You're Wrong About Planning and Structure

So I've gotten kind of tired of my Facebook addiction and I'm trying to get addicted to Twitter, now.

(Follow me! @CarlWrites)

While I was experimenting with this new thing called Twitter that I understand is all the rage with the young folk, I stumbled upon this image.

(Visit http://www.tomgauld.com/ for details about and further work from the illustrator of this image. No, seriously, do it. His stuff is super cool.)

Now this comic is kind of funny and it highlights a very common criticism of certain writing theory and technique. It's an argument against formula, against rigid structure like the three act structure and it's the sort of arguments I hear from people who are explaining why they never plot or plan a story before writing it.

I used to be one of those people. I used to wing it every step of the way for maximum creativity. I wrote Sorceress' Blood that way.

And if you happen to be one of those people, good for you. If it works for you and you write productively and write well and you're happy, good for you.

But allow me to express a counter point.

Go to your book shelf, down to the book store, to the library, to your e-book store of choice and have a look around. Dig out a stack of your favourite books from the last two thousand years and I guarantee you that some of those were written specifically to the three act structure. I guarantee you that some of those books were intricately planned before a single word was put down on the page. 

And I'll go a step further. I'll say that some more of those books were written without a plan and then heavily revised to have a better structure, to suit a more rigid plan. The same can be said for your favourite movies, your favourite stage shows, our favourite comics, your favourite Pokemon/Sonic The Hedgehog cross-over erotic epic poetic saga fan fiction.

Did you notice it when you read those books? Did it ruin the experience for you?

I asked you to get your favourite books, so I'm going to go ahead and say that you weren't too bothered by the fact that somebody planned it before it was written.

That's because it works. It has always worked. It will always work. Those beginning and end points, those turning points, the inciting incident, the rising tension, the climax all make for a good story. You could argue that this kind of story telling isn't an invention but a discovery, that we naturally tell stories this way. It's an idea with some solid ground, considering how many stories follow the formula and that it can even be applied to the way we tell anecdotes from our life and how we tell jokes.

And when you deviate in a big way, when you have your inciting incident too late, when your tension scale is flat, when there's no climax, when your conflict arises too fast or too slow, people notice it and they don't like it. Go ahead and break from the formula. Write your story with no climax. Trust me when I tell you nobody wants an anti-climactic story or one that just stops without resolution.

And for all the complains about rigidity, about restriction and how it kills your creativity, at its most basic level, a structure isn't that rigid. A structure is a guide, a framework for telling a story in a way that is logical, natural and satisfying. Whether it's three acts, four acts, seven acts or nine acts, they're essentially the same idea expressed in a different way.

Used correctly, a story structure is invisible. It's a subtle formula that bends to your needs as you shape your story to fit it. The only people who see it are those who are looking for it or already know it's there, and even then the lines can be blur together easily.

Look, as I said, if you don't plan your story in advance and ignore all the theories about structure and it's working out for you then that's great. I'm happy for you. But if you think that planning ahead or applying a structure to your story makes for a worse story or weakens creativity in some way, or that it makes all stories the same, then you're just plain wrong. You, sir or madam, are factually incorrect! And the chances are, if you finish your work and go back and have a look, you'll be able to see a way your story already fits a basic structure. They're that flexible that you can usually apply them after the fact without much difficulty.

Whether or not you personally consider narrative structures and formula, whether or not you personally plan ahead according to these theories, they work, have always worked and will always make for good stories.

At the end of the day, everybody writes differently and we all find our own balance of planning, moment-to-moment creativity, and we all decide which tools we're going to master and bring to our blank page to craft our story. There's no one correct way of doing things. Just don't trash other people's methods.

To Do List - 2016

Around this time, there's lots of talk of new years resolutions. I think it's great. I don't partake in it, but I think it's great.

