writing for years… I’m just aghast.

I’m not even going to get started on abruptly being mired and sucked down in scenery that has interrupted the action and WILL NOT STOP, even though I’m skimming the edge of a proverbial knife blade and desperately trying to catch sight of the character again to SEE WHAT HAPPENS.

Agents’ Chapter 1 Pet Peeves is a post on the The Guide To Literary Agents blog from August 2008, but its message never goes out of date.  In my humble opinion, the advice you can gain from it is invaluable when it comes to your manuscript getting noticed the right way, so absorb that post down to its last letter and incorporate it.  You’ll be glad you did.

Thanks to An Englishman In New Jersey for the tip on this (in a roundabout way LOL).

Go forth and conquer.

(Originally posted June 2, 2008 on Writingscape V1.0)

A popular character on a long-running soap opera “died in the ER” last week from bullet-lacerated liver, with a loved one at her side (she refused surgery because being a nurse, she already knew the score on that one, and used her time to say goodbye instead). The scene was well done, as dramatic TV goes. I didn’t have a problem with it as a Writer or Viewer, in particular. I’ll even give concessions because she really had no time for any kind of transition (body shutting down in stages) period–she bled out rather quickly.

But when it was over, I couldn’t help thinking. Hm. How nice and neat, and pretty-looking. And like everything inside a body just shuts off, all quiet-like. Huh. Shame it’s not that way in REAL LIFE. Nice and neat. (Big Sister thinks they could have done a little better.)

New knowledge, even if it comes with great pain, can serve us and our own characters quite well, in the long run.

(originally posted May 22, 2008 on Writingscape V1.0)

I got the opportunity to watch Children of Men (2006) last night, and was very happy to do so because 1) the movie’s premise has always intrigued me and 2) I’ll watch Clive Owen in anything. ANYTHING, even a wrestling match. He’s THAT good. From the moment “Theo Faren” just missed being killed in a terrorist bombing on the street, I was transfixed. By the time the rebel/immigrant/army firefight was paused by the mere crying of a baby, I still hadn’t moved. (I might have blinked a few times, maybe.) When the movie was over and I was gathering my thoughts, a 2006 post I’d made about movies made from books came to mind.

I still feel the same way I did then. Even more so.

For the most part, Children of Men was accepted, but I do remember some people making those same old rumblings, moaning and whining because it wasn’t like the book, and this and that wasn’t done, and this and that was changed. Well, after checking out the detailed book synopsis, I say thank God for that. The big screen version worked perfectly for me as a movie. The plot changes, Owen’s harder-to-read Theo Faren against a faceless antagonist, the character additions and all kept the pacing and tone of this 2-hour journey crackling, and was exactly what I needed to stay engaged and holding my breath until the end. In book form, though, I think this plot would have needed a few more layers.

In the other corner, the book version, THE CHILDREN OF MEN, on screen would have been heavy, cumbersome, way too long to keep my interest level, and plot-holed to hell without everything included. But for reading, it’s perfect–incredibly layered, a bottomless hole of character introspection, antagonist versus protagonist mentally and physically head-to-head. Not to mention the world-building. Wow.

In my opinion, both versions are superb in the mediums in which they are done–without having to be the exact same story in both places. There are a lot of stories just like that. And have been for years.

Whenever possible, I prefer seeing “the movie” before reading “the book”, the opposite of the norm. Hard to do these days, I know. But maybe that’s why I don’t turn into a rabid rottweiler when something changes between page and screen. Who knows?