Ideas Are Never Wasted

"I'm still big, it's the pictures that got small." --Norma Desmond, Sunset Boulevard.

In Sunset Boulevard, aging film star Norma Desmond has an idea for a comeback, an idea so awesome that she's convinced it will only take tweaking by a good screenwriter to make it perfect.

The key to this classic movie is that Norma is partially right. She's still a fascinating, vital women and should still be in pictures. But she's wrong as well, refusing to accept that her one brilliant idea can never bring back the life that was.

Gloria Swanson explains it all to William Holden in Sunset Boulevard

She's so deluded that even after murdering the person who was supposed to be her savior, she retreats further into her fantasy world, becoming the part she wanted to play when the cameras show up. "I'm ready for my close-up," she declares, having permanently taken up residence in fantasy. That fantasy is so strong and so comforting and reality so harsh, that it's hard to blame her. Even Joe Gillis (William Holden), gives her a pass. He, of course, regrets it.

Sometimes I feel like Norma, hanging onto an idea so tightly that it's impossible to know whether the belief in that idea or story is an utter fantasy, a delusion so big that it allows no room for reality to intrude.

Writing has no box scores, no bottom line that defines success or failure. Publishing does, of course, and that's measured it in sales dollars, but, as with any art, sales dollars aren't always the best measure of overall success.

I choose to be positive about ideas that don't work out, as part of my 10,000 hours of practice toward getting decent as writing.

My one big idea that hasn't worked out so far is to write a paranormal with a ghost hunter and two psychics hunting a mad scientist vampire. The original concept was to pair two women and one guy, since I'd been seeing so many romantic threesomes with two girls and a girl and I thought I'd mix it up. Well, turns out the reason the reason two guys and a girl is a more popular threesome is because it's more likely to be a female fantasy.

Oops.

Luckily, this revelation occurred only about 10,000 words into the book. So I swapped out Tammy for Rhys and I wrote the rest of it. In first person. For 80,000 words.

And at the end of the book, I liked the plot, the villain, and the two guys. I didn't like my narrator, my heroine, at all. And I didn't like the first person narration.

Oops again.

It turns out, unlike many authors who write in first person, that point of view distances me from my characters. When I write in third person, I feel like I'm riding with them as the story happens. When I write in first person, I feel like I'm sitting in front of a fire with my narrator and they're telling me a story, rather than me experiencing the story along with them.

So, rewrite needed. Back to third person. For all 80,000 words.

Still didn't work. ARGH.

I'd learned a lot about how to write psychic elements and how they combine with sex and a lot about writing a younger male character, and a lot about ghosts. But it was the first book that I just didn't feel I should even try to sell.

I put it aside.

I started writing something new, superheroes, and the Phoenix Institute series was born. The first book, Phoenix Rising, featured a young male hero. With psychic abilities such as telekinesis and firestarting that were not completely under his control. It also featured a heroine whose own abilities responded to the hero's.

In other words, elements from my failed idea. Younger hero. Check. Psychic abilities that needed some work. Check. Combination of psychic powers and sex. Check.

Phoenix Rising has been my biggest seller to date and it keeps selling.

So was the paranormal featuring the mad scientist vampire as the villain a failure or a bad idea? Nah. I just needed to practice first.

I've since gone back to the ghost hunter threesome story and rewritten it and it features a narrator I enjoy now. I noticed this week that a publisher was looking for a modern gothic, which is mostly what that so-called "failed book" is.

So I've concluded Norma Desmond was right. It wasn't the idea that was bad. It was the writing that got small.

And small writing?

It takes time, patience and energy but I can fix that.

Corrina Lawson is a writer, mom, geek and superhero. Most of the time. :) You can find out more about her books at www.corrina-lawson.com

Are Villains Better Than Heroes?

There are times when villains are much more fun than heroes. J.R. Ewing of Dallas is much more interesting than his good brother, Bobby. Alexis Carrington Colby Dexter Dexter of Dynasty had a much more fun life than her rival, Krystle Carrington.

And who doesn't root for Alan Rickman over Kevin Costner in 1991's Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves? Robin is wooden and boring in this movie. Rickman, however, seems like great fun!

And then it becomes tempting to turn these villains into heroes or, if not heroes, not really villains any longer.

My two favorite former villains are Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Magneto from Marvel's X-Men.

Not sure? Would you pick Xavier or Magneto from X-Men First Class? Spike or Angelus?

To me, that answer is obvious.

I think the key to creating a memorable villain is, as with all good characters, a sense of who they are.

Magneto didn't suddenly decide that humans were worthless. He saw his family destroyed in the Holocaust and then humans attacked him merely because he was a mutant. He has good reason to hate others and to impose his will on a society that doesn't understand him. His methods over the years--including his slide into mutant terrorism--left a great deal to be desired.

But such was the power of his character that he's now become a sort of mutant mentor and is more often allied with Xavier's students than not. In some alternate timelines, he's a hero.

Spike, in his first appearance, was a completely unredeemable villain. He loved being a vampire, he had no remorse for his human victims, and he had no intention whatsoever of being a good guy. But we loved him anyway because he was witty and he was fascinating to watch on-screen. His love for Drusilla took precedence over all. He didn't want to destroy the world, he only wanted Dru to be happy and he'd do whatever that took for her.

Over the years, that ability to love transformed Spike from villain to hero. Well, with a few bumps here and there.

Jennifer Crusie, when she talks about antagonists, says that no one gets up and says "I'm going to be an asshole today." No, these villains likely have very good reasons for what they do and that depth is what makes the hero's triumph at the end all the better.

I have a special fondness for two of the villains I've written. One is Lansing from Phoenix Rising. He was inspired by Magneto as he has a disdain for the human race and thinks they need to be controlled or destroyed to protect his own. But the means he uses to accomplish this is what turns him into a villain. But he's not completely dark.

The other is a villain in an unpublished paranormal story who I like to call the Gil Grissom vampire. He's a 100-year-old vampire who's lost his humanity but not his need to explore science, especially on how to reverse vampirism. So he sees the world as test subjects, not people. He's absent-mindedly evil.

I have this desire to write him as the hero in the third book of the trilogy but that will take some doing.

I consider it a challenge. :)