"No. It's the same as it ever was. The weak get taken."

Spring suffered a terrible setback last night.  I'm hoping this is the dramatic part of the fight, where it looks to Adrian and all the world like Rocky is going to lose but then he pulls out all of the stops and in a slow motion dance accompanied by a stirring rock ballad, he punches his way through blood and sweat and defeat into the final page's happy ending.

Wait a minute – Rocky lost.  That’s a terrible analogy.

Speaking of terrible, I caught another episode of "The Walking Dead."  It wasn't hard, they're zombies and they don't move very fast.  In this case, neither does the story and I'm sorry, I know there are a lot of people who absolutely love the show, but I just don't get it.

Go For a Walk Instead.

I mean, I get the show.  It's about survivors after the Zeds show up.  What I don't get is why so many people are in love with it.  I have to go to enough staff meetings that watching a bunch of aimless, brain eating creatures wander around doing nothing isn't entertaining to me.  (No offense boss, if you're reading this.  You're meetings are more like Fire Fly.)

The root of the problem for me is that I don't find zombies fun.  I don't like zombie movies.  (Except Shaun of the Dead.)  I don't play zombie video games.  (Except Plants vs. Zombies (but not the sequel, that one isn't as much fun.))  I don't read zombie books.  Or comic books.  I wonder how many people who are so infatuated with Zombies feel the way they do because of their friends, or the inertia of our culture.  That would be ironic, if they are fans because they want to stay hip, they embrace it as cool because they've been told it is.

Give me an alien invasion, an ancient nuclear winter, or even a computer taking over everything. Those are stories that bring out humanity, hope, a sense of purpose.  Zombies are just about falling to our own hunger - one by one.  You can't have a positive message in something about the zed.  Every fight is against someone who was human.  We are the enemy.  Depressing.

So I watched Arrested Development afterward to cleanse my palette.  Oh those silly Bluth boys.

"Even Nostradamus didn't see him coming!"

We're over 7k page hits, thank you.  That's a nice way to start a very dreary day.  And it is dreary.  Foggy, raining, and cold.  It's the sort of day that would be fun in the woods, if you were dressed appropriately, because the daytime fog is wispy and hides things and you can imagine anything from an alien invasion to the zombie conversion with stalking secret agents and hobbits in between.

But I don't live in the woods.  And my joints hurt.  Not badly enough to complain, just enough to make me prefer boating weather.

Today is #4's first basketball game.  We're pretty excited about that.  I fueled him up with biscuits and gravy this morning (actually, #3 and I had the biscuits -- #4 had biscuits and chicken).  Why do I always want to spell biscuits with a 'q'?

I've been working on a short story -- a real short story (>4k words) -- on the train this week and when I got home last night I was almost done so I hammered out the last bit.  I wanted to see how it ended.  That may sound funny, it was my story, but it's true.  I've read more than one professional writer say that if you don't have an emotional reaction to your writing, nobody else will too.  Other pros have written that, as the author, you're the first person who gets to hear/read/see the story.  What they are all saying is that when we sit down to write, there's an idea -- sort of an image of the story and characters or scene -- but it lacks definition.  The act of writing brings it into focus and creates a narrative line rather than a tangled ball of string.

That's what happened with my story, working title of "Intention".  I've had this idea for a bit of technology and a very rough idea of how it might be used, but no setting or plot.  Then I was told about an interesting encounter IRL and that served as my inciting incident.  With that, the rest just unraveled.  It was a very neat experience.

"We're in their homes and in their heads..."

I did coverage notes for a script a few days ago and caught myself starting to write, "This would be fine for TV but it just isn't quite a movie."  I immediately switched courses but it got me to thinking about why I might consider something to be fine for one medium and not for the other.  (The script was well written, it just didn't have the emotional depth or plot to justify a $15 ticket.)

Why are our standards lower for TV than the movies?  Or aren't they?  “Airwolf” vs. “Firebirds” is a dead heat and “MacGyver” copied movie plots for the first season (even using movie footage).

There is clearly a difference in production quality and the amount of money spent per hour.  And, until recently, when a movie was finished the story was finished too, whereas with TV it just sort of kept going as long as advertisers would still pay for it.  And if you were a film actor you didn't do TV -- until about 1998.  So if film is so much better, why even bother with TV?

