jblum's Journal

One of the advantages of doing a reading at Conjunction was that it reminded me what I liked about our earlier work, on a sentence-by-sentence level. Where The Prisoner's Dilemma was -- as befits the style of the TV series -- rather dictatorial in tone, a surface layer of cool-and-commanding description covering an almost hectoring relentlessness, and full of detail to the point of being overwrought... Fallen Gods was much more viewed from inside. The scenes were sensual enough that you could feel the sweat on the characters' foreheads, but concise and playful, and most importantly emotionally driven. These are passionate characters, fully engaged with a wide range of emotions.

In the five years since then, I think I've been erring too much on the side of making my characters grounded in the real world; that actually gives them more of a sense of distance and cynicism, because I've been equating real life in recent years with the passionless side of existence: the eternal Day Job, the cycle of quiet disappointments caused by Kate's health problems. Bernice in Nobody's Children is fighting against feeling numbed, but fundamentally she has been numbed. But even a somewhat cynical and hardened character like Alcestis (the way she starts out) is cynical because she's feeling her bruises -- what you get is not a lack of engagement, but the aftershocks of engagement.

The stuff I've been writing lately, particularly the spec scripts, have been me trying to have fun -- focusing on being slick, polished, and a bit playful. I can do good work that way... but I'd like to do great work again. So I've got to work out which project I can find that heart in. I'd better go back and look through The Decision Tree, and I'm finally beginning to figure out how to attack Angel Express...