What I do every year is make a To Do List. I make a list of all the things I want to accomplish through the year. They're not resolutions because they're not about a change in behaviour or altering my lifestyle. They're not on-going goals like most resolutions are, they're binary. It's not like a diet which I'm doing, then I slip, then I'm doing it again, then it's the holiday season and I'm bending it a little for social necessity, then I'm back to it. Either I achieve them or I don't. They're either done or they're not. Once they're done, they can't be undone. It's a small distinction but it's important enough to note.

It began in 2013, the year after Sorceress' Blood was published. I decided at the start of that year that I'd have my next novel ready for publication, a collection of short stories in the editing stages and the first draft of a third novel begun.

I accomplished none of those goals in 2013.

In 2014, I basically had the same list. Pilgrimage published and knee deep in the next novel by the start of 2015. I decided not to go with the short story collection idea and instead sell a short story to a magazine. Just one.

Well I did a little better that time. In 2014, I finished Pilgrimage and it was released in November for the whole wide world to read and enjoy. I'd made a dent in the next novel's first draft but I hadn't sold a short story. So I took those left overs and made them my To Do List for 2015.

2015 was a tough year for me for a whole bunch of reasons. I had some hyper productive days, I made some great progress and I learned a lot. In fact, this year's biggest triumph has been how much I've learned about planning a story. But in terms of my To Do List? I didn't tick anything off. Projects aren't finished yet and projects I never intended to work on made a lot of progress.

2015 has been interesting, if not my most productive year.

Now we're just days away from 2016 and I'm looking at my next To Do List. I'm going to share it with you. Hopefully you'll come up with your own. It doesn't have to be long or complicated. Mine is just, well, take a look...

1. Sell a short story
2. Finish second draft of Sorceress' Blood 2
3. Plot fourth novel

After doing this a few years, I'm working to find the right balance of goals that I can accomplish, goals that will challenge me, goals that won't get in the way of each other and goals that are important to me.

The first two are obvious, but those second two are also important. I believe your writer's To Do List for the year should not have goals that interfere with each other. I'm not trying to write two novels at the same time. Those are two massive tasks that I can't split my attention between. I don't know if anybody could juggle that. On the other hand, my first goal is selling a short story. The focus here is selling. The market for any short story is going to be limited and if I've got something in review in that market, I can spend the waiting time working on Sorceress' Blood 2. And I only need to work on it. My goal is not to finish the book this year, it's to complete the second draft. Once the first draft is done, I'll take a break from it and if I haven't sold a story by then, I can work on a few more while taking a break from the novel. These are two different goals, two different tasks. They won't interfere with each other. The third goal is the same. Plotting is something I can do in the spare moments of the day, be it sitting on the train with a notebook or brainstorming in the shower. Plotting time doesn't have to overlap writing time.

The fourth criteria for a goal is being important. I've ranked them in order of importance. For the last two years I've been working here and there on some short stories to try and sell them. So far I've been unsuccessful. The stories I've written have been rejected. Many more I started and wrote didn't even make it to the pitch because they didn't work in a fundamental way or weren't good enough for a wide audience. But I'm not stopping because it's important to me. I want to do it, I want to prove to myself I can do it.

A very early lesson I learned about writing is that you're going to fall short of your dream. You're going to be rejected, you're not going to be a best seller, you're going to get bad reviews, your dreams are not going to come true, your "final draft" is going to suck and you need to do another one. It sucks. But lucky for you and me, there's infinite retries. Get out there and do it again. Maybe this time it'll stick, maybe you'll be lucky. But to be motivated, to be persistent, it has to matter to you.

Writing books matters to me. Right now, selling a short story matters to me.

Every year I've made a To Do List, I've had left overs to carry over to the next year. I've carried over more of my list than I've ticked off. But that's fine. I don't plan on dying any time soon and that is literally the only thing that's going to stop me. I can keep going because it's important to me.

And as long as you don't stop trying, you haven't failed yet.

So just make sure Giving Up isn't on your To Do List.

