Month: March 2012

fantasy · flash friday · Short Story · Writing

Friday Flash: Sons

Sonia Lal46 Comments

My first Friday flash in weeks. Weeks and weeks and weeks. 😉

“He said he’s not my father. He denied it in front of everyone!”

“He’s denied it for years. You can’t run off like a child because -”

“He doesn’t want me! I don’t want him either. I’m leaving. If he decides he wants a son instead of a – a minion he can come find me.”

“Son -”

“You’re not my father!”

“No, but I do care for you. He loves you as well. He just -”

“- is too ashamed of me to call me son?”

“I am certain he is very proud of you.”

“Like hell. Tell him goodbye.”

General

The Hunger Games Movie

Sonia Lal15 Comments

I liked the movie version of The Hunger Games. They do a pretty good job of following the book.

They toned down the violence, but if the movie had same level of violence as in the books, the movie would have ended up with an R rating. It’s a little strange. The book is for young adults, but if they hadn’t toned down the violence, the young adults wouldn’t have been able to see the movie. In the theaters anyway. 😉 They can read it, they just can’t watch it. It strikes me as bizarre.

The movie left out stuff, of course. But movies can’t ever be as detailed as the book. I am not upset about that.

But I do wonder if people who haven’t read the book will get the movie. I mean, there are so many things it doesn’t explain. It implies, yeah, and the characters say things in passing. But if you miss a line or two, there are lots of minor details you won’t get.

Like when Katniss tells her sister not to put in extra slips with her name because the extra food isn’t worth it. Would you get the characters can put in extra slips with their names, as many extra slips as they have family? And that the slips are cumulative? I am not sure I would.

It’s little stuff like that. Most people probably still understood the story, but still.

It was fun watching though. I liked the parade scene when both their costumes are on fire. 😉 And the interview one where her dress ignites. She isn’t in public when Peeta announces he has a crush on her, but still. Not bad. 😉

I liked the scene where the tributes first break out. Everything is chaos and violent and bloody. There isn’t a lot of blood afterward, but that was a good scene.

And the scene where Rue dies? Fantastic. I had tears in my eyes.

One the last scenes, when the other tribute has Peeta in a headlock, Cato does this short monologue about how he’s already dead. I don’t remember that from the book, but it was pretty touching. In that moment he was a lot more sympathetic than I remember from the book.

On the train ride home, Katniss says she wants to forget what happened. It implies she faked/exaggerated her feelings for Peeta. Which she did, but the movie doesn’t state that explicitly. That kind of disappointed me.

Also, I wish Haymitch had looked like a drunk in the movie. He sobered up fast. LOL

Related articles
Writing

Rereading the WiP

Sonia Lal4 Comments

So I came back to the WiP after not writing for a month. It was a good month, just not one meant for writing. Or blogging. Or reading, even. Well, I read more than I blogged or wrote, but even reading was minimal.

So I felt the urge to write again and opened up my file and I find I have forgotten details of my own story. Like, names. They include the names of various business and characters and so on.

Okay, yeah, the characters are minor and so are some of the business. But really!!! Does not remembering mean I should not have attempted to turn into something other than stock characters? I am not going to spend hours and hours on characters that only appear a handful of times, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get names and at least a few words of description. Does it?

Also, I didn’t expect to forget little details of the lives of the secondary characters. That’s even worse than forgetting the names of minor characters.

I realize now I have to reread the whole damn thing and resist the urge to edit while reading. I wasn’t expecting to have to do that. There are lots of pages. Thousands and thousands of words. It’s going to take a few days before I can actually start writing again.

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General

Separating POV Character and Protagonist

Sonia Lal3 Comments

There is a story I haven’t written yet. It is in my thoughts, in my dreams, but I am not going to start on it until the current WiP is done.

Anyway I can’t start on it until I do more prewriting work. I’ve written a few back story type short stories and flash fiction so far, but I need more. More about the characters, more about the various places in the world, stuff like that. An actual plot might help, too. LOL

When the first character appeared in my head, I thought he was the main character. Having written a few short stories about him, I think maybe he’s not a good choice for the POV character. He could still be the protagonist. I am not sure. But I prefer my POV character and main character to be one and the same.

I am thinking now the POV character is going to be a boy, the guy’s nephew. Out of half a dozen short stories, the kid has only shown up in one of them. It’s odd.

The uncle, the first character that appeared in my head for this story, has problems that would make telling this story more difficult. The boy doesn’t; I can show things through his eyes I can’t show through the uncle.

It’s just that I am not sure if I want to separate the POV character and protagonist like this. I have never done it before.

reading · Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesday: Angels’ Flight

Sonia Lal12 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

A pause as he studied her, cool intelligence rising past the hot burn of temper. “You intended to take me along all the time,” he said at last. “Now you try to play me. Shame on you, Ashwini.”

– Angels’ Flight by Nalini Singh