You could argue availability -- even with videotapes there wasn't exactly an endless supply of new content.  But now there is.  I could log into Netflix and watch a different movie every night for the rest of my life.  Most of them are awful, but I could.  Which brings up the question, if those movies really are awful, why bother with them at all instead of just watching…TV?

I've been reading pundits who argue that TV is now the superior format because you can address more characters with more depth and run a longer plot arc -- (“24”, “Lost”, and “Breaking Bad” all support this thesis).  Others point to CGI tentpoles like “Ironman 3” and say, "As good as ‘Agents of Shield’ is, it's still television.”

I think it depends on the show and the movie.  Any Bruce Lee movie is going to be better than an episode of “The Master.”  By the same token, any episode of “Arrested Development” is going to be funnier than a movie with John Candy in it.  And it won't take nearly as long to get there.

But maybe not.  Maybe what we see is that there are two different ways to tell stories.  “Firefly” was a popular show, but not popular enough.  Yet the movie “Serenity” was a huge hit for a larger audience.  It was a story better suited to film.  Most folks are done with zombies by the end of “Last Man Standing”, but they'll tune in season after season for “The Walking Dead.”

I guess it comes down to the fact that if you pick the right format, you've got a winner.  Pick the wrong one and my Netflix slush pile expands with content that sounds good, but isn’t ever quite good enough for me to get to.

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion."

I ate too much pie.  Or drank too much eggnog.  Or something.  It had only been a week since I last put on a suit but for some reason, yesterday, it was way, way too tight.  I swung some kettle bells last night, didn’t eat a bag of chips before bed, and today I’m a bit more comfortable.  It looks like I’ll have to plan my cookie binges carefully this month.

Speaking of plans, you should have one.  (Smooth transition there.  Kenny G. better watch out.)  A plan is different from a goal in the same way that a map is different from a destination.  I’ve just finished Nano and had a plan to get that done, but that’s not the whole plan.

In the movie “Dune” there is a scene in which they talk about “plans within plans.”  That was a weird part of the film, but the concept is really very good.  You have a plan to get a specific task done, but that task is part of a larger plan.  The task (or goal) is not the end.  It may seem that you’re setting yourself up to never be done, but that’s not the case.  You’re setting yourself up to never be lost, without course or purpose.

I had a plan to get the job I have now.  Once I reached that I began working on where I wanted to be assigned, and then what sort of work I wanted to do.  I’m still working on “that next step” because I’m still employed, but now I’m also looking at what I want to do when I retire.  That’s why I blog.  It’s why I am writing so seriously.  I plan to write.  The closer I get to retiring, the more detail I have to have in that plan.  Sure I want to write, but what does that mean and how do I get there?

One of the tasks I have in that plan is to publish a novel before retirement.  That task requires its own plan.  A plan that included Nano but goes far beyond simply writing that many words in a month.  Nano was just a task in the plan to publish.

Looking at it this way helped me through Nano because even if I didn’t win, I was still working toward my publishing goal and I knew exactly where that fit in my vocational goal.  Recognizing that each page I wrote was a step closer to achieving the big, pie in the sky, goal helped me resist the urge to “take a break from the silly contest and play Plants v. Zombies.”

Now that Nano is done I can appreciate the accomplishment, and I am personally proud of making it – I had to overcome a few challenges to get there – but my work is only half finished on this story.  I need another 50k words before I can start the 2^nd draft.  That doesn’t seem insurmountable.  I just hammered out 50k in a month.  (See yesterday’s post about proving to yourself you can do something…)

After the 2^nd draft I’ll need readers that will give me high quality feedback – the sort of feedback that hurts.  As I write now, I know that some of what I’m wracking my brain over will be cast aside.  It can seem depressing, but in the overall scheme, it’s about making the work the best it can be.  With that as the plan, slogging along the path to get there isn’t so bad.

It’s sort of like driving in traffic.  Sometimes you want to just pull over and quit.  But you don’t.  If you did that you’d never get where you were going.  Are you playing Frisbee at the rest stop or staying in your lane ticking the miles off one by one?

"Did you hear we're running out of bullets ?"

Today is November 21, the publication date of "Ebb and Flow" in Apocrypha and Abstractions.  See my name?  It's time to put up an "I love me wall."  Never heard of that?  I'll tell the story on the page when it goes live.  Meanwhile, be excited with me.  It’s been almost 10 years to the day since I’ve published anything else.