Writer's Group: A Reflection

So back in August last year, I wrote briefly about being part of a writer's group and also about my hesitation towards such things. I'd been burned before.

But I went in with an open mind and no shortage of eagerness, in part because it was being conducted different to any group I'd been a part of before and also because it included many of my close friends. Indeed, the tremendously creative and ever enthusiastic Craig Robotham cooked up the whole idea.

Every month we set ourselves a challenge to write at least 500 words to a particular theme of challenge and then workshop it together, take notes, give notes, discuss and so on. I submitted for their approval a slice of Pilgrimage's prologue (this was not long before Pilgrimage was published) and received some wonderful feedback to help pick up my game on it.

Our first month was very productive, full of participation and conversation and we swapped ideas and worked together and everything was just dandy.

Then came the second month and, sadly, my prophetic visions began to be realised. Mostly, it seemed, people were unable or unwilling to commit. I don't say that in a judgmental way. We've all over committed ourselves at one time or another and for many or most in the group, writing wasn't a job, just a hobby. Whatever the reason, participation dropped sharply in the second and third month. A few new people joined in, revitalised numbers and contributed their best and then fell away. Less than six months after we began our great experiment, with only a few people contributing, we pulled the plug.

More than a year now, since we started, with everything unfolding more or less as I expected (in my tremendous cynicism) I'm disappointed but my view of writing groups has changed significantly since last August.

If you're not part of a writing group, you should be.

Or maybe groups aren't really your thing. You could be a grumpy recluse like me. That's fine. Then find a buddy or two, find a writing partner and make friends with them.

Either approach is fine, so long as you find somebody or somebodies and use them. Talk shop with them, trade ideas, collaborate, swap writing and give each other feedback. Make it detailed, make it honest, most importantly, make it helpful.

Remember how I said a little while back that books aren't written by one person? This is the sort of thing I'm talking about. You are not an island. You can't expect to be an island and a good writer. I have a number of good test readers for my work and an exceptionally talented editor to help me, too. But I also have writers in my peer group that I can go to. Writers have a different perspective to readers. They see the code, they know the secrets, they've learned the language. Even if you don't think they know more than you (and you shouldn't be so arrogant, really) odds are good they can remind you when you forget something important.

So if you haven't, find some writers near you or some writers online. Give them a chance, meet with them, talk with them, swap some work and some feedback. See if they're the right kind of people for you and stick with them.

That last bit is important, too. It's not enough that these people merely be writers, they have to be writers you respect, writers you will be willing to listen to and spend a lot of time talking to. If you find yourself having inexplicable bouts of rage when you see their faces, move on and find some different people. Don't let one bad experience jade you to the point where you are deprived of valuable learning experiences and opportunities to improve your craft.

Like the man said...

Just do it!

Also, go and look at Craig Robotham's work because it's awesome and he's awesome and you'll won't regret it.

Are You Representing?

I thought about posting this over on the soap box but decided I want to talk about this not so much from a philosophical perspective but from creator's perspective. Because of the nature of the topic, we can't avoid the politics completely but we're going to go light on that.

I'll go into this a little at the end but right now you need to accept an axiom. Before we go further, you've got to get keen on this idea. If you can't, what I have to say will be moot to you. Ready?

Diverse representation of humanity in your work is a good thing.

So when I wrote Sorceress' Blood, I set a chunk of the book in China. This meant there were a number of Chinese characters. But that makes sense, right? Book set in China, got to have some Chinese walking around. Why was it set in China? Why not? China is cool. I'm Chinese history hobbyist and I wanted part of the book to be in China.

Pilgrimage is set entirely in Australia but one important member of the supporting cast is a Japanese woman. A Japanese sorceress living out in small town Australia. Why is she Japanese? Is it important for her to be Japanese? Does her being Japanese mean anything? Is it just because I'm a massive Japanophile? Is there an in plot justification for her to be Japanese? No. No there isn't. Her magic is heavily drawn from Japanese Buddhist mysticism* but she could just has easily have been an Irish woman with magic drawn from druidic tradition or a Native American shaman type figure or a Voodooist (is Voodooist the right word?) But I chose Japanese. Sue me.

