#WorkshopWednesday: Effective vs. Empty

I wrote a book review/Workshop Wednesday post on Substack a couple weeks ago, and then expanded on it in an Insta reel last week, because why would I keep it simple and consolidate all my musings on one platform? The book was Hell House by Richard Matheson, I do not recommend it, and one of the novel's most egregious sins was its lack of meaningful, tangible characterization. Today, I want to talk about the ways strong characterization can elicit strong reader reactions, and why those are sometimes negative reactions, and why that's almost more of a compliment than a five-star review. (It's not, but it IS satisfying in its own way.)

If you're not watching House of the Dragon on HBO, I can't tell you that you should be watching it, because you might be like my mom (Hi, Mom) and not be down with all the dragons, bloodshed, and backstabbing. If you are watching it, you no doubt have strong opinions about it. Are you Team Black or Team Green? Do you sympathize with Alicent? Or wish Rhaenyra would stop being so damn nice to her? Is Caraxes the best boy? He is. Does Daemon have the kind of swag the OG Thrones characters could only envy from afar? Yes. 

My point being, viewers are invested. The analysis, both silly and serious, is insightful and fun. The memes are pitch perfect. And it's not because of the dragons (though I love them, big, fanged horses that they are), or the battles, or the twists, the turns, nor the political intrigue. All of these elements draw us in for one reason and one reason alone: because these characters feel incredibly alive for us. 

I read the novel Fire & Blood when it first released in 2018. Stylistically, it's a little different than A Song of Ice and Fire because it doesn't read like a moment-to-moment narrative, but more like a history text. The stories within are abridged and told from a historian's perspective, rather than the intimate third person limited POV of the original series. The events taking place in the show are only a portion of the Targaryren history - but, for me, it's the most interesting portion. Daemon showed up in all his Lestat/Loki glory and I was there for it. I was also immediately on Rhaenyra's side in the Dance, Team Black all the way. As a result - and I think with good reason - I got to a point where I loathed Team Green. Aegon, Aemond, Alicent, all of them. Because they were bad people by comparison? No. But because I'd come to care so much for one set of characters that their enemies became my enemies. It had nothing to do with morality, and everything to do with favoritism. Say what you will about Martin's writing, he immediately and indelibly establishes characters we love and hate, but who we always find to be believable. 

The last decade or so has seen a sharp decline in general media literacy with regards to fiction. Some readers feel the need to justify things they enjoy or like best through a moral lens. "This is my favorite character, which means she's morally correct, and the opposing character is evil." Fiction is fiction; it's there for enjoyment. It's perfectly acceptable to love an awful gremlin character best, and it isn't a reflection on your own moral code. 

Similarly, characters behaving badly in a way that angers a reader isn't a sign of weak writing. Chances are high that if a character pisses you off, it's because that character feels real to you; they're so deftly drawn that you're having a sincere emotional reaction to a character's flaws and mistakes. When someone expresses dismay that one of my characters has done "something stupid," I smile to myself. That means I've created a character who is three-dimensional, and whose actions impact you emotionally, for good or for ill.

The next time you're rating a book, and you want to knock a star or two off your review because a character misbehaved or made a mistake, stop and ask yourself if that character's actions are a sign of a writer's poor writing...or of a writer's very human and effective writing, and if maybe they earned those stars after all. Empty, papier-mache characters inspire empty responses. You can't get angry with someone who isn't real in any way.

Just saying.

#WorkshopWednesday: Why Authors Ask For Reviews

 

A phrase I've seen oft repeated across bookish social media is "reviews are for readers." They are! Usually, this phrase is used when readers feel that an author has overstepped his or her boundaries and replied directly to negative reviews of their books. But it's also a reflection of the fact that reviews are indeed written by readers for other readers, so they know what they're getting into before they purchase a book.

Why, then, do authors always ask readers to leave a review? Let's get into it. 

Sometimes, you come across a review in which it becomes obvious that the reviewer is addressing the author directly. Some readers think the point of a review is to educate the author on how to write a "better" book in the future. Some are gentler than others, but still issue suggestions or requests. 

I hate to be blunt, and I don't like to speak for all authors, but I think it's safe to generalize when I say that authors, myself included, do not look at reviews as inspiration, or reprimands. I do love to talk about my books with readers on social media, via Instagram posts, or blog posts like our Fearless Read-Along. Nothing makes my day like having a reader quote a favorite passage to me, or share personal stories with me about how a scene in one of my books reminded them of a loved one, or a special memory. That sort of thing is crack to an author. 

But reviews serve a different purpose. By the time an author publishes a book, it's been edited, and re-edited. It's been proofread. We've bugged our editors and loved ones about plot points and word choice until they're sick of us. What we put out (this is at least true for me) is what we mean to put out, for good or for ill, knowing that some readers will love it, and some will hate it. I reserve the right to respond to direct messages, emails, or comments on my blog or social media, but I don't ever respond to reviews left on review sites. Occasionally, I'll deal with someone who's a bad actor: a person who leaves a string of disparaging reviews and then reaches out offering to be my editor. They think all those poor reviews will convince me I need to hire them. It never works. I vague blog about them until they crawl back under the rock from whence they came, and move on. Long story short: reviews don't tell the author what to do/not do; they help other readers decide if they want to read a book. 

That's why authors ask for reviews. The more reviews a book has, the more attention it gets: both organic, and through the algorithm. Unfortunately, popularity still matters, even after you leave high school, and books with a high number of reviews tend to draw larger numbers of new readers. On Amazon, the more reviews a book has, the higher the book's ranking, and the higher its visibility. Books that receive lots of ratings and reviews get bumped up in the Amazon algorithm, and casual Amazon scrollers are likelier to see it. This is exactly why some authors buy reviews. The higher the visibility, the higher the sales, the higher the probability that it's worth an author's time to write a sequel.

Basically, it's all a numbers game, which is a little bit soul-crushing when you're an artist who wants to think hard work, dedication, attention to detail, and artistry will carry you forward. Instead, it's all about rank, and views, and clicks, and the cha-ching, baby. 

I do so love reading comments; I'm trying to be better about responding to all of them. And having chats online about our favorite characters. But reviews really are for readers, in more ways than one. 

Workshop Wednesday: Tension

 

Devin gazed at the phone a moment longer, then nodded to himself, blacked the screen, and slipped it back into his pocket. “Right then,” he said, face creased with smile lines. “Our girl wants us to get along. She wants me to treat you with kindness, so that’s what I intend to do.”

He stuck his hand out, and it was a friendly gesture, this time. “Hi. I’ve no idea what my real name is, if I ever had one, but I’ve been Devin Green for forty-some-odd years now. It’s suited well enough.”