Must see TV this week takes another look at the show Revolution.  Why another look?  It's been quite some time since we tried it last and it keeps getting recommended so maybe we missed something.

Nope.

What Revolution does very well is create a world where society has collapsed.  The sets are good and it's refreshing that there are no aliens running around the carnage, or zombies, and because the collapse was brought about by the power going out we don't have cities laid waste by war.

Revolution also has an intangible going for it – somehow the show makes you want to like it.  And sometimes you do.  But not very often.  There are interactions between the "plot" and the setting that have dramatic inconsistencies -- like, is there an ammo shortage or not?  You keep saying there is but then everybody is always shooting, even when there are alternatives.  Alternatives that make for much more compelling drama.

I have found that there are a couple of characters that I like and, interestingly enough, they haven't had flashbacks to explain why they are who they are and act how they act.  The shallow characters need flashbacks or the show would seem even more random.

Maybe they should rename it to “Random.”  I will probably continue to watch it, in small doses when nothing else sounds good, until I get to the end.  As I said, it really wants to be liked.

"Because, we weren't friends before."

Changed a headlight bulb with #1 last night in his new-car-that-is-older-than-he-is.  He was quite surprised at how easy it was.  Even in the dark.  Without the right screwdriver.  He did happen to be looking right at the bulb when I plugged it in, and we did have the lights of the car on so we could see, so it did blind him.  But he did not drop the hood on my head.  Level thinker, that one.

Of course they all (the boys) want to buy chain mail jerkins to protect them from the zombies so -- maybe not so level?

I am a finalist this week in the 5 minute fiction contest.

Tales From the Script this week is about Monster's University.  I liked the film though not nearly as well as the first one which sits firmly in the #2 spot of my favorite Pixar movies.  There were several things that they did very well, but to discuss them requires spoilers.

So... SPOILER ALERT.

First off, making Mike the main character was a great choice.  There are others in the story with big parts but he's the driver.  The voice (sorry Billy) started to get to me by the end, but there really isn't any other way to tell the story.

Setting Sully up as the anti-friend was cliché and they did such a great job of making him the bad guy that even at the end of the movie I didn't really like him.  Which stinks, because in the first one he was terrific.  Setting up Randall as Mike's best friend was refreshing and brought a great twist to the story.  It let us in on a secret that Mike didn't know and we were, naturally, very curious to see how Randall became an adversary.

Which is another thing they did right.  Monster's University is a prequel which, while lacking the "whoa, cool" factor of the original because now we've seen the idea, still managed to provide greater depth to the universe and the recasting of the characters allowed for discovery.  This was not a Star Wars prequel debacle.

The lines were funny and the art was very imaginative.  I will probably watch it again when I get a hold of the script.

As great and wonderful as the movie was -- this one didn't coast on the name Pixar -- there were some things that didn't sit right with me.  Like the themes of dishonesty, disobedience, and "the ends justify the means" (found in pretty much all kids movies) being integral to the happy ending.  I'm not big on blind adherence to rules, but there are a hundred different ways to beat the system when you're as smart as these characters are supposed to be and yet they cheat, lie, steal, and vandalize to get what they want.  And they get it.  Without consequence.  How do you tell your child not to lie when he says back, "Sully did."  Or how do you say, "Cheaters never prosper" when clearly, if this movie is to be believed, they do?  And the children will believe this movie.

What happened to the hard work and perseverance of Flik in A Bug's Life?  Where's Bob's comeuppance from The Incredibles?  And where's the learning to get along and model of true friendship in Toy Story?

"Trust in me."

Today we celebrated a birthday in my house.  Birthdays are always great fun and one of the very times that everybody likes to get up early.  We open presents before school, before work, and when the tea kettle takes too long, before coffee too.  There was the usual collection of cool stuff, books, and checks but for anyone looking to find the perfect Christmas gift for a Nerf junkie I need to tell you – the “Nerf Zombie Collection”  is very, very cool.  The shot gun variant is semi-steampunk and fires 3 darts at once.  Hint, hint.

The other big news today is that I won the 5 minute fiction contest this week.  Thank you for voting, and an extra special thank you if you voted for me.  If you have never experienced an adrenaline rush while writing, I recommend you try this contest at least twice - the first so you get used to the panic and figure out just how much time everything really takes - and the second so you get to actually enjoy the stress of competing.