Right now I'm writing a book with a bit of an ensemble cast. One protagonist is a half-Italian girl and one is a homosexual man. Is there a reason? Does this have any bearing on the plot? Would it change anything if he was straight or bi? No. I just thought it'd be good to have a homosexual character.

I just thought it'd be good to have some diversity. I want to write a world in which there's more than hetero white people walking around.

But equally important is that those characters are not defined by the things that make them diverse. The homosexual character is not defined by his sexuality, it's just part of his make up as a (fictional) person. It no more defines him than that he is male or that he is English or that he is a Sorcerer. Rather, all of that informs the person he is and the actions he takes in the story. You know, like people.

Yasu, in Pilgrimage, is a sorceress of legendary power who also happens to be Japanese. She isn't a powerful Sorceress because she is Japanese, or because she's a woman, or because she's old. All these are traits she has but you cannot reduce her to one trait. At least, I like to think so. Critics may disagree.

But the point here is that when you're writing a diverse cast of characters, it is extremely important that you avoid tokenism and fetishisation of that diversity. I think we can all agree that Will & Grace was kind of funny but also kind of awkwardly a little offensive too but it's over and we're a more enlightened culture now and we don't need to have stereotypes in our work.

If you think you might be falling on sexual, gender or racial stereotypes, stop and reset yourself. Try writing the character without any reference to their gender, sexuality, race etc. and just write them as you think they should be written to be the most interesting character possible, then go back and add those missing details in revision.

Now I'm sure some of you are thinking, asking, "Surely if I'm writing a transgender character into my story, there should be a reason for them to be transgender. Their gender identity should be part of their arc or it should have an impact on the plot or there should be an in world reason for it." This question isn't usually asked about non-white characters but it often comes up talking about LGBT characters in fiction.

And I ask you: Why? Do you ask LGBT people in the real world to justify themselves? Do you think they need permission from you in the real world to exist? No, of course you don't because that's insane. Including diverse characters doesn't need a special reason because it doesn't need to be a big deal. It doesn't need to be any kind of deal.**

So if it's not part of the plot in anyway, how do you work this sort of thing in? Again, this isn't such an issue with racial heritage. You can tell your reader this character is a black American as easy as you can tell the reader their hair colour or what shoes they're wearing. But what about gender and sexuality?

Again, the key is not to make it a big deal.** We reveal all kinds of little and inconsequential details to the reader as we develop our characters. This character's father is dead, this character likes driving muscle cars, this character did some boxing in university, this character is homosexual, this character is allergic to latex. It's not a plot twist and it doesn't need a big reveal. Work it in naturally, just make it a part of who that character is and you'll see the place and time to bring it out and show the reader.

"Okay, Carl, so you've convinced me. This is a piece of cake. I'll make my writing more diverse. I'll include more and varied women characters, I'll have a whole range of nationalities and ethnicity in my cast. I'll have some LGBT characters. Of course, I won't go overboard. One in 20 people in the real world is homosexual, so one out of every twenty characters I write will be homosexual. On average, you know."

Look, I don't want to tell you that every book needs to have a transgender character, a Mexican character, a black character, a homosexual character and also has to pass the Bechdel test. That's not my goal here at all. I don't hold myself to that standard. But just because your life experience or some statistics you found on the internet tells you that homosexual women only ever appear once in a blue moon, that doesn't mean they should be that rare in your fiction. The goal here is to show a diverse world, not an accurate to real life world.

I'm saying make an effort. Because diversity is good. The problem is a lack of variety of humans in fiction.