Shep was still reeling from the text. Simple words, and a truth he’d already known, but hearing the way Cass had strung it all together for her father had left his sinuses stinging. He accepted the handshake. “Frank Shepherd. I’m gonna marry your daughter.”

Devin’s smile lines deepened. “Good. I think that’s what she wants.”

In case you missed it, Beware of Dog dropped on Saturday, and you can grab a copy here:

Kindle

Paperback

Nook

Kobo

I won't do an official debriefing post until next week, so I can discuss spoilers, but the book inspired today's workshop post about narrative tension.

I can't write a story if I don't have a firm grasp on my characters. But the engine that drives any story is narrative tension. You can have the wildest, most creative plot in the world, but without tension, the narrative is going to fall flat, and turn out boring and forgettable. Tension can be high, it can set your teeth on edge and make you squirm while reading, but it can also be subtle and low stakes.

Obviously, there's tension present in the main conflict between the heroes and the villains. In Beware of Dog, that tension comes from Sig Blackmon and his family, and the people they hire to do their dirty work. 

But I wound up leaving quite a few scenes on the cutting room floor because they amounted to nothing but fluff, with zero tension present. I might end up putting them here on the blog, for anyone who likes the fluffy bits, but I felt like they detracted from the novel itself, which is chock full of tension.

There's the romantic/sexual tension between Cass and Shep, of course. Then there's the tension of their relationship being secret: both of them are worried about telling her family, and, to a lesser extent, Maverick and the rest of the Dogs. There's tension between Cass and her roommate, Jamie, who she's trying to help. And, some of my favorite not only in this book, but in the whole series, the tension between Devin and his kids, and amongst said kids themselves. 

In real life, tense relationships between family members are not fun. But if Devin and his brood were loving and well-adjusted, those family scenes would be boring on paper. In BoD, it's a low-stakes sort of tension. By this point, we know that Fox and Walsh love each other, but that tension between them makes their conversation on the clubhouse porch interesting, rather than a sap-fest. And for Shep, much like Mercy, he resents Devin's absence in Cass's life, and isn't shy about expressing his feelings on the matter. 

“Your boys have been giving me shit,” Shep said, “and now you’re gonna give me shit, and none of it’s gonna scare me off, so why don’t we cut it out already?”

Devin studied him a long, unblinking, eerie moment, then nodded, and the life flooded back into his expression. “Fair enough. But I’m still going to say my piece.” He shifted his weight, cocked a hip. Ready? Or relaxed? God knew. “Son—”

“Don’t call me son. I’m not your son, and I hate your f***ing guts.”

Devin’s brows twitched, but mildly, and not with anything like surprise. “That’s a bold statement.” His lips quirked. “I’ve not heard the old ‘hate your guts’ since the boys were in short pants.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Smart. They’ve said it since.” He tilted his chin. “Them I understand. Why do you hate me, then, Francis?”

Not only does all of this interpersonal tension create a more interesting reading experience, but it also makes it much more rewarding when two characters finally come to an understanding. Just like trials and tribulations make a character's journey more satisfying, so too does a disagreement or a personality clash elevate a friendship when it finally forms.  

He doesn't have a ton of page time here, but I love Devin in BoD. I would say he's become one of my favorite characters to write, but he pretty much started out that way. Instead, let's say I'm thrilled to see so many readers express their affection for him, now that he's grown on them. 

#WorkshopWednesday: Learning From Failure

Some books are more popular than others. Some books are so UNpopular that you wish you'd never written them. 

I kid. Mostly. 

One of the things it can be difficult to keep in mind with regard to authoring books is the tired, but very true adage about learning from our failures. Every failure does teach us something, if we're receptive to that knowledge. And even if it sucks to realize a failure was an entire year in the making. 

Publishing any book is a gamble: you're betting your time and effort against the likelihood of it selling. Traditionally published authors with book advances have a guaranteed cushion. Self-published authors are going all in without a safety net. Sometimes the gamble pays off, and sometimes it doesn't. That's when you have to start asking yourself the hard questions: why did this book fail? Is it market related? Trend related? Series related? Are there readers holding out on a series until it's complete, or is continuing a series just putting good money after bad? You have to take a step back and seriously self-reflect. Will more advertising help? Or was the book a lost cause from the get go?

That's the business part of learning from failure. My takeaways in this instance have been twofold: write shorter, snappier books in general, and end this series specifically. 

But the more hopeful, and useful, aspect of failure is that you can't become a better writer without completing books. 

I have always written. Short stories, scenes I wished were included in favorite TV shows, poems, contest entries. I was obviously a stronger writer at eighteen than I was at four, but I didn't notice marked improvement in my work until I started writing novels to completion. I started dozens in my high school and college years, and ran out of steam around ten-thousand words in. In every case, that initial burst of confidence would fade, and I'd talk myself out of continuing, certain the idea wasn't as worthy as I'd first assumed. In this way, I was unable to become a better writer. Anyone can start a story, but carrying it through the middle and end requires commitment. An introductory scene sets a stage, yes, but it doesn't highlight the growth of the characters, or teach you anything about plot, or pacing, or the subtle use of tension. It wasn't until I finished my very first novel - an early version of God Love Her that will never see the light of day - that I realized I could write a book, and only then could I set about learning how to write better books. 

I've written more than forty full-length novels at this point, and each one has taught me something different about craft. As we go through our Fearless read-along, I've cringed over some of my own words - and that's a good thing, because it means that I've grown, and that I'm a more skilled author, and that I can write with more authority in the future. 

There have been many days since its completion that I truly have wished I'd never written Lord Have Mercy. It took me a year, and I can't help but think about all the ways that time could have been spent more successfully. But even if it's a failure of a book, I learned a great deal about my own style in the process. I pushed myself, and I could feel the growth as it was happening. Writing that book helped me level up, which means the next book, and the next, will be better. 

If you ever find yourself writing something and you start to doubt whether it's worth finishing, I think it is. Even if you fail, finishing is where we learn the most. 

#Workshop Wednesday: A Tailored Approach

 

Y'all probably think that I stretch the horse riding/book writing metaphor to breaking point, but I'll never get over the similarities. "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" No, "Why is a horse like a novel?" Writing and riding aren't that many letters off, after all. 

Today's metaphor is: the moment you start swinging words like "always" and "every time" around, an exception is going to smack you in the face. Figuratively in the case of fiction. Literally, sometimes, when it comes to Kit Kat. In both cases, tailoring education yields more positive results. 

