Season Towers

seasontowers @ 2008-02-08T20:19:00

2008-02-08T20:25:43Z

This has been around for a while, so some of you may have come across it before. But it's new to me, and I'm the boss here.

Way back when in season 3, the writers for Battlestar Galactica set up a mic in the writers room whilst they broke the story for the episode 'Scar'. There's nearly three hours of unedited recordings of these proper paid writers crafting the episode, and it makes for some fascinating listening. Or I thought so anyway.

Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here
Part 3 is here

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

In every generation...

2008-01-31T20:12:50Z

minisinoo has some pragmatic tips on how to start your story and hook a reader from the off.

In the current environment awash with paperback novels, publishing wisdom says you get between 3 paragraphs and 3 pages (more often the former than the latter) to interest a reader. This applies to fanfic no less than to published fiction. If you can't grab a reader by that point, the reader puts the book down and tries something else (unless really desperate). That's the hard, cold, brutal truth.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

I wrote my thesis on you!

2008-01-29T19:11:41Z

Some interesting reading on William The Bloody.

This thesis is based on Lydia the Watcher's line in the episode "Checkpoint" (Buffy season 5). On first meeting Spike she says in awe, "I wrote my thesis on you!"

We submit this collaborative effort as the thesis Lydia wrote. We have given her the last name Chalmers. Since we imagine this thesis to have been completed in May of 1998, any information about Spike or Sunnydale which has appeared since then will not have been available to her.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

Wait, I have a condition. Whoop! Goh-boy! Dirty bitch!

2007-07-26T21:28:19Z

rexluscus has something to say on writing tics. More interesting though, is the comments.

There are a number of these things: overused words and phrases that are basically empty, and that provide an escape route from the more evocative phrase you could have used instead. Frankly, I want a list of these. I know of a few that plague my own writing, but I'm sure there are loads more that I don't even think about.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

You get credit for speaking, right?

2007-07-13T14:30:24Z

Doris Egan (tightropegirl), a writer on House and Tru Calling amongst other shows, has something to say on POV.

Of course, all this talk of honesty doesn't mean the narrator might not be fooling himself. The unreliable narrator is one of the charms and risks of first-person. (I am firmly convinced that House, for example, if he were writing his own story, would be one of the most unreliable narrators in the history of the planet. Which is ironic from someone who values realism as much as he does.) The risk to the author is that some readers may not pick up that the protagonist's view of his reality is inaccurate, or to what degree he's fooling himself -- and whether, on some level, he knows it and is avoiding opening that closet door.

Part 2 is here.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

You should come to our class on big thinking. It's good.

2007-07-11T17:27:43Z

I'm not sure how I missed this, but:

Back in 2005 Joss Whedon and Tim Minear both gave hour long talks on writing and the art of breaking a story at the Screenwriter's Expo in LA.

_eb has her notes from the event written up.

What were some of the Firefly stories you never got to tell?
He hemmed and hawed, “Should I tell you this?… Oh well, what’s he going to do, fire me?” The original show was darker and this story was more in keeping with that tone.
It opens with Mal and Inara fighting (as they do). Mal tells her she pretends to be a lady and wants everyone to bow before her and kiss her hand but she’s just a whore. Then the Reavers attack and take Inara. While trying to get her back they learn that she had something that would make anyone who had sex with her die. When they finally track down and board the ship they find all of the Reavers dead and Inara shaking and traumatized.

What I didn't realise was that there's a DVD of each of the two sessions available here and here.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

You're a complicated man.

2007-05-15T12:52:17Z

Creating original believable characters in your fic ain't an easy thing to do. Luckily, wisteria_ has some handy hints.

If you're having a hard time coming up with a character, period, look at your story and find all the tangential people who could become involved. For example, if you're writing a fic in which Spike is playing poker, think of the types of people (or demons) he'd be playing with. Choose one to write about. On a similar note, what about the waitress bringing them their drinks? How does she react to the situation? You might never use this character in your story, but it's a great way to imagine how original characters could become involved.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

Dear One

2007-05-13T18:21:25Z

bookishwench examines Darla's view on love and relationships and the thing's that have shaped those views.

The key to understanding Darla’s view of relationships is her human life. We are told very little about her, but it’s what we are not told that is every bit as crucial. For example, we have no idea what her name was as a mortal. Angel [see note B] discovers in the episode “Darla” that the name Darla didn’t come into common usage until 100 years after she had died. He assumes the Master must have given her the name

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

Like Bowie

2007-04-26T10:56:29Z

There's changes afoot! Season2Ep14.net is undergoing a major re-design.

Over the next few hours the new CSS based layout will go live for the main archive (The Zone Noir will remain using the old layout for a few days, and will follow if nothing implodes in the meantime).

