Or: How to write more indulgently.
A lot of people talk about writing honestly. For the record, I'm for that. And I'll talk about it another time. But I want to talk today about writing indulgently. Because as much as writing honestly can bring truly relatable and emotionally genuine content to your story, writing indulgently can bring, well, a little guilty pleasure. It can bring that addictive quality that keeps a reader coming back, or keeps a fan begging for the next installment. It can keep your story in the mind of your readers long after they've laid down for bed. It puts it in their dreams. When you write indulgently, you give people that guilty pleasure they have to get more of.
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Haven't you heard? Doctor Strange is supposed to be really good. It's got like a really high score on Rotten Tomatoes and it's got that up and coming Benedict Cumberbatch. Plus it totally looks like Inception! Win win win! Right? So I saw it. And... Meh. They should really start getting the people who make movie trailers to start making movies, because they all seem much better at structure, style and pacing. Even my wife thought it "Looks awesome!" Instead? When we saw the actual film? Meh. Now don't get me wrong. "Meh" does not equal "Ugh." "Meh" means it was an okay film, where they managed to avoid all the things they could've done wrong. The film is no embarrassment. And many people seem to honestly like it. But I was, as they say, whelmed. Sure, it has great special effects. Sure, the acting is all sincere. The jokes land. The plot thickens. The ending appropriately solves all the issues it needs to solve while being both kinda clever and awesome looking, and only enough plot threads are left loose to seed future story lines in a deliberately organic sorta way. And yeah, it's more or less a fairly accurate interpretation of the comic book core concept. But still. Meh. Why meh? Keep reading... |
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