The November issue of Apocrypha and Abstractions is out but they spread the content out over a month of postings so my story won't appear until 11/21.  I'll post the link then too.  I'm still going great guns with nano - no burn out to date - and have had a couple of +2k word days.  It seems that many of the other folks buying groceries with non-writing jobs are backing off on their blogs to focus on the novel project this month.  I will not be doing that.

However, today I will not be writing about TV like I usually do because I haven't seen anything new to comment on or anything new in the few shows I have watched to highlight.  Well, there is one thing.  When you are writing dialogue for a script rather than a novel, less is definitely more.  Let the actors and setting show so you don’t have to tell.  Three lines in a book might only take three words in a script.  Trust the actors.  Trust the director.  Trust the snake voiced by Winnie the Pooh.

"The closer you look, the less you see."

My arms hurt, like I just got finished playing a championship round of "Forearm Smash" with Rich.  You don't know Rich, I went to high school with him, and if you did a forearm smash with him, it hurt.  Ergo, my arms really hurt.  Stupid kettle bells.

The good/bad bit from yesterday ended without a heart attack so all in all, a good day.  Today?  It's dark and rainy.  Probably will be fine.

This week's "Tales From the Script" is an elementary school flashback - we're going to compare and contrast "World War Z" and "Now You See Me."  What?  They don't have anything in common?  Au contraire.

WARNING: Spoilers follow.  There is nothing other than discussion of these two films below and if you plan to see them, I may be ruining the surprises for you.

WWZ:

I did not have great expectations for this film.  I know the book was good but I didn't read it.  #1 and #2 saw it in the theater and thought it was great.  I didn't go.  I'm just not a zombie guy.  Long before the current national obsession began, I was plagued by zombie dreams and so I am just not entertained by them.

WWZ exceed all of my expectations.  It may not be a classic, destined to be taught in film schools for years to come, but it was very good at what it was.  The story moved along at a good clip and while there were no real surprises in the plot, you didn't have to wait for the film to catch up with where you were.  The setting was spiced up with all sorts of tid-bits.  I especially like the North Korean solution.

WWZ got all of the mumbo jumbo out of the way early.  That's key for a film like this.  The world was set, and then the rules were followed.  People were becoming zombies and Brad Pitt was some sort of specialized trouble shooter with mad skilz that would save the day.  Straightforward “grailing.”

When I say they got the pace down, they nailed it.  This was one of the most suspenseful films I've watched.  It wasn't so much scary as immersive - very similar to the feeling evoked by "Gravity."  In fact, watching this was much like watching "Aliens" back when it first came out.  These are not your Father’s zombies.

It was gory, it was startling, and there was a bit of foul language so the PG-13 rating is more than fair.  If you can stand that, are looking for an action movie, and want dangerous zombies rather that the pitiful walking dead sort, then you may want to catch WWZ - the first Brad Pitt movie I've seen where he leaves his shirt on for the whole film.

NYSM:

I thought this was going to be an awesome movie.  The opening teaser they released back in the beginning of the summer had me saying things like, "If we only see one movie in a theater this year, it has to be this one."  We didn't make it to the theater.  It was gone very quickly from our neighborhood.  Now I know why.

It wasn't a bad movie - we were entertained - but it wasn't good either – that’s harsh, it didn’t meet my expectation from the promise of the poster.  I got a trusted recommendation to see it and I did enjoy it, but… there were problems.

The biggest problem I had was that the mumbo jumbo was NOT taken care of in the beginning.  In fact, the end was just plain dumb.  I felt cheated.  I don't mind twists, turns, surprises, etc., but the end of this film was pure double mumbo jumbo.  Dues ex machina all the way.

And that was the next problem I had with the movie.  I realize that they were magicians and it was magic but there wasn't a single setback for any of them.  The ego problems were never really explored, the love triangle never developed, no growth, no challenges.  They walked in, floated around a bit, and walked out.  Dues ex machina.

Then there were the technical things – like a high speed chase on the FDR.  Are you kidding?  Has anyone involved with the film every been on the FDR?  There was also the scene where they discretely followed the safe – with six police cars escorting it, lights flashing.  I know about a loose tail and that’s not what it looks like.