Because your readers want to read about people like them. Because you provide a better experience for your diverse audience if you give them people like them, characters they can better relate to. Because there's a lot of romance and erotic books about homosexual characters but not enough homosexual action heroes. Because when you include diversity in your writing, you become a better writer.

I'd like to leave you with this image that's been floating around the internet for a little while now. If you need any more convincing, just take a look here.***

****

 *but more on the Buddhist reading of Pilgrimage another time...
**Obviously stories where racial and sexual identity is the main theme do exist but they're a different topic.
***I've focused on sexual and racial diversity here but it extends beyond that. Diverse representation can also include characters with autism, or characters suffering depression. I have by no means been exhaustive.
****If this image is yours or you know the author, please let me know so that I can give appropriate credit and kudos to them.
Note: While I have tried to refer to all people by non-offensive terms, I apologise if my politically correct language is not current. I tried my best. Correct me in the comments if you like.

Kick Start Your Imagination

So you've sat down at your desk, picked up a pen, turned on the computer, dusted off the type writer, cut the throat of a chicken or otherwise prepared your writing tools. You're ready, you're willing. You want this, you need this, oh baby, oh baby.

It's time to write.

And you sit there. And you sit there. Nothing happens.

Damn.

So you want to create but the White Queen has come and turned your Brain-Narnia into a frozen wasteland. There's no sun, no warmth, no growth and no Christmas. So what are you going to do? Well, here's a few tips.

Listen to music

Hardly a secret. Everybody says listen to music. But that's because it works. Music stimulates us, gets our minds going. Music can be like dropping acid on our imagination and sounds become images become stories become inspiration. So choose some tunes and let it happen. For some people, any music will do. Just that addition of sound to their work space gets them going. For some, it's got to be classical music. Classical music is the smart man's music. Classical does you well. I've known writers who choose music that suits what they want to write. Fast, energetic music for action, somber and slow for drama. Film soundtracks are excellent for this. There's also many musicians who offer their music for free online for personal use. Finally, some writers, like myself, will choose music that their POV character would enjoy. What do you think your character would listen to? What artists? What genres? Use music to get a little deeper into that POV and think like your character.

Take a shower

It is well documented that we have some of our deepest, most inspired and most creative thoughts while we're showering. Can't seem to get the creativity turned on? Go jump under the water for a little while, stand and reflect, think and imagine. The shower is a great environment for meditation and it might be what you need to put yourself in the right frame of mind for creating.

Punch the keys, for God's sake

I hope you read that in a Sean Connery voice. If not, for shame. Anyway. If you just can't get the next sentence started on your work in progress, try opening up a new file or turning to a blank page and hit the keys. Start just by hitting keys, then make words, any words. You can type your thoughts, or type all the words you know in alphabetical order. I like to free style some kind of brief narrative, just putting one event after the other no matter how they connect (or don't, as is often the case.) We're not trying to create art here, we're just getting the hands moving. It's purely physical. Once your body is warmed up and you've got your attention where it should be, turn back to your project and keep the fingers in motion.

Read a book, watch a movie

Somewhere in our life, we decided we wanted to write. I would bet that it happened for you in a similar way to me. You watched a movie or a TV show or read a book or a comic or saw a stage show and you said, "Damn, I want to create that." This trick for kick starting your imagination is all about feeling. Dig out one of your favourite stories - in whatever form that takes. Watch/read for a little while, until you get inspiration. Find that feeling that made you want to write in the first place. For my money, I like to watch 'Terminator 2' because damn. Dayum. I watch that movie and I say "Why am I sitting here? I want to make a story that good! I want to give somebody the same kind of experience Mr Cameron just gave me!" Again, you want something that will inspire an emotion, not an idea.

Brain Storm

Or maybe what you need is ideas. Maybe your work is at a dead end and that's why you don't know how to get writing again. So start writing down ideas for what could happen next. Anything. No, really, anything. Begin with something like "the world explodes," or, "Main character wakes up and finds he is a cockroach," or absolutely anything else and if that ideas doesn't quite suit you, go onto the next one. Eventually you'll get past the absurd and you'll be writing down implausible ideas, and boring ideas, then possible ideas and if you write down your ideas for long enough, you'll eventually write down THE BEST DAMN IDEA YOU EVER DID SEE THERE, BOY.