In my tenure as barn manager, I worked with lots of little ones. Weanlings and yearlings, just like human children, need lots of education and hands-on work. Because horses are prey animals, those early years require lots of what we call desensitization. There's a boogey man in every doorway, and a monster lurking in the depths of each shadow. An empty shavings bag caught by the wind is a ghost, and a tipped-over bucket is going to eat them. Don't get me started on blankets: absolutely deadly. It's important to introduce them to all sorts of stimuli, from flags and balloons, to tarps, poles, fake flowers, umbrellas...anything they could conceivably encounter that might spook them. Not only does this build confidence and reduce the likelihood of spooks and bolts, but it builds the trust between horse and handler, too, and sets you up for future success. 

Enter Kit Kat. 

Some of it can be chalked up to having a Quarter Horse Brain™, but mostly she's just naturally fearless. Even at six months, I could tell she was going to grow up to be a Boss Mare. She's confident, thoughtful, and walks toward scary things rather than shying away from them. This is amazing! She's not afraid of fireworks, gunshots, tarps, poles, other animals, or plastic bags of all shapes and sizes. But it means my training approach has to be tailored for her needs. It's not one size fits all: the same approach won't work with every horse. 

She's what you'd call a "pocket pony." She wants inside your pocket. Rather than trying to get free, she's usually trying to get on top of you, so our groundwork has been all about establishing and respecting boundaries, and yielding to pressure: laterally and backward. She's sharp, which means once she's done something, she gets bored with repeating it over and over, so I have to mix things up every day. Her default setting is a strong side-eye that just screams "why are we doing this again? How lame." This week, I introduced a little incentive with treats, and it's been a game changer. I know that there are old school cowboys who would say I should make her, rather than encouraging her with cookies, but so long as she's respectful about it, I'd much rather develop a positive working relationship than one built on force. 

That's a long way of saying: it's important to assess the individual needs of a horse and adjust the work accordingly. I need to work on building Kit Kat's flexibility and topline strength, and don't need to focus on scary boogers as much. 

Here's another for-instance: years ago, I was having a Coke at the picnic table after a ride and chatting with some of the boarders. One of them, a very sweet lady without much riding experience, asked me about my ride, which she'd watched from the barn. "How did you know to do a circle down here?" she asked. 

I said, "After the extension down the long side, I could feel that he was getting too strung-out and hollow-backed, and I needed to pull him back, ask for the bend in the circle, and get him to slow down and come back under himself so he could sit down behind."

She said, "But how could you tell he was hollow?"

I don't remember my exact answer, but I do remember struggling for a beat or two, because for me, that had become as second-nature and effortless as knowing when to apply your foot to the brake pedal of a car: I could feel the change in my horse's gait and carriage and reacted accordingly to rebalance him so he was moving in a more positive way. Years of practice and education meant I knew how to rebalance him. But the boarder's knowledge was much more rudimentary, and it was clear that she would need lots of practice in developing a "feel" for her horse's movement before she would automatically know how to help him during a ride. 

She and I couldn't have taken a joint lesson because we were working at different skill levels and had different training needs. A tailored approach wins the day.

I promise I'm getting to the book part of this (very) extended metaphor. 

I was a member of RWA for only one year, from 2015 to 2016. I didn't renew my membership because there were several aspects of the organization I didn't care for. I know it's overgone a total overhaul, and I'd be curious to know what its environment is like now. It was too high school cafeteria, you-can't-sit-with-us when I was there. Someone at a meeting actually handed my bookmark (with my website and contact details) back to me when I said that I was self-published. She didn't want to be seen speaking with me. 

But I was struck by something at one meeting. We were listening to a presentation about different character archetypes, and it was a good presentation. We had handouts and we were taking notes, and I was breaking down Ava's archetype on my worksheet. A member raised her hand with a question, and when she was called upon, she said, "I'm having trouble coming up with names for my characters." The speaker was visibly baffled. Other members chimed in with suggestions, and a side discussion broke out about character names, and the presentation stalled out for a little while before returning to topic. 

The thing that struck me was how different the needs of the members were. I was in the middle of writing The Skeleton King at the time, and someone sitting two rows up was in the conceptualization stage of her very first story. 

There were hundreds of members, each one in a different phase of authorhood. On one hand, this makes for a diverse and rich environment, and each member can contribute a new perspective on the unifying goal of writing professionally. But on the other hand, it meant that most of the monthly lecture topics were very middle of the road: generalized, without providing deep dives for those just starting, nor those at a more advanced stage who were working toward creating overarching series storylines or juggling strong secondary or tertiary storylines. This is of course not anyone's fault, but it left me wishing there were more resources, and that there was a broader range of resources so writers at every level could learn something valuable. 

Wouldn't it be cool if there were more intimate writing education/mentorship groups within an organization like RWA? Wipe away all that close-to-the-vest competitiveness and offer real instruction. Groups where first-time authors could work from earliest concepts through brainstorming, story mapping, and prose writing with the help of a mentor? And groups where more seasoned writers could tackle more specific issues? 

The answer to this, I'm sure, is to form friend groups within the larger group and help each other. This happens, and this is great, peer review is certainly helpful, but I'm thinking of a more structured course. Or courses. Something for writers who don't have the time or finances to enroll in college classes, but who still want to enhance their writing through literature study, writing exercises, and one-on-one work with mentors. Deep dive analyses, grammar and punctuation refreshers, and self-editing guidance. 

I think it would be cool. Probably something like that does exist, but it would be wonderful to see it incorporated into a big organization. 

Just some thoughts I had this evening while working with my girl. 

#WorkshopWednesday: Dirt

Illustrative excerpts for this post are all from College Town, available now.

As an artist, I have a deep-seated love for lovely things. For sherbet sunsets, and freshly-unfurled flower petals; wrought iron benches, and dainty blue and white china plates, little teacups on saucers. Gleaming cherry muscle cars with Big Block engines, and glossy-coated, well-muscled horses with arched necks and uphill toplines. French chateaux and sprawling Queen Anne Victorian houses with two-story verandas. Who doesn't love lovely things? There is a wonderful satisfaction, as a writer, in sketching those lovely things with words and bringing them to life in vivid detail on the page. 

But it's the dirt that makes a story feel real. It's imperfections, and flaws, and the grunge of life that takes a book from something nice and makes it feel like a habitable place into which the reader can step, and stay. Especially if you're writing fantasy, or even a rather over the top contemporary concept, like, say, a motorcycle club, or a mafia. 