There were some great scenes and I enjoyed them, but it's almost like in the planning there were a couple of clear ideas and the writers sort of strung them together with taffy.  I did like how they used magic to fight and escape - the card trick payoff was brilliant - but they came off as super heroes without a super villain to fight.

My final complaint with NYSM is Morgan Freeman.  He was awesome.  Amazing.  Dominated the screen.  Nobody else in the film was in his league so he made them look bad.  In some cases, really bad.  Casting him didn't bring the movie up, it pointed out how good it wasn't.  I don't want to be down on the rest of the cast, but he made their performances seem flat.  That may have been the way it was written too, though.  It's hard to inject life into a lifeless role.  But Atlas?  I just didn't like him, never rooted for him, and didn't care what happened to him.

There wasn't any gore in NYSM, the rating was just for language and they had to put a lot in to bring this fairly tame story in the profitable PG-13 slot.  There were bright lights, a good fusion jazz soundtrack, and plenty of magic tricks going for this film, it's not a waste of time.  It just isn't as good as it could have been.  I mean really, who thought that was a good ending?

"We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83, when I was the only practitioner of it."

One of a writer's greatest tools is a full understanding, and appreciation for, irony.  It helps you develop twists, it provides insight into the humor and tragedy of life, and exercises your ability to observe, process, and apply what you are experiencing to your craft.

Yesterday I was reminded that I live in the south - something easy to forget in the hustle and bustle of built up northern Virginia.  I was driving back to my house in my 4x4 pick-up truck with #1 who had just finished a yard and garden project for an elder acquaintance of ours.  We had the radio on - the last bit of a top 500 countdown celebrating the end of summer (I had been stuck in line at the grocery store SO long that I heard two Heart songs separated by 11 places...) when a commercial came on that caused both of to look at each other and remark, "Is this for real?"

 

The ad was for a service that would help you make your own gun.  It assured us that it was both legal and easy.  The website was named about thirty times but I don't remember it now.  I'm not exactly old, but I've been around.  I've heard ads for Dexitrim (the original Red Bull), ads for Doan's pills which, while allegedly for back pain, turned out were really for menstrual cramps, and even one summer back to back playing of ads for O.V. and OB - they were literally both on at the same time for months.  (One was a beer, the other a feminine product - the slogans and jingles were very, very close.)  Am I the only one who thought that was really odd?

Anyway, despite all of that experience, I'd never heard an ad for making your own gun before.  Not even as part of a Nynex Yellow Pages campaign.  [Just got interrupted by the arrival of my train, the man exiting the station in front of me was wearing an "I (heart) Zombies" id lanyard.]  There's a rabbit trail with the zombie thing - they're the new "flying saucer" of our culture.

So what does any of this have to do with irony?  Nothing.  See?  That's the irony.  I started by talking about how important something was and then didn’t actually say anything about it.  Of course, to satirize the masses - please don't be offended - I could literally point out the irony of building your own gun to fend off the impending zombie apocalypse.  But I don't have time, I need to fill up my 4x4 again.

"A couple of us sneaked a look at his personnel file the day he arrived. It's his IQ."

I'm taking tomorrow off from work to go camping with my boys.  No girls.  In fact, the name of the expedition is "The No Girls Allowed Campout" just so that there's no confusion.  Apparently the ladies of my house are planning a "No Boys Allowed Shopping Spree" with the caveat that the "no boys" part doesn't apply to the boy's credit cards.

Writing project update:  The reorganization of feature #1 is on schedule.  Feature #2 is aging like claret (and probably will until I can figure out how to get the budget lower).  Feature #3 is stalled out but that's okay.  Short #1(really a promo video) is complete and available to watch on Facebook - you don't have to login.  Finally, short #2 is in outlining/synopsis/1st draft mode.  That's quite a mode.  I have the concept and logline but the rest of my process is still sort of out there.

So Jon, thanks for the updates and everything, but this is Thursday.  Where's the TV report?

This was not a good week for TV from my perspective.  I left several episodes unfinished.  I don't know

Francis Aaron a.k.a. '85' in 1992's Alien 3

 if it was the after effects of the perigee moon, just being tired from the kettlebells, or that I've picked up Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice.  What an amazing story teller.

