If you are in need of a job, may I suggest working on a farm? True, the work is back-breaking, exhausting and often involves hours of being bent over like a croquet hoop (if you’re picking strawberries). However, there’s work here in California. Plenty of it.
In other news, I recently made the mistake of watching Michael Bay‘s current Transformers. $6.50 for a late afternoon ticket. Kids were off camping with the grandparents, wife was down in LA visiting her grandmother, self was alone and in need of seeing robots blow stuff up. So, I went to see Transformers. This might be the understatement of the year, but they blew up a lot of stuff in that film.
That’s also the plot line: an exciting story in which robots blow stuff up. Or smash stuff.
The film seems to be doing very well, scooping in tons of money here in the States and overseas (see: Michael Bay laughing all the way to the bank). But there’s not much of a plot. So what does that mean? My storyteller’s mind stumbles and trips on this. I guess one answer is that Mark Wahlberg has a lot of diehard fans. I also guess that’s not the right answer. Maybe the answer is just that a lot of people like seeing robots blow stuff up. Or smash stuff.
By the way, Mark Wahlberg is an immense improvement on Shia LaBeouf (or however you write that kid’s name). Better actor. Generates more empathy. Plus, he doesn’t go around getting plastered and tossed out of nightclubs and generally behaving like a lobotomized chipmunk.
Which means a lot of people don’t really care about coherent stories, as long as there are robots smashing stuff, and there’s a cute girl who wears short shorts for most of the movie.
Hmm. This has implications for writing stories.
In other news, I ate my first Moon Pie. Ever. I only made it through two bites and then a great deal of my body said, “what the heck is this?” and “get this away from me now or I’ll file a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services.”
So, no more Moon Pies. And no more stories with coherent plots.
Hmm. I’m kind of thinking that movies that are about robots blowing up stuff and not much else come under the same entertainment category as WWF wrestling, not as books and films with plots. There’s some folks who like that stuff; they don’t care about story, just want to see the action (incomprehensible to me, but hey, to each their own). So I wouldn’t rush out and take all the plot out of your books in favour of more explosions; your story-liking readers wouldn’t appreciate it, and you probably wouldn’t hook the WWF audiences anyway.
Darn. You’re right. I was looking forward to writing some plotless non-stories. You’re just way too logical.
I totally agree with Angelika. I watched the first Transformers movie, and I thought it was a great action flick, then the second. well, let’s say it was pretty disappointing. and didn’t even see the third one. I was almost tempted to see this one. thanks for saving me some $. I’d rather spend it on another of your books.