Category Archives: Leigh Galbreath

Sure, the Avengers has its faults, but the weaker aspects of the film are more than made up for by aspects that worked unbelievably well. Pacing, the juggling of an ensemble cast, great dialogue, the list goes on and on.

The Writing Excuses podcast recently covered what the Avengers did right, which everyone should give a listen to, if you haven’t already.

One of the things I think this movie handles very well is the making of promises. Of course, this post is far too short to cover the subject exhaustively, so we’ll stick to just a few scenes.

The film starts out with an obvious promise. The Other’s voice-over promises an impending invasion, sets up the stakes a bit and asks “…and the humans, what can they do but burn?”

If that isn’t a loaded question, I don’t know what is.

That scene is followed by Loki’s arrival, which gives us all kinds of promises. It tells us what to expect from the film: lots of nifty effects (doorways to the other end of space are so pretty), quick pacing (things turn from bad [the Tesseract misbehaving] to worse [Loki running off with said Tesseract] in no time at all), snappy repartee (Whedon’s specialty that you have to hear to believe), and possible global annihilation (Agent Hill’s admonition that “there may not be a minimum safe distance”).

We also get all kinds of character promises. Fury’s willingness to be buried shows how far he’s willing to go. Hawkeye’s competence in this scene sets him up as a valid threat when he’s turned to the dark side and lets us easily accept him into the team when he gets his own personality back. Similarly, Dr. Selwig’s knowledge of the Teseract promises the capacity to create a stable door for Loki’s army to use, and his ability to sneak in a “kill switch” to turn it off again. Also, his mention of Thor, and Loki’s subsequent reaction, promises equal danger to Selwig himself somewhere down the line. And am I the only one who, upon seeing Loki’s first close up when he arrives, thought he was pulling a fantastic impersonation of the Joker’s signature grin? This immediately sets this Loki apart from the one we met in Thor, taking him in a darker direction while still promising some fun when he makes all hell break loose.

A little later, Fury states that he believes the Avengers just need the right push to do what they need them to do. That push turns out to be Agent Coulson’s death, and while we weep over the loss of such an entertaining and likable character, the death is not at all as meaningless as it would have otherwise been without the promise it helps fulfill.

But not all the promises are made at the beginning of the film. Almost halfway through the film, there’s a promise that, when fulfilled, is probably one of the most memorable moments in recent cinema. While at work in the lab, Stark says in an offhand way that Loki is “playing with Acme dynamite” and that he’s going to be there when it explodes in Loki’s face. Now, he says this to Bruce Banner, who we soon learn is the “Acme dynamite” in question. He’s the explosion Loki’s banking on using to get the Avengers out of the way. Anyone who’s seen the movie knows how that turns out, and while Stark isn’t there to see the Hulk toss Loki around like a rag doll, it’s still incredibly satisfying to watch. That unforgettable moment is also promised repeatedly with Whedon’s proclivity to knock Asgardians out of frame in the middle of saying something.

Now, I’ll admit that this film is cheating a bit. As part of a series of movies taking place within the Marvel universe, Whedon is able to lean on promises made in previous films to create a more fulfilling experience for the audience. He also has to make promises meant to be carried over to subsequent films.

Taking from this experience can be difficult depending on one’s style. People who heavily outline their books will have an easier time of planning these promises, as they know what’s going to happen. As a discovery writer, I have to go back to put these in after the fact, but I’m learning that my promises don’t have to be clustered in the first part of the story, nor do they call attention to themselves. Yet, if nothing else is learned from a close observation of Whedon’s use of making and fulfilling promises, it’s that taking the time to pay attention to the promises you make can allow easier handling of other aspects, like juggling a large cast of characters, and can make the story far more powerful and effective.

Got another favorite, or a movie you think does it better? Leave a comment and let us know.

Digging Our Own Well

June 30, 2013

Leigh Galbreath

Leigh Galbreath The Writing Life 2 Comments

At the beginning of the month, Gregory Little talked about the two main reasons why myths and legends are inevitable-humanity’s unconscious desire to flatter and preserve itself. It seemed appropriate to head back to that well at the end.

Yes, it’s true. We are a selfish species, aren’t we? But we do it with style. And we’ll never stop. Our natural oral tradition of myth-making is alive and well even in this day and age. We see this most acutely in the form of urban legends, or urban myths.

Everyone’s heard them, those stories someone swears is the truth about some strange, off-the-wall incident that happened to some distant relation or a friend of a friend you’ve never heard of before. These myths are based on hearsay and passed from person to person like juicy gossip that has no basis in times gone by.

There are hundreds of them, from the scary but mundane (the guy who went into a store only to find out from a passerby that there’s someone hiding in his backseat, or ate pop rocks and drank a coke only to have his stomach explode), to the weird and unexplained (the moth-man or ghost hitchhiker), to the natural world out to get us (the crazy ways you can catch a simple disease that will kill you!).