As a result, you might see the odd glitch as files are replaced. Posting is still live, but won't actually show up on the site until after the new layout is up.

Comments and feedback on the new layout are welcome! Hopefully I won't break anything.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

What's a rogue demon?

2007-02-18T17:25:58Z

Minim Calibre has a few ponderings on Buffy/Wes, and how to pull such a thing off.

Keep in mind also what it is they have as common ground. They've both got an extremely practical streak, and both tend to pull away from their friends when they could most use them. They both internalize a lot of things, have unresolved parent issues—not to mention the unresolved Angel issues.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

Soulboy, right? Deadboy?

2007-02-14T08:41:49Z

Cindy has some wisdom to share on the topic of souls in the Joss'verse.

many fans do not seem to differentiate between types of souls (i.e. human, vampire, vengeance demon, Mmm Fashnik, etc.).

As long as all of the 'verse demons were evil, the term soul and the definition like-a-conscience, was sufficient. Whistler, Doyle, Lorne and their ilk have muddied the waters, and this is an attempt to filter them. Although some of these terms, definitions and explanations are non-canonical, they draw on canon, don't contradict it, and attempt to fill it in, and wank it a little so that it works.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

Damned pigeons...

2007-02-11T21:27:50Z

The Season2ep14 e-mail has been playing up over the last few weeks - It seems not all messages have been getting through to Season Towers, and not all of our fabulously witty replies have been getting out.

So, if you sent us some witty discourse, and didn't hear anything back, do please send it again. The crack 24/7 support team is convinced that the problem has been solved.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

I think I'm kinda gay...

2007-01-21T23:07:23Z

So, you want to deal with a character coming out to their family and friends? From Xander to Liam, it's possible to make the events surrounding this plausible and intriguing. wllw makes some very good points that should be taken into account.

Make a list of what the reactions of his friends/family/random group of strangers are going to be. Look at it. Can your list be neatly divided into a "omg squeee thats so kawaiiiii!!!!1" category and a "wtf thats wrong get out of my house and go angst, u sicko!!!!!!11!"? If so, you are guilty of stereotyping your characters and oversimplifying human emotions, and you are hereby sentenced to reading the rest of this rant.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

seasontowers @ 2007-01-18T03:55:00

2007-01-18T04:08:04Z

Faith and Xander are both fascinating, compelling characters in their own right. The relationship between these two is brief but complicated. liz_marcs thoroughly outlines their characters and interactions before delving into gender roles, psychology, and the troubled history between these two individuals...and where they could go from there.

Where they actually fit lies in where they differ: Faith has a tendency to keep people distant while Xander has a tendency to reach out to people. Faith is a loner while Xander prefers to live in a crowd of people (although the fact he’s working alone in Africa without his Sunnydale friends might be an element to consider when writing post-S7 Xander). Faith is a fairly good judge of character with a strong bullshit detector, but she doesn’t always know how to translate her judgment into good communication skills. Xander’s ability to judge strangers is not as good, but once he gets a bead on someone’s character he can usually find the right words to say to spur them into action or help them through a difficult situation. In the heat of battle, Faith tends to take the lead and fights in the thick of the action; Xander tends to focus on the periphery by backing up the people with the physical power or removing innocent bystanders and the injured from the field of battle.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

Praise be...

2007-01-13T22:24:41Z

Season2ep14.net is backup and running fine. No data was lost during the downtime, although do let me know if you think anything's amiss.

Damned interweb technology.

Holy smoked mackerel...

2007-01-13T17:50:02Z

Season2Ep14.net is currently down after a hard disk failure in our server. All data and content is completely safe, and I have the daily rolling backup to fall back on if something does get zapped.

A new hard disk is currently being installed, so hopefully downtime should be no longer than an hour / hour and a half. I'll keep you updated.

God doesn't want you, but I do...

2007-01-11T23:19:06Z

Blue makes a good argument for Darla as a truly tragic character. Y'know, in a good way.

I wasn’t sure if she was going to work as a major nemesis for Angel in the second season, but then my view of a nemesis was pretty limited. Try imagining the bad guy in the huge black cape, but from the moment I heard Darla (Judgment) say:
"Angel . . . it's been a long time . . . I'd love to see that boy."

I was simply riveted and couldn’t wait to see what tricks Darla had up her sleeves for Angel and crew.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

Who, at a crucial moment, distracted the lead demon by allowing her to pummel him about the head?

2007-01-10T21:33:15Z

Terry Rossio, an actual oscar nominated screenwriter (Shrek), argues that it's really quite neat when your hero doesn't win the day. Impressive failure is what it's all about.

In plotting an action-adventure type film, how your hero fails is at least as important as how he succeeds. If the plot requires the hero to fail, try to figure out a way for him to fail as impressively as possible.