Every time I read a book that fails to fully engage me, I can usually point to a lack of grit. And I don't mean grit as in "badass-ness" or whatever it is people attribute that word to thematically speaking; I'm talking actual grit. Like when you open a door and the bottom of it scuffs over the floor and makes that teeth-clenching gritty sound of dirt grinding under the weight of it. Life is dirty, in so many ways. It's finding dog hair in your bra, and slopping a bucket of water down your leg; it's tracking mud across the carpet, and hastily throwing miscellaneous crap under the bed and into the closet before company arrives. That grab in your chest and stomach when the doorbell rings and you ask yourself "oh, crap, did I remember to scrub the toilet bowl?"

Writers are tasked with creating "likeable" characters, and that is...wildly open-ended. We all like different things. We all value different qualities in friends, in romantic partners. One of the decisions I made early on was that I wasn't going to a) put real human faces on my book covers; and b) talk about celeb crushes or guys I thought were cute. Why? Because it was irrelevant. A writer has to be able to create a very specific vision that somehow appeals to a broad audience, and that's difficult when you account for differing taste. The trick, I think, is, as I've mentioned in a previous post, to make the characters endearing, and also to layer in the dirt. To use character-specific details in a way that make a character feel real. It's much easier to like a real person than a pretty, two-dimensional cutout. 

It's important to me that readers know that every single scene in every single one of my books is written in a character's voice, rather than my own. Whoever's showing us the scene, whoever's eyes we're looking through, the picture his colored by his or her biases and tastes. If someone is described as beautiful, it's because the POV character thinks they are, not that he or she is a supermodel - except for Raven, of course. For instance, I've always found it genuinely hilarious that readers took stars off their reviews or griped at length about Walsh (and Fox) not being tall enough "for them." He isn't for them, though; he's for Emmie.

 Admittedly, at this point, I'm having fun pointing out that Walsh and Fox aren't very tall - that's my inner troll coming out - but their height also plays into the core of their character. In Lord Have Mercy, there's a scene where Alex is standing in Walsh's living room with him, and feeling more than a little intimidated, and it's something he marvels over. Alex is the larger of the two, physically, but Walsh is the more imposing. I love Devin's boys - Tommy, Miles, Phil, and Tenny are all almost six feet; they can have some height, as a little treat - being the sort no one expects: they don't look like a threat, until you've got a gun in your face. But the other thing is...a club, like a family, like a community, a neighborhood, a church, like any gathering of people, is going to have all sorts. Huge, hulking Mercys, and jockey Walshes; Tiny Dancers, and Hot Dumbasses like Aidan. Old Timers, and Dipshits, and Good Little Soldiers. "Alexa, play 'All Kinds of Kinds' by Miranda Lambert." 

Despite being someone who is deeply displeased with my own face, it's important, when I write, to sketch in the laugh lines, and the frown lines. The little gray hairs. Freckles and tan lines. The nervous tics, the bad habits; the bitten nails, and the cigarette habits, and the coffee breath. The flares of temper, and the inappropriate jokes at inopportune moments. The way the corners of jean back pockets get threadbare; a mustard stain on a shirt. It translates to landscapes, too; to houses. 

The siding on the back, where there’s less sun, is mildewed, green patches screed over the buttercup yellow his mother picked out some thirty years ago. The back deck sags in the center, and needed a fresh coat of Thompson’s Water Seal at least three years ago. The chimney brick needs repointing, and the once-tidy flower beds along the back walk now grow scraggly with weeds. The brown tips of last year’s leaves peek out of the gutters, and there’s a crack in one of the upstairs windows he hasn’t noticed before.

The place looks derelict. It’s clean inside, because he and Mom and their hired help, Nancy, ensure that it is, but Lawson knows all the furnishing and fixtures are badly out of date. Mom watches all those home reno shows where happy married couples demo and redo houses, but they’ve lacked the funds for such an endeavor, or the personal know-how and time to do it themselves.

Lawson kills the engine and then grips the wheel with sweaty palms. “So. Here we are.” When he dares to glance over, he sees that Tommy’s frowning.

“I know it looks like hell,” he begins, and Tommy interrupts him.

“Where’s the ramp?”

“What?”

“Your dad.” Tommy gives the back of the house a narrow-eyed once-over and then lowers his gaze to meet Lawson’s. “He’s in a wheelchair, you said. You need a ramp.”

“Oh. Yeah. We were gonna get one, but the contractor bailed, so…”

“You couldn’t build one?”

“I tried.” 

You have to balance the lovely with the dirty. The cracks in the sidewalk; the weeds in the yard; the crumpled potato chip bag tumbling in the breeze. 

Dartmoor has always been grungy in a very specific, biker way, so much so that the world feels so very familiar that sketching the whole picture - from sunset to flaking porch paint - feels like second nature. College Town was a new and engaging challenge because though it was, technically, a mafia book, and the attendant opulence and finery and danger was present, the story was told entirely from an outsider, civilian POV, through Lawson, and Lawson's life is mired in all the ordinary "dirt" of suburban life. Tommy is probably conventionally attractive, but he's beautiful to Lawson because of their history, and the love there, and so the narrative is necessarily biased. 

“They didn’t have welcome home hats,” Dana explained, snapping one onto Lawson’s head as he climbed out of the car. “So birthday it is.”

She hung back and let Lawson get the walker, and then help Tommy up to his feet so that he was standing beside the car, holding onto the walker’s handles. Then she stepped in and, much more carefully than she had with Lawson, settled a hat on Tommy’s fluffy hair and delicately tucked the elastic band under his chin.

Tommy smiled, small and bashful, and reached up to adjust it, his new ring gleaming in the sunlight. He was pale and stubbled, and still sickly and shaking, just a little, and he was the most beautiful thing Lawson had ever seen.

In everything I write, the dirt - the flaws, the tics, the lines, the mildew, the nicotine stains; all of it - is objective, but the beauty is very subjective. The dirt is the necessary groundwork that allows the author to reveal the beauty - of the story itself, of the characters, of the setting - in a way that ends up feeling inevitable, immutable, and universal, despite its inherent subjectivity. 

That's a long way of saying: when you sit down to write a story about something beautiful, don't forget to get your hands dirty. That sounds so terribly cliche, but it's cliche for a reason. If your story feels lifeless, scoop up a big handful of dirt and grind it in. 

Right Book, Right Time: On Rereading

 

It’s the Lord of the Rings, I think, where one of the characters says that “way leads on to way”; that you could start at a path leading nowhere more fantastic than your own front steps to the sidewalk, and from there you could go…well, anywhere at all. It’s the same way with stories. One leads to the next, to the next, and to the next; maybe they go in the direction you wanted to go, but maybe they don’t. Maybe in the end it’s the voice that tells the stories more than the stories themselves that matters.

It turns out that finishing Lord Have Mercy Part II dovetailed neatly with finishing my reread of the giant Clown Book, and that is in no way a coincidence. I spent six months on both, though one was a considerably more arduous task.

