|
|
|
|
|
| SFReader Forums > SFReader > Ask The Expert > Breaking new ground in S&S | Forum Quick Jump
|
| 
John M. Whalen
flashg
      
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 422
| Posted 4/3/2008 5:36 PM (GMT -5) |   |
nathan said...
John M. Whalen said...
Peckinpah's masterpiece THE WILD BUNCH changed forever the way action movies are made. Peckinpah may also be responsible for killing off the western. After the Battle of Bloody Porch what more could you do?
Well go dig up the body of a guy who slept with your woman and then bond emotionally with the severed head?
aside...that moment after the wild bunch had killed El Hefe and were standing there, surrounded and waiting for the Mexicans to slaughter them and it became very clear the peon militia wanted *no* part of 'em and would have let them walk away...and then they said "screw it" and started the Blood Porch Incident for real? Fuggetboutit
However I think you're confusing Wild Bunch with Magnifcent 7 for roots to Yojimbo and Red Harvest.
No, I said FISTFUL OF DOLLARS was based on YOJIMBO and RED HARVEST. MAGNIFICENT SEVEN was based on THE SEVEN SAMURAI.
But you are right about the total coolness of that scene where everyone freezes for a moment before all hell breaks loose in THE WILD BUNCH. BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFRDO GARCIA is by far the film where Peckinpah said it all. The things you have to do to survive! Including digging up the head of your former best friend who screwed your woman. | | Back to Top | | |
 |
RHFay
Sage
Date Joined Nov 2007
Total Posts : 1895
| Posted 4/3/2008 5:37 PM (GMT -5) | |
Jordan Lapp said...
John M. Whalen said...
Maybe that's the new direction needed for S&S. A barbarian who wears ladies underwear and plays the lute. I'm SURE this has been done. And, if experience is any indicator at all, someone will soon shoot us a link.
If not, maybe I'll write one sometime. 
Actually, a warrior playing a lute (or being skilled at playing a similar musical instrument) isn't unknown historically. I can't say that it's been done in S&S, but it was certainly done in myths, legends, and folklore.
"I'm going to do what the warriors of old did. I'm going to recite poetry!"
Richard H. Fay - Azure Lion Productions
| | Back to Top | | |
|
PaulMc
Adept
Date Joined May 2005
Total Posts : 992
| Posted 4/3/2008 5:43 PM (GMT -5) | | | | |
|
MichaelEhart
Sage
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 2336
| Posted 4/3/2008 6:28 PM (GMT -5) | | Westerns were cheap. Whole studios in the 1930's cranked out "Poverty Row" westerns with tiny budgets and one-week shooting schedules. It wasn't until Stagecoach that folks started seeing them as something for adults. Budgets went up, and quality, until TV came along and took over the western. It wasn't instant, but by the time TV had beaten the western to death, it took a long time for the public to come back.
Nowdays, spectacle westerns tend to do poor BO, but there are are always a few exceptions. Dances with Wolves, Maverick, Unforgiven, Tombstone all did well. What is needed, though, is someone to make a bunch of good, cheap westerns, with someone like Tom Selleck or Sam Elliot, and run 'em on the Hallmark Channel or... oh wait!
Click here to buy my book!
The Servant of the Manthycore from DEP
Illustrated by Rachel Marks, with an introduction by Michael Moorcock
Read me in 2008!
"Without Napier" Every Day Fiction, TBA
"Night of Shadows, Night of Knives" Magic and Mechanica, Ricasso Press, Spring 2008
"To Destroy All Flesh" Return of the Sword, Flashing Swords Press, Spring 2008
"Only His Name" Every Day Fiction, March 30
"An Exorcism Straight, Hold the Elvis" They Are Not What They Seem, Janrae Frank, ed., TBA
"The First Trial of Jermaish the King" Flashing Swords #10, May 2008
Still in print!