Consider RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Indiana Jones is perhaps the greatest action hero in the history of the movies. And in his debut film, he flat-out fails from beginning to end.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

Why don't you open me up and find out

2006-12-20T17:51:22Z

selenak has some interesting musings on Connor.

Connor helping Jasmine voluntarily as opposed to everyone else highlights both sides of his nature, again. He finds out she eats people and accepts that, which is on a par with Faith being willing to help the Mayor consume Sunnydale High on his Ascension. The abdication of moral responsibility in trade for affection from a beloved person, or the conviction that anything that beloved person wants makes it right. (The Mayor? Would have loved Jasmine and her idea of how to create world peace.)

Connor's possibly the one character that I actually dislike from the Joss'verse. But still, interesting reading.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

I see... I want... I take. I forget.

2006-12-18T22:37:02Z

There's a great comments discussion in mara_sho's LJ about Faith and whether she's a misunderstood anti-hero, or villain.

Having watched The Wish for the first time in ages the other weekend, I had my usual moment of thinking about nature/nurture in the Slayer world. All is good if the slayer is nurtured, but when too much is left to nature the slayer (Faith or Wish Buffy) becomes a darker character. Is this something to do with who they are in terms of their human character not being able to cope with the loneliness/ work of slaying, or to do with the demon element that gives them their slayerness becoming too dominant because there isn't enough humanity around them to nourish their human side?

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

What? I can't have layers?

2006-12-14T14:14:45Z

Actual BtVS script writer, Jane Espenson, has tips on creating interesting original characters.

A neat trick to quickly devising an interesting character is to think about the contradictions in their nature. You probably do this already when you’re trying to describe an interesting actual person whom you know. You say things like “He’s this big bruiser of a guy, who writes the most amazing poetry.” Or “She’s so quiet and shy, except when she’s arguing a case in court.”

Her blog is an endless source of writing tidbits.

In other news: Who new that Jane wrote the last Battlestar Galactica episode (The Passage)? No one tells me anything.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

seasontowers @ 2006-12-09T13:01:00

2006-12-09T13:13:12Z

gyrus1001 has some great advice on constructing your action scenes.

Once you have established the purpose of your fight scene, you probably already know how it is going to end. Now you have to figure out how to get to the end. In a way, this makes your job harder than that of the BTVS and ANGEL screenwriters. They can just outline the basics of a fight scene and leave the minute details to the fight choreographer. You, on the other hand, are the fight choreographer as far as your story is concerned, so you have to visualize the action in as much detail as you would see on the screen

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

New Pretty

2006-12-04T17:57:30Z

I’m planning on changing the site layout in the new year, and in preparation I’ve been prodding photoshop a little. I’ve included two screenshots of the new layout below. Comments? Suggestions?

Bear in mind that the images at the top will change at random, just like they do at the moment.
There’ll also be a few new features launched alongside the new layout. Plus, for the web design savvy amongst you, the new layout will be built in pure CSS (the current design is all tables), so it should make it more accessible to people using different browsers and platforms, as well as being a little lighter on code.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

And then he stumbled. And died. It was tragic.

2006-11-29T21:42:31Z

Another real world (not quite gabillionaire) novelist, Holly Lisle, has advice on building scenes that move your story forward.

Okay. That's a whole scene, though there isn't much to it. It comprises the essential elements of scene -- a place, a time frame, and a change that moves the story forward. We know that something vitally important has happened, because we're reading about it. (If it weren't important, why write it?) We have some feel for the story -- lives no doubt will depend upon the smooth functioning of the control panel and the command center, and we already know that there's a glitch that no one else knows about. When we started into the scene, the command center was working smoothly. When we left it, there was a problem, and a problem heightened by the fact that the people who needed to know about it didn't.

There's a whole bunch of other stuff if you poke around her site a little more. It's mostly geared at the pro, or wannabe pro writers, but still.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.

If you're gonna crack jokes, then I'm gonna pull out your ribcage and wear it as a hat.

2006-11-27T22:07:44Z

Real world gabillionaire novelist Stephen King talks about imagery how to create an image in your readers mind.

If I can say anything important to writers who are still learning the craft of fiction, it's this: imagery does not occur on the writer's page; it occurs in the reader's mind. To describe everything is to supply a photograph in words; to indicate the points which seem the most vivid and important to you, the writer, is to allow the reader to flesh out your sketch into a portrait. Since "Salem's Lot" was originally published several years ago, I've seen maybe three dozen different pictures of the Marsten House, all based on the description I have in that short paragraph quoted above; no two are the same, and none of them is quite the picture I had in my own mind -- and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Visit the super spiffy fic archive Season2Ep14.net for a whole bunch of kick ass BtVS and Angel fic. If you’d like to contribute to The Writers Room LJ, then mosey on over here.