I’ve always thought it’s important for an author to reread their favorite books. The first reading is an unconscious effort – or, we’ll say less conscious. You’re riding the suspense, you’re turning the pages quickly. You’re reacting. And at the close of the story, you’re left with an impression that’s more emotional than cerebral.

The reread is where, now that you know what happens plot-wise, you can linger. You can dig into the mechanics of the story, highlight your favorite passages, and try to understand why this particular book left such a lasting impression, and then use those answers to further and better your own work. Rereading is an active process, and it’s also where the details shine especially bright.

I don’t really know what possessed me to pick Stephen King’s killer clown doorstop up late this summer – nostalgia, most likely, a repressed need to seek comfort in the words of someone who helped to shape my author voice – but it turned out to be the best decision I could have made while tackling Lord Have Mercy.

I decided I’d treat myself to a new paperback edition to give my screened-out eyes a breather, and in a twist of rather delightful kismet, it arrived on an afternoon when it was bucketing rain, and the cover’s got some permanent water damage. I was dismayed for about a nanosecond, and then chuckled over it. Maybe every copy of It should come with a wet, crinkled-up cover. Because I like to keep my books as pristine as possible – I’m one of those annoying nerds who doesn’t want the spines to get cracked – I usually copy all my favorite quotes down in a notebook as though I didn’t have better and more pressing things to do. But I took the highlighter to this one, and now, flipping through it, it becomes obvious, picked out in bright yellow, that this is one of those books that has managed to capture the whole of the human experience. It’s too long? It drags? Well, amongst its pages you’ll find some of the silliest, dumbest passages you’ve ever read, and you’ll find fear, and loss, and heartbreak, and absolute unfairness, and then you’ll come across lines that are absolute gems, that represent not just a deft hand with a typewriter, but a beautifully-subtle stroke at the deeper human feelings we so often, like Pennywise’s true form, cannot define in their exact shapes, and so we couch them in simpler, more wholesome terms.

Maybe, he thought, there aren’t any such things as good friends or bad friends – maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you’re hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they’re always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that’s what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.

It is the best and the worst of humanity laid out on the page, and in that sense, thirteen-hundred pages is quite the feat of restraint.

Reading it in a post-It: Chapter Two (2019) world definitely shaped the way I interpreted certain scenes.

“Put him down,” Beverly said. “He can stay here.”

“It’s too dark,” Richie sobbed. “You know…it’s too dark. Eds…he…”

“No, it’s okay,” Ben said. “Maybe this is where he’s supposed to be. I think maybe it is.”

They put him down, and Richie kissed Eddie’s cheek. Then he looked blindly up at Ben. “You sure?”

“Yeah. Come on, Richie.”

Richie got up, and turned toward the door. “F*ck you, B*tch!” he cried suddenly, and kicked the door shut with his foot…

“Why’d you do that?” Beverly asked.

“I don’t know,” Richie said, but he knew well enough.

(He knew well enough is the line that sent me sprinting to ao3 in 2019, where there is some impeccable fix-it fic from some insanely talented writers.)

I had a moment, near the end, when I knew what was coming, and nearly skipped over Eddie’s death, but didn’t. That didn’t seem fair to leave him in the dark, even if the Losers had to. Also, I’m not a skipper. I don’t “skim” anything I read, and that’s what this post is really about.

Taking 500 words to get to the point? Me? No.

I don’t post about the books I read as often as I’d like, but when I do post about them, it’s not simply because I like chatting about books. I do, but, also, I feel like it’s an opportunity to help readers, or potential readers, understand my approach to writing so they know what to expect when they pick up one of my books.

The whole idea that anyone does skim a book they’re reading for supposed pleasure is anathema to me. I know everyone reads differently, but I genuinely can’t imagine just reading parts of a book, if I truly enjoyed it, to “get to the point” so I could move on to the next, and the next. I hate the ways Goodreads has turned the incomparable pleasure of reading into a beauty contest, a footrace, and a high school lunchroom. It’s provided me with the sad realization that there are people out there judging and rating books who genuinely do not like the act of reading. Who don’t read each and every word. Who don’t savor the imagery, and the play of language. The way a sentence can punch like a fist, and the way a sentence can trickle slowly and musically like a clear, cold stream burbling over smooth pebbles in the deep of a forest. I love words. I love what human beings – singular, unique, creative human beings, not AI users – can accomplish with the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet. It is astonishing.

Some of my favorite moments in It are when King goes on his about-Derry tangents. Talk of topography, and vegetation. The history of the Standpipe, and the glass umbilicus connecting the adult to the children’s libraries. The imagery of the Barrens, and the trainyard, and the sunflowers nodding on their stalks in the yard at 29 Neibolt Street. Watching the bloody rags slosh and froth through the glass door of the washing machine in the laundromat. Fidgeting in the chair in Mr. Keene’s office, the milkshake dashed to the floor when Eddie learns what a placebo is.

That level of detail is what makes me love stories. It’s what makes me want to write stories. It’s…me.

I knew before I began Lord Have Mercy that it was going to put me through the wringer. I spent three years and five books building up to it, because I knew it would be a heavy commitment, and because I honestly didn’t want to deal with the skimmers and scanners whining about it when its monstrous, detail-heavy final form slumped out into the world. But rereading one of my absolute favorite books proved the shot in the arm I needed. It helped me take a deep breath and shove the noise aside and write the way I wanted to. The way it needs to be written. Lots of people can write lots of books, but this is my book. These are my brain children, and I’m the only one who can tell their story.

I know not everyone enjoys lengthy, detailed, layered books, but that’s what this is. This one’s for the deep-dive readers. For the lovers of words. For those who want the full Dartmoor experience. I crawled through the sewers of Derry, Maine, and came out in Knoxville, Tennessee, smiling. This one’s gonna be good.

“Nothing lasts forever,” Richie repeated. He looked up at Bill, and Bill saw tears cut slowly through the dirt on Richie’s cheeks.

“Except maybe for love,” Ben said.

…

They walked into the Town House on a wave of laughter, and as Bill pushed through the glass door, Beverly caught sight of something which she never spoke of but never forgot. For just a moment she saw their reflections in the glass – only there were six, not four, because Eddie was behind Richie and Stan was behind Bill, that little half-smile on his face.

#WorkshopWednesday: High/Low Stakes

 

“Oh yeah,” Richie said. “I can see it. After you shoot it four or five times and it keeps comin at us like the Teenage Werewolf in that movie me and Ben and Bev saw, you can try your Bullseye on it. And if the Bullseye doesn’t work, I’ll throw some of my sneezing powder at it. And if it keeps on coming after that we’ll just call time and say, ‘Hey now, hold on. This ain’t getting it, Mr. Monster. Look, I got to read up on it at the library. I’ll be back. Pawdon me.’ Is that what you’re going to say, Big Bill?”