Your mileage will vary. Some methods will work for you, others will not. Give them all a try at least once, see what gets you going. If none of these are your cup of tea, trust me, there's plenty more for you. You'll find something.

Face It, You Suck

Yesterday I say down and I wrote for an hour and I sucked.

It happens.

It may have been because it was getting late and I was tired, or I hadn't eaten dinner yet and I was hungry. It could be that I've recently lost a friend and didn't feel so creative. It could be I'd spent a little too long playing a video game and my mind had gone numb, all my creativity dried and turned to dust.

What may have caused an evening of some terrible writing doesn't matter. Fact is, I wrote some absolutely awful prose. I was productive, but in the same way food poisoning makes you productive. You're welcome for that thought.

So I finished an hour of writing and said, "I'm going to put a hold on this for now."

I'll try again tonight. I might still be in poor form. I might write some more crap. Depending on how the day goes, I might write crap for two hours, or three.

In the end it doesn't matter. It doesn't bother me even a little.

Normally I like to flatter myself and say I'm a decent author. I write some good stuff, some exciting stuff, some engaging stuff. Mostly I like to say I write something worth reading.

And often, I don't. Days like yesterday happen. No big deal.

I'm going to say something that's pretty standard writer's advice. This maxim gets shared around plenty and, unlike many writer's maxims, I tend to agree with this one.

Give yourself permission to suck.

It's going to happen. It's probably going to happen more often than not. A lot of the time, it's going to happen when you don't even realise it. You'll write something and you'll be very happy with it and later you'll come back to edit it and you'll say, "What happened? This was good when I wrote it! Those damn Suck Goblins snuck into my house again and ruined all my work!" But the Suck Goblins aren't real. I know they're not because I just made them up. Literally, I made them up just now. So you can't blame the Suck Goblins. That bad writing is all you. Bad prose, bad dialogue, bad plot, bad metaphors, all of it is on you.

And that's just fine. It happens. Nobody writes a perfect first draft. Nobody writes a perfect second draft. Third draft? Nope. Fourth? Fifth? I highly doubt it. Personally, I usually take six or seven drafts to get something right. Every draft up to that point is full of suck.

I plan to go into detail on editing in the near future so I won't dwell on this idea for long but let me say this: Good writing happens in pieces, in stages, over time. Drafts one to five aren't terrible and then draft six is all strawberries and cream. Each stage sands off the edges and polishes the surfaces until you've got it right.

What are the caveats, you ask? Good. You're learning. There's always fine print, always some extra detail these maxims demand. Sadly, they don't get shared as often as the maxim itself - because writers just love a snappy little truism. But this is why you come to me, right? We don't play around, here. We get down to the hard nosed truth.

All right. So, give yourself permission to suck.

But don't. Don't ever let yourself get the idea that writing something crap is okay. It's not. We're not put upon this earth to write bad stories with bad prose. We're here to produce quality. So when you notice yourself writing something that makes babies cry for all the wrong reasons, just make a little note of it to yourself and keep going. You'll come back later and fix it up. All this bad writing here is an error that must be fixed like a typo. It's a typo that the government gave psychic powers to and now its powers are out of control and its body is mutating into this giant fleshy baby looking monstrosity and it's shouting "KANEDA!!!" and you're shouting "TETSUO!!!" and half your audience is scratching their heads at this point, wondering just how we got to this point. The take-away from this is that you don't want to write badly, and when you do, remind yourself that it is bad and that you'll fix it up later.

Don't get comfortable with bad writing.