We started a “Glades” and stopped it 10 minutes in.  Picked it back up a couple of nights later and finished the episode but, meh.  We got about 8 minutes into “Terra Nova” and gave up.  Just wasn't cutting it, seemed like everyone was being really, really dumb.  I mean 85 dumb.  Watched “Arrested Development” and my wife fell asleep - it's only 20 minutes long.  Tried another episode a few nights later and, well, either it's not staying fresh or it was just not a good week.  We even watched a “Flashpoint” to break things up.  It was the worst episode we've seen.  There have been a couple of good ones, most are okay.  This one I kept saying, "What?"  Except for the part where I said, "Dude, you're BACK is on fire, why don't you roll around on that instead of your stomach?"  It was one of those weeks where Plants vs. Zombies is more interesting than anything else on the screen.

This week, “Must See TV” is “Must See something else on TV”.

"Beedeebeedeebeedee..."

This Tuesday I reach into the toolbox and pull out... Storyist, for the iPad.  Last week I talked about how the nifty, trendy, costly little contraption from Apple has become indispensable to my writing, this week I'll share the app that has made it so.  Indispensible, that is.

To be quite honest about things, Storyist is far more important of a tool than the iPad, but, of course, won't run on my Seiko so it gets the number 2 spot.  I understand that there is a Mac version of the program too.  I haven't used it but if I had a Mac I definitely would.  Storyist is that good.

What makes it so good?  It works.

Storyist is, at its core, a word processing app for the iPad.  You can write anything you want using Storyist.  It's not as powerful as the top desktop applications are today, but you can do everything that the early generations of Word Perfect, WordStar, or even Word could do and you can do it more easily.  No dot commands or obtuse menus.

The formatting required for writing screenplays is very exacting and Storyist handles it all.  Switching between action, characters, dialogue, sluglines, or anything is simple and intuitive.  The transitions are customizable to fit your writing style.  It has an "auto-suggest" that manages to be helpful without

getting in the way.  You can type the first couple of letters of a character's name and up pops the whole thing.  What a time saver if you have someone named CAPTAIN WILLIAM "BUCK" ROGERS with lines in every scene.  (If his name was ANTHONY “BUCK” ROGERS then you’re probably writing silent film… okay, it wasn't that old.)

Wait!  That’s not all.  There are project templates for Screenplays, Novels, and “General” – which is just a blank file.  The template project files set up the formatting for industry submission standards and provide the organizational folders you will need to hold your "story sheets" - notes that are specific to characters, scenes, settings, plot points, or what have you.  The story sheets are a great way to organize your ideas and all tie in to each other.  It sounds complicated but it isn’t.  You can even include photos if you want – to remind you of what that perfect setting looks like or if there's an actor who looks exactly like Gil Gerard.

There is also a notecard feature.  The notecard feature in Storyist completely changed how I wrote long fiction.  It's why I was able to churn out a "way too long but finished" 172 page first draft of my first screenplay in a month.  The notecards tie directly to the main body of the text.  Sluglines serve as card headers.  You can put notes on the cards to describe the scene in you have in mind and then move on to the next.  You can write in any order.  You can color code.  You can rearrange - and when you rearrange the card, the entire section in the main file moves too!  You don't miss bits and pieces.  That's especially important for the iPad where you don't have a mouse.  The note card feature is available in any of the templates so if you are writing a research paper you have the same benefit.

You can share files from Storyist directly with iTunes and Dropbox.  It will export in all of the standard formats (including .PDF) plus Final Draft.  It also IMPORTS Final Draft format and text files.  I happen to like that since I use Final Draft on my desktop.  I import a lot of text files too – mostly scripts that I’m reading that aren’t in PDF (which I read using the Nook) because it’s easy to organize them and I can make notes.

I have also tried the "Novel" template and it works.  There isn't as much in it compared to the screenplay template, but then, you don't need as much.  The writing is very easy, I didn't spend my time fighting with a program that was creating lists and bullets or reformatting my text all of the time.  That’s what makes it such an amazing tool.  In 15 minutes you’ve learned it and then the only thing you ever think about is what you are writing.

Storyist is not a free app, but at $7.99 it is a bargain if you have an iPad and do any sort of writing.  The $40 for Final Draft is a rip-off.  Forgive me for being blunt.  There are a couple of free or nearly free screenwriting apps but they aren't worth the trouble.  Storyist is seamless.  I've been using it for nearly six months and still love it.  Sometimes I'll even work from the iPad in Storyist when I'm home and have access to "the big guns" just because it's so basic and effective.