Apologies in advance if you were hoping not to hear any more about the Clown Book after that post a couple weeks ago. I certainly didn’t intend to make it an ongoing thing, but it’s spooky season, and I’m rereading the Clown Book for the first time in years, and remembering why I love it so, and wondering when I can squeeze in a movie rewatch, so, the first wasn’t the last, and neither is this one. The year is 2023 and I’ve got Clown Book brainworms. There are worse worms to have, I suppose. And look, I can put the worms to use!

I’m currently on page 372 of 1,153, and I’ve reached one of my favorite scenes: Richie and Bill going to the house on Neibolt for the first time, just the two of them. Earlier in this same chapter, Richie went home with Bill to look at Georgie’s photo album (one of those delicious small scare scenes that I wish had made it into the movie), and earlier than that Richie tried awkwardly but sincerely to comfort Bill when he had a breakdown on the curb about his worried complicity in Georgie’s death.

“He was your brother for gosh sakes. If my brother got killed, I’d cry my fuckin head off.”

“Yuh-Yuh-You d-don’t have a buh-brother.”

“Yeah, but if I did.”

“Y-You w-w-would?”

“Course.”

The entire chapter is one of my favorites because Richie – Kid Richie, especially – is terribly sincere and tender-hearted under his Voices and his need to make a spectacle of himself. I could go on for pages about ventriloquism as a metaphor, but we’ll stop there. We’re talking stakes today.

Any scene in which a child comforts his friend during an ugly crying jag is one that tugs on the heartstrings. But in this instance, it tugs a little harder, pulls a little sweeter, because of the elevated stakes. Bill’s not crying because he got grounded, but because his little brother is dead and he lies awake at night worrying it was his fault. A low stakes moment made more poignant by the higher stakes moments that frame it.

High stakes versus low stakes moments are extremely relative, depending on genre and plot. I have such admiration for authors who turn claustrophobic, low-risk family stories into highwire acts that leave you gasping. That’s such an art form: dialing up the tension so your heart races over stories that are daisy chains of slow beats, plays entirely of conversations and kitchen table awkwardness. One day I’d love to be able to write something like that. For now, I keep dragging shootouts and werewolves into the mix. Not because I think that makes my work better; it’s a simple matter of taste. I like the shootouts and werewolves. I like superheroes, and spaceships, and Gothic vampire mansions. I think too often the genres get played against one another, readers and writers alike trying to find moral reasons for their preferences. They’re just preferences. Chocolate, and vanilla, and strawberry. And I often find that I resent when fantasy or sci-fi are seen as not real. As not being about real stuff. “Oh, all those monsters and dragons? Yeah, no. I like books about real stuff.” When I complained that the end of Game of Thrones sucked, someone said, “Ha, I never watched it. It had dragons in it, please.” But the dragons weren’t why the ending sucked: that was down to the producers failing to understand anything about character motivations. When I hated the last Avengers movie and stopped watching all things Marvel after that, someone said, “Those movies were dumb. People don’t have superpowers.” But once again, that wasn’t the point.

All stories are about real stuff. All of them. No matter how wacky. It isn’t about an evil Lovecraftian clown who gobbles children. He’s there, leering at me from the cover of my paperback edition, but the story isn’t about him. It’s about the pain and indignity of growing up; it’s about friendship; about parental abuse, and living through it; it’s about bravery, and sacrifice, and fear, and being brave and sacrificing in the face of that fear. All things that could be told in a more realistic, less fantastic way, sure; but the fantasy is what cloaks the whole of it, raises the stakes up to eleven, and makes those very real moments twice as enjoyable.

Every story I’ve ever written has largely been about the intricacies, failings, and triumphs of family. Sibling relationships, both strong and damaged, parental relationships, romantic relationships. No two the same, and all of them contrasting and complementing. As much as I enjoy the inherent eroticism of vampirism, or the pulse-pounding drama of a good fist fight, all of the fantasy and action elements are window dressing meant to highlight and deepen the character connections. It’s one of the reasons I’m never in a hurry to tell a story quickly. I’m not a plot-driven writer. I’m not rushing to “get to the point.” There’s a war on in the Drake Chronicles, but the books aren’t about the war. A few very twisted members of the FBI are hassling the Lean Dogs in Lord Have Mercy right now, but the book is about Mercy finally coming to grips with his heritage. All the betrayals, the revelations, the kisses, and the love confessions are honed to sharp points thanks to that window dressing. High stakes pointing spotlights on the low stakes.

I’ll let you decide which stakes are actually high and which are actually low. But that balance is essential in storytelling. I’m a slow beat, kitchen table conversation sort of writer, so that’s where all those stakes are focused in my work. Understanding what your tastes and preferences as a reader mean is a huge step in finding an authorial voice in your writing, I believe. You have to think about which stories stick with you the longest and most stubbornly, and then you have to analyze why, and then you can turn those lessons into your own writing mantra and set out to create all those warm fuzzies and shocked gasps for your readers in return.

And while we’re speaking of stakes…I decided I wanted to do a reread of the entire Sons of Rome series. Not skimming or note-checking, but an honest to goodness reread. I queued them all up on my Kindle and started with the preface, and I realized two things. One: I really, really enjoy this series, as a writer, but as a reader, too. Why wouldn’t I? It’s all my favorite things. And two: I want to do a structured readalong, hopefully starting next month. So be on the lookout for that. My aim is to start October 1^st, and do a post a week, moving at a reasonable pace through all four books. I’d love to dive back into work on Lionheart, but I need a refresher first, and I think it’ll be fun if we do that together. I’m always ready to share “director commentary” stuff.

Keep your eyes peeled. I miss my vamps and wolves.

#WorkshopWednesday - The Weight of Expectation

 

On Monday, I said I'd follow up my Jurassic Park 30th anniversary post with a post about the Jurassic World films, and I decided to turn it into a Workshop Wednesday post, so here we go. 

Let's talk about the weight of expectation. 

The beauty of adding an installment to an existing world is, well, obviously, the world already exists. You're adding new layers that can only be built upon what came before, taking the story further than you could with the original, foundational narrative. You can't, for instance, have a trained-raptor chase scene in Malta without seeing a raptor hatching in 1993. Whether or not the audience loves that Malta chase scene, though, is one of the pitfalls of writing within existing properties: a pre-existing world is familiar to the audience, and its members bring certain expectations with them to each new installment. 