Let’s remember, though, that the myths we know were once brand-spanking new, too. What do you wanna bet that there were people in Columbus’s day who knew a guy whose brother had a lady friend whose cousin grew up with a sailor who was on a ship that sailed off the edge of the world or was eaten by sea monsters? That medieval children knew the name of someone long dead who went into the forest on a dare in the middle of the night to be eaten by some sort of hobgoblin?

And everyone will have sworn it really happened.

Sure, the subjects of the stories have changed. Instead of sea monsters, we have psycho-killers. Instead of selfish step-mothers, we have shadow governments. Instead of witches out to snatch our first born, we have kidney thieves. But the message remains the same-be careful, little ones, dark things are waiting to happen out in the big, wide world.

We’re still making up stories to preserve ourselves.

But what about the flattery part?

Am I the only one who noticed that, unlike our ancestors, our current monsters for the most part…are ourselves? Perhaps we’re not as vain as has been put forth.

In fact, I suggest that the purpose of that flattery isn’t simply about making ourselves look good (though that can often be the case, I admit). We take what is best and hold it to the light not just to wash away the dirt of our inequities but to draw ourselves to something purer. King Arthur isn’t remembered because he was a good military commander. Martin Luther King isn’t remembered because he made good speeches. These legends don’t just make us look better. They inspire us to be better. They remind us that even a selfish species can rise above.

And the fact that we remember these legends, even after thousands of years, shows that we, as a species have always aspired to the better parts of our souls even when we don’t succeed.

Myths aren’t just about where we came from. Legends aren’t just about people gone to dust. The importance of these stories don’t just exist in what’s come before. They speak as much about who we are now as what we were then. We may no longer need to explain the world as our ancestors did-that’s what science is for-but there are still things out in the dark that can eat us. There are still silly, stupid actions we can take to hurt ourselves. We’re still insecure little creatures out to overcome our frailties. And it shows in the stories we tell.

Even our modern appropriation of older stories tell more about us than they do about them. There’s barely a hint of Ovid’s statue in George Bernard Shaw’s flower girl in his rendition of Pygmalion. The women of Shaw’s time were very different than in Ovid’s. Is it a surprise that Farscape’s “lotus flower” turns out to be the base ingredient for the ammunition of pulse weapons? While taking a class on West Central Africa, where oral-culture has never lost its prevalence, I read origin myths that had warlords with guns. Yeah, I pretty sure they didn’t had guns at the beginning of civilization.

We like to say that we reuse these stories because they are familiar. People are drawn to the stories that already resonate with them. Yet, when we adapt, we’re not just telling those stories. The present overlays the past in every adaptation we do. It’s unavoidable. So, really, is it the tale itself that’s the familiar? Or is it what we interject into them? Are we using the tale to bring in the audience? Or are we using our own lens to help the reader better understand the message behind the myth?

So, let me offer another facet as to why myths and legends are important and inevitable-they keep us connected. They connect us to each other with their universality and to our past in their malleability. As humans, we are all more similar that different on the inside. Appropriating an old tale is more than using a ready-made plot people are familiar with; it’s communing with the past in a way the present can understand.

In a way, we’re not just going back to the oft-used well when we work with myth & legend in our fiction. We’re digging our own new ones as well.

But then, maybe that’s just another form of flattery.

The Imaginary Line Between Myth & Legend

June 3, 2013

Leigh Galbreath

Leigh Galbreath The Writing Life No Comments

Welcome to Myth & Legend month at the Fictorian Era!

This month you’ll hear about why we feel drawn to myths and legends, how they are alive and well even in a modern world ruled by science, and how they can and are used to create a more vibrant and realistic world in which our characters live. From ancient Greece to modern conspiracy to vampires, zombies and true love, we Fictorians will be delving into the stories that we grew up on, the stories that keep coming back again and again, the stories that impact our lives even when we don’t know it.

But before we dive into the whys and wherefores, I wanted to spare a moment to talk about something that has always rather bugged me–the importance placed on the truth or falsity of the stories we tell.

myth noun

1 a: a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon

b : PARABLE, ALLEGORY

2 a: a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone; especially : one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society

b : an unfounded or false notion

3 : a person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence

The above definition comes from the Meriam-Webster online dictionary. Now, the first definition is fairly typical of what most of us view as myth. Yet, look at the second definition. For some reason this expresses myth as being a “popular belief or tradition…embodying the ideals and institutions of a society…” but associates that idea with “an unfounded or false notion”.

For some reason I have yet to figure out, there are people who think that just because something is made up, it is false and therefore has less value (an idea that should be anathema to every fiction writer). There are, for instance, many people who take offense when the idea of “Christian mythology” is brought up. To them, the religious stories of the past are truth.