Buying Storyist gets the zombie pass because if you write and have an iPad it's a... "no brainer."  I am so hilarious.

"Have fun storming the castle."

Today on Must See TV - How 4th grade reading class prepared me for writing this blog.  Say what?  We'll get there.  I didn't try any new shows this week but I have upgraded my assessment of Castle.  The first season was good.  I have no problem recommending it.

But Jon, what does 4th grade have to do with this?  I'm getting to that.  Chill, man.  First let me share a great tip I just learned for recognizing passive and active usage.  That's important because when you are writing a screenplay you are supposed to use active voice.  The simple test, concocted by someone else's 4th grade teacher, is that if you are able to add "by zombies" at the end of the sentence and it still makes sense, you are using passive voice.  It goes something like this:

The chips were eaten by zombies  - passive

They ate the chips by zombies - active

Sure, some of you will think that any sentence with a zombie in it doesn't make sense and others will think that any sentence with a zombie must make sense, but for most of us, this works well.  And just because this is Must See TV Thursday, don't assume that when I wrote chips up there I was talking about Erik Estrada or Larry Wilcox.

Now back to my 4th grade story (by zombies).  Every page in our 4th grade reading workbook had at least one "compare and contrast" question.  Today I will compare and contrast the relationships between the single fathers in "Lie to Me" and "Castle" with their daughters and how those relationships impact the show.

Just to be upfront, I think the writing is much better for the relationship between Richard Castle and his daughter Alexis; she is a more believable character than Emily who is inconsistent in her behavior and interaction with Cal Lightman between episodes.

What's the same?  Both men are single fathers of teenage daughters living comfortably in a major U.S. city fighting crime without actually being a law enforcement officer and have strong emotional ties to a female coworker - there is also an ex-wife that can show up at any minute.  The daughters are set-up to be independent, smart, and confident; often telling their fathers about the way things should be and providing advice for interacting with the world socially - outside of the crime fighting milieu.

The differences, of course, are what set the shows apart.  The relationship is used by both shows for character development of the main protagonist but while LTM uses it to show how inept and self-centered Cal is, Castle uses the relationship to show there is a tender, nurturing side to the playboy image on the outside of Richard.  Of course we see Cal trying hard to be a good father and Richard constantly throws himself into harm's way with little regard for his daughter, but the engines of the shows revolve around these portrayals.

In LTM, the relationship is superficial to the plot in all but a few exceptions where the plot is specifically about Emily.  You could remove all references to the daughter and still have the main story intact.  No interaction at all between the A and B stories.  Castle, on the other hand, makes a father/daughter chat (usually around minute 23) a key aspect to solving the mystery in every episode.  Often it showcases that the cops, with all of the training, miss something important because they don't have families.  Forget the feel good part of showing a healthy relationship for a moment (this isn't a blog about family issues) and think about the writing - that's really good.  It ties everything together - you have scenes that are fun, develop the characters, and advance the story.  You can't take them out because then the crime isn't solved.  It isn't always handled neatly, but structurally it is very sound.

The final contrast I’ll point out here, is in the consistency of the characters.  In LTM, Emily is introduced as strong and independent, yet repeatedly she is shown as the victim or comes crying home to a Daddy that she spends every other episode disregarding.  She goes from fighter to victim without being knocked unconscious and that just doesn't jive.  The evil of the world has not invaded the Castle apartment in any of the episodes I've seen yet so I can't comment on Alexis under pressure, but she has real conversations with her father about things other than boys and parties - I believe a Castle movie would pass the Bechdel Test.  Neither my wife nor I have stopped and said, "That doesn't fit" in a scene between Richard and Alexis.

While it may seem clear that I prefer Castle to LTM, that's not quite true.  I believe that the relationship between the main protagonist and his daughter is better written and utilized in Castle, certainly, but that is just one part of the engine that drives the show.  LTM has a lot going for it, including pretty good writing for the A story - most of the time.  It's also a little less predictable than Castle, I mean, how long does it take to get there?  S/he's wearing a shirt that says, "I did it.  I'm the killer."

What are you watching?  I'm always interested in new leads, as good as the Magnum re-runs are, and, since I didn't make the cut for the Quest Initiative, I've got some time...