The original Jurassic Park was an event. It became an instant icon, beloved by kids and adults. It makes sense that Crichton's follow-up novel, The Lost World, would get the film adaptation treatment. It wasn't as well received, but well enough to warrant a third film, this one a film-only effort, since there were no more books. At the time of their releases, I remember not liking them as well, but still being happy enough to return to the world of JP. Upon a rewatch this past winter, I felt more or less the same. The sanitized film version of The Lost World is much less intense and real-feeling as the novel. If you judge based on lone character from the first film carrying a follow-up film on their own, surrounded by new characters, Alan Grant cuts a much more compelling figure than Ian Malcolm, in my opinion, but the third film remains my least favorite of all six. 

Something about the end of it strikes me as terribly sad. In the beginning we see Alan visiting Ellie's family, very clearly still smitten, but he never took his chance, and now he looks on forlornly as she plays house with someone else. On the island, he's surrounded not by capable professionals, but by two panicky tourists - obviously, they're trying to find their son, not to tour, but they're liabilities rather than assets - and by a protege who ends up pulling a monumentally stupid stunt with the raptor eggs. They get off the island, in the end, but where the first film ended with that lovely sequence in the helicopter, the kids asleep on Alan's shoulders, Ellie smiling, soft with exhaustion, and the sun glittering off the water as a flock of pelicans, modern-day dinosaurs, keep pace alongside. The music sweeps our heroes grandly back to the mainland, and despite the loss, and the terror, and the harrowing escape, it feels as if there's a future out there waiting for them all, and that perhaps it can be a hopeful one. By contrast, for me at least, the third film feels very melancholy. Alan's just fought the same battle all over again, older, more exhausted, and still alone. You could argue that the movies are about dinosaurs and action sequences, that as long as though two requirements were met, that's all that was needed, and you wouldn't be wrong...but to me, had the third film been the last in the franchise, it would have felt like Jurassic Park ended not with a bang, but with a whimper. 

But then!

I'm going to be honest with you, I was 100% onboard when I saw the first trailer with Owen training the raptors. I was six again, thinking, if I worked at Jurassic Park, I'd totally imprint with a baby and have a special bond with it. That storytelling decision alone proved to me that someone working on the film looked at the viewers who'd grown up with JP and asked themselves, what did all of those kids want most in 1993? We wanted Magical Horse Girl bonds with dinosaurs, and Jurassic World said, I'll get right on that. 

Blue and Owen's relationship is my favorite thing about the Jurassic World movies. The first of the three films was pretty well-received, with mixed responses to two and three. Three, especially, didn't perform well with critics, but I can't remember the last time I listened to critics. I have my own quibbles, but on the whole, I think the films do a good job of 1) Establishing new and engaging characters, 2) Living within the rules of the established world while carrying forward the consequences of current actions, and 3) Remembering what made the first film special. 

From its inception, Jurassic World faced one major challenge: the weight of expectation. Forget rampaging dinosaurs: the scariest obstacle of all was an audience deeply familiar with, and comfortable in, and protective of the sandbox in which this new team was about to play. I feel their pain. Obviously, I haven't written, and likely never will write anything as well-known and loved as Jurassic Park. A girl can dream, but some dreams are just plain ridiculous. But no matter your name or noteworthiness, if you write a new story in an existing series, fans of that series will come to it with certain expectations. Occasionally those expectations are impossible to meet: a new story can't be exactly like the ones that came before it, or else it's not a new story at all. The characters will have gained knowledge and experience; new characters will enter the story; old challenges have been faced and new challenges await. A total lack of progress, plot-wise and character-wise, would be frustrating and stagnant, so it's impossible to recreate an earlier story - but you can try to recreate the feeling that story inspired. 

Typically, recreating a feeling means upping the ante. The addictive part of any story, the thing the audience craves, is not the conflict itself, but the emotion the conflict inspired in them. For instance, with Dartmoor, the upping of the ante was inevitable. In Price of Angels, the club faces off against a handful of evil rednecks. A small-scale enemy. Since then, the baddies have gotten bigger and badder, and now the club is squaring off against international sex-trafficking rings, and the FBI, and the Russian mafia. I've seen it argued that the series is "stronger" when the Dogs are facing small-scale villains, but here's the challenge: if they kept fighting evil rednecks every book, and never got any better at it, the overall story hasn't progressed one iota. The battle stops being suspenseful or thrilling or even frightening when it's the same battle over and over. It's like walking through a haunted house. Scary the first time. Maybe even the second. If you walked through the same haunted house fifty times in one night, and you knew exactly where each scare was, it stops being scary at all. Same with Dartmoor: the club can't face new challenges if the club and its members don't grow. As a writer, I have to find new ways to create suspense and intrigue and a chance for love to save the day, but you'd get tired of the same plot retread in each novel. (Sidenote: rereading is a fantastic way to revisit older stories, and I'm on a reread/rewatch kick myself right now.) As a writer, you want to move forward, to allow the natural progression of your fictional world to unfold, but you want to hold on to what the audience found special about earlier stories. 

It's a tricky balancing act, one that's guaranteed to polarize portions of your audience. How do you keep writing when there are voices in the back of your head already predicting those inevitable snarky reviews? How do you focus on this story, right now in front of you, while honoring the past, and without letting those future nay-sayers get you hung up with indecision? I'm working on Dartmoor book 10, and I already know what the critics are going to say. Because I'm bookending Fearless, I'm waxing poetic about the swamp, and its haunted waters, already knowing the novel will be called "bloated," "too descriptive," "slow," etc. Mercy and Ava are married, have three kids, and are juggling all that entails, as opposed to restarting a taboo romance against her father's wishes like in Fearless, but this book will be accused of "not feeling like" Fearless. I can look at each beat, each scene, and see exactly how it will be torn to shreds. 

Even if, like me, you don't let the ebb and flow of outside opinion dictate your storytelling, that weight of expectation exists, and must be shouldered, resisted, met in small bites, disregarded in others. It's the silent partner in the corner of the room; the bigger the franchise, the bigger and scarier the silent partner in the corner. In my own work, the best course is to stay true to my characters, knowing I can't please everyone. In some big pieces of media, the goal is to subvert expectations totally...to the point that the story becomes disjointed, meaningless, and naught but a shell of its origin, like with Games of Thrones. Sometimes, the weight of expectations is the only consideration, to the point that the characters have zero agency or impact. *Oscar Isaac voice*: "Somehow, Palpatine has returned." Given the absolute shitshow that has been franchise endings in recent history, I'm here to boldly say that Jurassic World didn't do so badly. 

