Author Archives: Janna G. Noelle

On Female Ghostbusters, Gimmicks, and the Nature of Storytelling

Posted on by
Ghostbusters original cast(1984).

Ghostbusters original cast (1984).

By now, most people have heard about the plan to reboot the movie Ghostbusters with an all-female cast.

Some people are really excited about it.

Others are really upset.

Like really upset, to the point of borderline self-righteousness, with words like “gimmick” and “pandering” receiving a thorough workout.

Maybe I’m just splitting hairs over semantics, but in and of itself, I don’t consider a gimmick to be a negative thing.

All marketing and media uses gimmicks or “hooks” to attract a target audience, in this case the hook being the casting women where previously there’d only been men, ostensibly to attract – at least in part – a target audience of female viewers.

Which right there may well be the real issue.

Continue reading →

Everybody Has a Favourite (Quote)

Posted on by

Just like chocolate, everyone has a favourite quote as well. (Image from the 2000 movie Chocolat.)

Just like chocolate, everyone has a favourite quotation as well. (Image from the movie Chocolat, 2000.)

Quotations, it can be argued, second only to cats, are the foundation of the internet.

For they are found everywhere online: in status updates; in tweets; as part of social media bios; within blog posts.  Sometimes an individual blog post will be nothing but a quotation.

I too enjoy a good quote.  Back in 2010, I did the 12-week self-help, self-directed artistic rediscovery course known as The Artist’s Way, which is the subject of screenwriter Julia Cameron’s book by the same name.

It took me 11 months to complete the program.

Continue reading →

Planning the Perfect Vacation: A (Don’t-Ask-Me) How-To

Posted on by

Vacation plane

Some people are awesome at planning vacations.

These are the people who research their destinations exhaustively to discover the hottest sites to visit.  The people who book things months in advance to ensure they don’t miss out on those activities that always fill up and sell out.

These are the people who know ahead of time exactly the type of vacation experience they want, and make a near part-time job of scouring tour guides and soliciting knowledgeable friends and colleagues to transform the trip of their dreams into reality.

I’m not one of those people.  Not even close.

Continue reading →

Work or Leisure: How Do You Perceive Your Writing?

Posted on by

All work and no play

Like many writers, I am balancing my as-yet unpaid writing efforts with my paid day job.

At certain times of the year, my job requires me to work overtime.  One such occasion recently occurred, and at the end of my protracted work day, I found myself riding the elevator down with my boss, who is also an up-and-coming writer.

We got to chatting about how we would spend the rest of our respective evenings, or what remained of them.  This morphed into talk of how we usually spend our evenings, in particular as related to our writing.

Continue reading →

Be it a bang or a whimper, be sure to start your story with conflict (and a question)

Posted on by

Story beginnings are tough; even I can recognize that.

Outlander posterWhen I’m getting ready to start a new writing project, I spend a lot of time developing and getting to know the main character.  One of the things I do is write a character monologue to help get a sense of his/her voice.

With my WIP, I had the brilliant idea to include this monologue as the novel’s opening – a decision for which members of my writing group rightly called me out when I read it to them.  Comments included,

“Nothing happened.”

“I was bored.”

“There was no action; it was just a bunch of information that didn’t mean anything to me yet.”

“I found it rather poignant.”

(I think I fell in love a bit with the guy who said that last one.  However he was already taken, plus he eventually quit writing and gave up the group, which suggests he didn’t really know enough about writing craft to give me proper advice.)

Continue reading →

I Never Miss a Deadline … Except When I Do (which is often)

Posted on by

Deadline

So, my WIP, such as it is, is indeed still IP.

To date, despite have been writing seriously for some six years, I’ve yet to complete anything novel-length that stands as a fully completed story – a fact that haunts me continuously.

I’d originally resolved to finish my WIP last year by my birthday, which is at the end of November.

I didn’t make that deadline, but consoled myself with the fact that I had an entire other novel to write to finish the story, my previously anticipated duology in fact being a trilogy.

But there’s still something about deadlines – something definitive and binding, which I suppose is the whole point.  I almost never set deadlines.  I really don’t like them, even though my “type” is supposed to thrive on them.

Continue reading →

Is There a “Method” to Your Writing? (Writing advice from the acting world)

Posted on by

Acting

Earlier this year, I met a writer who was also an actor, from whom I received some interesting writing advice.

It happened during a session of the writers’ group that I run.  At each meeting, we discuss a specific writing-related question that all attendees are given a chance to answer.

The question du jour inquired which element of writing craft folk felt they needed to learn more about.

When it came my turn to answer, I said character voice.

Specifically, the fact that I wanted to someday write a sequel to my WIP from the first person point of view of a different character, but was unsure how to make the voice distinct from the first person narrator of my WIP.

Continue reading →

Character Study: Optimus Prime from Transformers (and the struggles of the Lawful Good)

Posted on by

By GEARSMITH on deviantART

By GEARSMITH on deviantART

Having recently watched the latest Transformers movie in theatre – perhaps against my better judgement – I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the character Optimus Prime.

Because the movie, in my humble opinion, made his personality almost completely unrecognizable.

Optimus Prime – right up there with Xena, the Warrior Princess – has long been a favourite character of mine. For those unfamiliar with the Transformers franchise – of which there have numerous incarnations via cartoons, movies, and comics – the main, unchanging premise is that of a race of giant alien sentient robots who are gripped in an eons-long war of good against evil.

Optimus Prime is the long-standing leader of the heroic Autobots against the ruthless Decepticons led by the tyrant Megatron.

Continue reading →

The Shortest Story I’ve Ever Written

Posted on by

For the record, I don’t like short stories.

Once upon a time the endI’ve written about 10 of them over the course of my writing “career” thus far, and almost all of them are flops.

Not because the writing is bad per se (although some of them were written while I was still in high school, so neither is the writing deathless prose). Rather, they don’t work because they aren’t really short stories at all.

They’re novel back stories masquerading as short stories.

That just seems to be the way my brain works: my stories come to me novel length.

(If my WIP is any indication, my stories come to me trilogy length.)

Continue reading →

“Not Every Girl is a Pearl”: My search for my favourite Tori Amos song

Posted on by

Tori Amos in concert in Vancouver, July 2014.

Tori Amos in concert in Vancouver, July 2014.

 

How do you choose a favourite song from an artist who’s been recording for over 20 years?

I own every studio release that Tori Amos has produced.  I can’t say I love all her albums equally, but as she is my “life soundtrack musician” – the artist whose music has played in the background of most of my life, scoring every major turning point and encoding my memories such – I’ve been able to find something to love about all of them.

Which doesn’t make picking a favourite song any easier.

(Neither does the fact that she’s also recorded at least 100 B-sides/non-album tracks, both original tunes and some amazing covers. And that her sound is constantly evolving, covering everything from pop piano ballads, rock, electronica, gospel, cutesy piano ditties, classical, and even musical theatre.)

Continue reading →