This is all about acceptance of the inevitable and giving our self the space to keep going. Bad writing mustn't become a stumbling block. It's a part of life that we acknowledge, and then we keep writing and we finish what we're doing and we get to the end of the draft and then we start again and we polish the surfaces and we sand the edges and bit by bit we remove all that sucky writing we did. But in the mean time, you have permission to suck.

Fortunately for us, that's the long and the short of the fine print on this one. It needs to be said, but it's said briefly. Maxims are great and that's why we love to share them around and make them into memes and say "Hey there, creative buddy of mine, just remember that when the tough gets going, it's okay to suck." Or something like that. But we must always look deeper and unpack pithy phrases like these to make sure we really understand them.

If we don't, we may get the wrong idea and when somebody says "Hey, this thing you wrote is kind of craptastic. You're usually better than that," we go and turn into a giant raging were-honey-badger and scream "I GAVE MYSELF PERMISSION TO SUCK AND THAT'S WHAT I DID AND YOU CAN'T TELL ME I'M WRONG I DO ALL THE THINGS THOSE FUNNY GREETING CARDS SAY TO DO AND I AM BEST WRITER EVER NOW I EAT YOUR FACE."

And nobody wants to be that guy.

Things I Find Mildly Annoying

For your entertainment, here's a short list of unimportant things that bother me.

People who say Christine and The Phantom should have gotten together at the end of The Phantom of The Opera

I get it. The Phantom is oh so handsome (with his mask on) and the way he broods is almost as appealing as the way he sings if you're into the dark and mysterious stalker/murderer type. And Raoul is douche bag, too, so seeing him get the girl is unsatisfying. But, seriously, the Phantom is a bad dude. You know he would have been abusive. How about an ending where Christine don't need no man?

Discussions about George Lucas' films

These just get me in trouble. Many of my friends are giant nerds and, being giant nerds, they have strong opinions on the prequel Star Wars and the fourth Indiana Jones film. I, being a giant nerd, also have opinions on them. My opinion is usually different to theirs. At this point, I'm just a little tired of being told why I'm wrong.

People who dismiss arguments or opinions for stupid reasons

If I ruled the world, everybody would be issued with debate licences. You don't have to do anything to earn it, it's your right from birth. But you can lose it if you break the debate laws that also exist when I rule the world. One of those laws is using statements like "You only say that because you're too young to know better," or, "I guess you need to have children to understand," or, "I went to university and you didn't, so obviously I'm right," or any similar dismissive bullshit like that. I mean the fact that it's incredibly rude should be reason enough not to do it, right?

The phrase "You didn't like that movie because you just don't get it."

Basically the same as above but this one annoys me so much it gets its own entry. How about when we have conversations with people, we begin from a point of not being a condescending asshat?

This thing my friend does where he cracks the bones in his neck

It's just weird!

Zack Snyder

'Nuff said.

Stanley Kubrick

At this point, my hatred of Kubrick's library of work is well documented.

People playing with their phones, their computers, or their portable game consoles at the RPG table

The Nintendo DS and the PSP are bad enough, but I once played in a Dungeons and Dragons game where a guy brought his entire desktop computer - tower, monitor, gaming keyboud and mouse, headphones - and sat there playing a video game until his turn in combat. Of course once it got to his turn, he would then ask for a recap of what happened while he wasn't playing attention! This isn't game-ception, guy, there's no need to game while you game. It's irritating and it's rude and you should feel bad!

News media that isn't The Guardian

At this point, there's hardly any integrity or standards left in journalism and The Guardian is one of the few news sources that seems to give me what I want from them: The news. The hilarious satire of First Dog on The Moon is a bonus.

Excessively negative people

People who are excessively negative and like to focus on things they don't like instead of things they do? Screw those guys. We don't need that kind of attitude around here. The only thing that bothers me more than them is obvious irony. It's like, yeah, we all see the irony,try to aim a little higher next time, pal.


List done! Enjoy the rest of your day, Also, I made a new Soap Box. If you like that kind of thing, go have a look.