Setting aside my love of trained raptors, let's look at the logic of the concept within the world of Jurassic Park. In-universe, with the technology already there, the island there, the dinosaurs there, it makes sense that someone would try to get the park up and running for real this time. It's a logical next step, given the circumstances, and is also very satisfying for viewers to see the park operating as Hammond always envisioned - perhaps in a much more advanced and engaging way than he ever could have imagined. But with the park up and running, and running smoothly, where's the conflict? In this film we get a twofer: rampaging dino, and malevolent government-funded entity wanting to use dinos as weapons. (Sidenote: casting Vincent D'Onofrio instantly adds an element of the unexpected to any character, so using him here turned what would have been a very flat Sinister Gov Guy into one with a little of that D'Onofrio WTF magic.) Following through with the logical train of thought: a T-Rex got loose and terrorized everyone in the first film, so doing the same would be, well, more of the same. How do you up the ante? Creating a new breed of dinosaur fits logically in-universe, and they do a decent job of explaining its unpredictability on its mashed-up genetics, and its utter lack of socialization. The horse-trainer part of my brain was tickled by all the animal psychology in this film. Likewise, the raptor training involved that important blend of bond and respect necessary for training strong-breed attack and personal protection dogs. It's like Schutzhund for dinosaurs. 

I'm not going to use the word "flaw" here, because that word gets thrown around in reviews when the reviewer really means "weak point" or "silliness I couldn't get on board with." A flaw is an error, or an unforeseen drawback that actively damages the story in some way. I don't really think this movie damages itself, but it does have weak points and bits of silliness. I know viewers complained about the kid storyline, and it was admittedly my least favorite portion of the movie. Narratively, it serves a few purposes. One, it shows us some of the park attractions we wouldn't otherwise see: the petting zoo, the tram - fully-enclosed to allow safe T-Rex feeding views - and the mosasaur show. Taking their little hamster ball off-course is dumb, and predictably disastrous, but it gets Claire and Own out in a truck searching the park for them. A different reason for sending them out alone could have been concocted, but I think the kids were used because it fulfills a callback: having kids at all. Tim and Lex, and Alan protecting them, were a major driving force in the first film, a role that Claire's nephews fill in JW.  I tend to give writers a little more leeway as a writer myself, so I can see the writing decision here: risk the goofiness of having kid characters? Or not include any kids, and risk the audience wishing there were kids here, like in the first film? That's a dice roll decision, and I don't envy them. 

Another major point of silliness is Claire going to fetch the T-Rex to fight the new dino. Ah, yes, let's add another giant carnivore to this party. Couple that with some of the overblown, lingering facial-expression shots and slow-mo running of that sequence, and it's just silly. Also, yeah right would the raptors help the T-Rex. (ALTHOUGH: it's not uncommon for predators to team up against a common enemy in the wild, so who knows. The crows and hawks hate each other at my house, but will join forces to wage war on the great horned owls, so...*shrugs*) But the T-Rex scene isn't just silly: it's also a great big, extended callback to the first film, with the script flipped. In JP, a T-Rex on the loose is rightly terrifying; but this time, it's salvation. And on a purely emotional, JP kid level? I cheered when she came out of her paddock and joined the fight. My inner six-year-old freaking loved it, so I forgive all its silliness. Not only did I forgive it, but I walked away from the film grinning, and that means the film was an artistic success. At least in my books it was. 

I find the same holds true for the next two films as well. I found the volcanic eruption, and subsequent death of the dinos on Isla Nublar genuinely upsetting. That final shot of the Brachiosaurus on the dock, crying? Yeah. That felt bad. It felt really bad. Like seeing the slain Diplodocus herd in the previous film. The mainland shenanigans succeed and flounder in different ways, the villains get their comeuppance, but not after sowing seeds of chaos. The whole mansion scene running from the Indo-raptor feels drawn-out and very static from a character growth standpoint. Nothing meaty or important is happening when everyone's running and screaming. But I still think the "logic" behind the story works. They're still tampering with genetics, and none of the revelations in this film - even Maisie - negate the science of previous films. Jurassic World does a really good job all the way through three films of building on what came before, rather than tearing it down and starting over, which is no mean feat, let me tell you. I think it makes sense some of the dinos were saved from the island, and we see in the following film that turning them loose had real consequences that aren't swept under the rug for convenience. If you make a narrative decision, you have to stick with it, and these movies do. 

The last film, Dominion, was the most critically reviled of the three. I don't think it was the trainwreck some of them claimed. In fact, I think the basis of the plot carries its weight and the conclusion is much more satisfying and emotionally rewarding than, say, the end of Jurassic Park III. Where it struggles is in some of the blending of new crew with old; there are too many direct callbacks that make some moments too silly, and so much action that the character beats get lost along the way. 

I think the locust angle actually plays. Again, the natural progression of sciences already established, wielded by malevolent, government-funded entities. 

The reintroduction of our OG crew was filmed to be a little hokey on purpose, but I'm here for it. Ellie standing on the truck's running board, pulling off her shades against the wind. Awesome. Same with the familiar music swelling as Alan turns at a dig site and reveals his face to the camera. I love the callback of Ellie showing up in his camp, and them fixing drinks and talking: it reminded me of Hammond opening champagne for them in the very first film. I liked Ian being all schmoozy and touchy like he was in JP, and I'll even take the callback where he's later trying to walk them along the control room map with walkie-talkies. 

But oh, was there was some silliness in the forced team-up scene-framing and dialogue in the last quarter of the film. The biggest offenders are:

• Alan and Ellie's awkward run-in with Maisie
• Ian and the flare when it's taking them forever and a day to get up the ladder while Giganotosaurus tries to eat them all. 
• The cringey girl power moment with Claire and Ellie in the control room.
• Dodgson and his Barbasol can heirloom that was found in the mud and made it off the island how????
• Alan helping Owen and Maisie with "the pose" while they triangulate on Blue's baby (Beta? iirc)
• Dino pushing off of what??? to fly up through the ice and attack them.
• WHY are you trying to LASSO a Parasaurolophus from a HORSE?? Do you want to DIE???
  
  

Whew. Deep breath. There's other quibbles, but they're little, taste-specific, and I'm not going to go into them. 

All of that aside...I still had a good time. I smiled and laugh-groaned over the silliness, because none of it changed the meaning of the film. None of it happened at the expense of a logical and rewarding conclusion. I think we've gotten so jaded, but a little silly's okay now and then. More realism would have meant more gore, more death, less fun. 

At the end of the day, Jurassic World honors and builds on the OG film, and that's what counts for me. And it bought us nine more hours in a universe that I've loved since childhood. I got my Alan and Ellie kiss, finally! And Blue remains the Best Girl. 

It's been 30 years, six films, and Jurassic Park has, I think, fared very well under the weight of all that expectation.