"The Stars by Law Forbidden" Unparalleled Journeys II, Journey Books, 2007
"Six Zombies Doing That Mick Jagger Strut" Damned in Dixie, Tenoka Press, 2007
| | Back to Top | | |
|
Lane
Neophyte
Date Joined Jul 2007
Total Posts : 118
| Posted 4/3/2008 6:50 PM (GMT -5) | | RHFay said...
My personal viewpoint - I think comments about "a new twist on genre tropes" are becoming old news. Doesn't it just become yet another type of "standard"?
At this point, a return to "standard genre tropes" might be a refreshing change from all the twists out there.
Maybe I just haven't read enough to become jaded in my views toward "standard genre tropes".
Sometimes, a good old-fashioned yarn is what I crave. I think that authors can get gimmicky-for-the-sake-of-gimmicky and try to use that as a hook.
Then again, I audibly groan when I'm in the local bookstore and I pick up a piece that's really nothing much more than a rehash of The Greats. For instance, I was really excited to see David Bilsborough's "The Wanderer's Tale." I'd read some buzz about it, but I spent a good 15 minutes reading it in the store before I bought it. Wise decision, if you ask me. Sure, it's well-written and displays that Bilsborough's a good author, but the story was flat and derivative. It wasn't a good old-fashioned read. It was the same read I had 10 years ago with a new coat of paint on it.
I think some things (elves and dwarves, for example) have been done so well and so complete that it'd be hard to do anything with them. Ultrahard military SF springs to mind as another example; spaceships fighting in space has lost some of its zip.
What makes fantasy and science fiction interesting for me is exploring some new world. If that world is the 30,000th copy of Middle Earth, I lose interest. For instance, Robert Stanek's "The Kingdom of the Elves and the Reaches" initially drew me because it was recommended to me on Audible. It was terrible, and looking at the books, they're even worse (down to having typos and other errors). It was terribly derivative; the world didn't feel new, the same band of intrepid heroes was fighting the same dark lord with the same set of plot twists and turns. Oh no! Captured by monsters in the forest!
When you look at the good stories you've read, even if they involve the standard set of tropes, they have something else there. As Swashbuckler said, meaning and intention counts for a lot more than what you think. Consider Gene Wolfe's "The Wizard Knight." There's nothing especially groundbreaking about the tropes Wolfe uses, taken wholesale from Scandinavian and Germanic mythology, like almost every other fantasy ever written. But the symbolism and nuance of meaning in Wolfe's story is what makes them interesting (well, not that interesting, the books were very slow, but you see my point).
That being said, Mr. Lapp, I do think that it is highly possible to have something interesting in S&S. Because S&S tend to be adventure stories, they usually entail adventures, meaning bad guys/monsters to fight and daring feats to be done. That's the nature of the S&S tale. I won't say "new" exactly, because at this point, there's not much new under the sun. I know that I find S&S to be the most difficult type of story to write, simply because it can feel sort of constraining at times. I try to vary my settings and dialogue enough to make it punchy; in fact, I probably rely on dialogue too much to move the flow of my stories along (it's a criticism I've heard before). But that's my technique, at the very least. Put your hero(in)es in a new place, give them interesting things to talk about, and eventually, they'll find something fun to do.
-L. | | Back to Top | | |
|
nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2122
| Posted 4/3/2008 6:56 PM (GMT -5) | | At this time, after several mentions by numerous wise and respected posters about 'world building' and such being folded into "original" as a concept that...
Setting is one of the 7 basic elements of fiction. Just so you know, or thing I'm like 'screw world building'--I just think it's addressed under Setting and think it isn't trophe busting, but rather one of the spokes in the wheel of basic fiction elements.
VIEW IMAGE
"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
|
Lane
Neophyte
Date Joined Jul 2007
Total Posts : 118
| Posted 4/3/2008 6:59 PM (GMT -5) | | Oh, I wasn't attempting to contradict you. I was using "do" as a modifier of "think," not in the sense of "I do think they can and you do not" but rather just for emphasis, since the majority of my, um, rant beforehand was about how there's very little truly new.