Legend, on the other hand, has a slightly different perception.

leg·end noun

1 a : a story coming down from the past; especially: one popularly regarded as historical although not verifiable

b : a body of such stories <a place in the legend of the frontier>

c : a popular myth of recent origin

d : a person or thing that inspires legends

e : the subject of a legend

In the above definition from Meriam-Webster, a legend is really not much different than a myth. In fact, as the above states, a legend comes from the past, which is fairly equivalent to saying it’s traditional, and like the “unfounded or false notion”, a legend is “not verifiable”. So, really, a legend is a type of myth.

Yet, for many people a line is drawn between myth and legend because while a myth is accepted as complete fiction, a legend has some root in real history. For instance, there is historical evidence that there was a real King Arthur running around Britain in the years after the Romans left and the start of the Middle Ages.

But would it really matter if that were true? If there really was a Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest at some point in history, would it make his legend any more powerful a tale? I think everyone pretty much knows the fallacy of “Honest” Abe Lincoln, but does it make him any less a seminal figure in American history that he wasn’t averse to the occasional lie?

The purpose of both myth and legend is to bring sanity to an insane universe, to explain the unexplainable, to give hope to the hopeless, to highlight the best and worst of humanity in order to teach us what it means to be human. This, I think, is why we hold onto them so tightly as to never let them fall into obscurity.

If you think about it, isn’t that the point of all fiction? Aren’t we, as writers, creators of myth and the occasional legend? Yes, our stories may not be carried down through the ages as of yet, but they could be. Heck, I’m sure Shakespeare never thought his plays would still be performed almost half a millennia after he wrote them, but the imaginary lives of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet have just as much impact as King Arthur and Robin Hood.

Daydream Addiction

May 21, 2013

Leigh Galbreath

Leigh Galbreath The Writing Life No Comments

When asked to write a post on what inspired me to be a writer I went blank. Couldn’t think of a thing. Most everyone else was talking about things they’d seen, books they read, that sort of thing, but when really thinking about it, my inspiration didn’t come from any external source. In the immortal words of Neil Gaiman, “It came from my head.”

I’m an addict, and my drug of choice is daydreaming. Has been from a very early age. If I’m not actively involved in a conversation with another person, or engrossed in a work of fiction, I’m locked in my head beating up bad guys or taking over the world–or both. I spend most of my day thinking about being someone else someplace else. So, naturally, when I started writing, all I was doing was writing what I had experienced in my head.

To tell the truth, I’ve been writing far longer than I wanted to be a writer. I think I started writing when I was in junior high school (I particularly remember a story about a group of kids my age who were trapped in their school, which had been sucked into a kind of limbo universe where nothing existed but the school-yeah, I was a weird kid). I never took it seriously at all. Making up stories was just something I did, like other kids doodled cartoons on their notebooks.

At some point in my teenage years (probably around eighteen or nineteen) I wondered what it would be like to get sucked into an alternate world with magic. Not original, I know, but bear with me. I started going through scenarios in my head as to how I would react in that situation. In true Walter Mitty fashion, I wasn’t really myself, but a better, braver, prettier, cleverer version of myself. At some point in the daydream, I got the weird notion that I would get imprisoned in a mountain. This brought up a question.

What would a magically inclined person be like if they were locked in a dark, underground prison, alone, for hundreds of years? How would they cope? What would they do to get out, and what would they be like when they did?

From that kernel was born my first trunk novel.

It was while writing that book, that I realized how much I really love writing. I’d been doing it forever, already. And I decided that, since it didn’t look like I was going to be rockstar, I’d be a writer.

Just about all my stories have started out just like that first trunk novel. What would it be like to experience this thing that I’ve never experienced, to be this person I’ve never been? Using myself as a starting point makes it easier to get into the idea. A dozen or so scenario’s later, and the idea has a life of its own. Those are the stories I end up writing down.

To be honest, what was in my head was influenced by real events in my life, books I read, music I listened to, and movies and television I had seen, all mashed up in my subconscious and bubbling out in my own unique way. Now that I think about it, the things in my head always had a tendency to work as stories because, after growing up sequestered in my room, reading fiction, I have a very twisted view of the world. I get frustrated when life doesn’t function like a piece of fiction (I’ve come to realize that I walk around listening to music constantly because I feel the need for my life to have a soundtrack-yeah, I’m still a weird kid).

This odd way of looking at the world sort of perpetuates my need to daydream. Life isn’t structured in three acts. We don’t get to skip the boring parts to keep the momentum going. People aren’t characters with understandable motivations.

Real life is complicated.

But dang it, it shouldn’t be! And so, I escape this nonsensical reality to my crazy made up worlds.

I am the first to admit that this is not a healthy way of looking at the world. But I ask you: How else am I going to experience life as a ridiculously rich and famous, deliriously beautiful, impossibly crafty, immortal vampire mage who travels through time to other planets in parallel universes?