I liked the Wizard and the Knight for what they were as one book, not two. I read them both together, back to back, and felt more engaged with it, even though I considered Able to be kind of a bully and didn't identify with him at all.
Another good example of using something that's been done to death in an interesting way is Naomi Novik's treatment of dragons in her "Temeraire" series. Those are excellent beyond measure, and I usually turn my nose up at anything serpentine.
-L. | | Back to Top | | |
|
MichaelEhart
Sage
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 2336
| Posted 4/3/2008 7:50 PM (GMT -5) | | Well, guys, you know that the very first story important enough to be written down was The Epic of Gilgamesh, over 4000 years ago, and that is clearly S&S--- so our burden is far greater than other genres.
Click here to buy my book!
The Servant of the Manthycore from DEP
Illustrated by Rachel Marks, with an introduction by Michael Moorcock
Read me in 2008!
"Without Napier" Every Day Fiction, TBA
"Night of Shadows, Night of Knives" Magic and Mechanica, Ricasso Press, Spring 2008
"To Destroy All Flesh" Return of the Sword, Flashing Swords Press, Spring 2008
"Only His Name" Every Day Fiction, March 30
"An Exorcism Straight, Hold the Elvis" They Are Not What They Seem, Janrae Frank, ed., TBA
"The First Trial of Jermaish the King" Flashing Swords #10, May 2008
Still in print!
"The Stars by Law Forbidden" Unparalleled Journeys II, Journey Books, 2007
"Six Zombies Doing That Mick Jagger Strut" Damned in Dixie, Tenoka Press, 2007
| | Back to Top | | |
|
Steven the Git
Acolyte
Date Joined Nov 2007
Total Posts : 213
| Posted 4/3/2008 8:43 PM (GMT -5) | | A hero who plays a musical instrument? Harmonica, in Once Upon a Time, and yes, that movie does have some high ideas. I love how the main characters each have their own music, and, never forget, Henry Fonda as a baddie! Great stufd.
I don't know about high concept, I just know the Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a great movie. Love the action, the plot and the characters. Mind you, have a preference for the second in the series. The villiain using the musical locket to kill people was excellent. Guess there's another music lover.
Gilgamesh is a fantastic read. It has sex and death and questions about life and big monsters and a chase scene with the sun. Again, if you can put core themes in, those that people will always find interesting, you can write about most things.
Oh, just thought. El MAriachi, and Desperado. Bloke plays guitar and shoots people. A lot.
Have to add big thumbs up to the ending of the Wild Bunch. It is sublime, they have them, the few versus the many, but you know what, what else is there? I remember when Saving Private Ryan came out and people talked about the start of it, and there's a battle at the end. Well I'd take the Wild Bunch over it any day. Bank robbery gone savagely wrong at the start, bloodbath at the end, and worth watching inbetween. That movie is about the passing of the west so you totally understand when they choose to start blasting.
I think something westerns do well is have a few people in a desolate place, so you can focus on the characters. They can often be explored and altered. Unforgiven would be my prime example. Yes, you have the crap, always. The spaghetti westerns were cheap thrills, such as Django movies. But the classics did a lot more.
I do agree with Jordan that all authors should be aiming to do the different or original, but I do think classics can be reinvented and reinvigorated. If someone writes with the same old elves again, but writes a great story, I'd love it and applaud it. I'd like to think it can be done.
Oh, crossdressing. Jackie Chan once put on a long dress so his opponents couldn't see his kicks coming. Best I can do for men. PLenty of women in men's clothes in s&s though - Janrae Frank's Lionhawk springing instantly to mind.
“Hello, I am William Burton, Head of Recruitment and Integration for the Agency for Peaceful Regulation and Definitive Cooperation of Extraordinary Existence.”
spinetinglers.co.uk Bakemono will not stop! | | Back to Top | | |
|
erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4539
| Posted 4/4/2008 2:51 AM (GMT -5) | | | | |
|
erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4539
| Posted 4/4/2008 2:53 AM (GMT -5) | |
| | |