The B Word

I have a character named Bunni Bubblez (working name). Holly’s most hated super foe. Bunni is a mind controller who barely has a mind of her own. A curvy sexy ditzy bimbo who hates Holly every bit as much as Holly hates her. Like Holly, she has an impressive bustline. Unlike Holly, Bunni likes to flaunt hers.

Bunni focusses her mind control power through her breasts. Although she does not take off her blouse, or tank top, or bikini top, or her wet T-shirt to do that. (Not that Bunni is averse to taking her top off. But my stories are PG-13 at the most.)

I have had Bunni (no one else) use the B word. Boobs. Or boobies. But I think I will edit that out. Why? Not great for kids, and I want a broad audience. And a lot of women dislike that word (not as much as the other B word). So I think I should avoid it. So what should I do when Bunni mentions her breasts? (And she will.)

There was a great standup comedian at Red Rock who would blip out his swear words. When he seemed about to say one, he would barely start the word, then an instance of silence, then he would continue talking. The audience would mentally fill in the word. Like Alfred Hitchcock said, that gets the audience working.

So I think I’ll do that for Bunni. Not silence, but have her use silly words for bosom. Like biggie bubbles, or bouncy balloons, or jolly jigglies, or softy globes, or creamy cones, or some other cutesy name. It will take me some effort to make a long list of silly substitutes, but it will be more clever than saying boobies. Dippy, ditzy names that Bunni would use for breasts. That will make the audience work a little to replace the silly term with the real one. Bunni says, “Tee hee! Giggle! I’ll just use my jolly jigglies!” And the reader will go, “Huh? Oh, yeah!”

I’ll see how this works. Making out a list could be interesting. If I laugh while making the list, I will be on the right track.

Bunni might say boobytize. Or maybe she should say hippotize. She’d never say hypnotize. Too big a word.

The Superheroine Word Problem

Go to Amazon, select Kindle from the Search menu, then search for “superheroine.” First book on the list contained the words “getting randy.” Another book title contains “Booty Call.” Most of the books on the first page of search results are under the “Synne City Superheroines in Peril” label. And the cover art for those books? Can you say butt cheeks? Or twin moons coming out early tonight? Superheroes so not have this problem.

The majority of the superheroine Kindle books that list high in searches are of the adults 18 years and over kind. I don’t want my Holly stories treading water there. Especially the Kittygirl story! Some of the superheroine Kindle books are for all ages. But you have to dig for them. (I bought one: Please Don’t Tell My Dad I’m a Supervillain by Richard Roberts, about a teen girl with super parents who discovers she is good at being a supervillain. Still trying to remember how I found it, I might have searched supervillain.)

At my latest open mic, a young lady told me she did not say “superheroine,” but “superhero” for both sexes. Perhaps I should use “superhero” to refer to Holly. She is the Superman of her universe, after all.

So I will call Holly a superhero first, a superheroine second. If a teen girl can call herself a supervillain, Holly can call herself a superhero.

A little hero: Kittygirl?

As per my previous post, about the little girls in the audience:

I have not finished my latest short story, working title “Super Sleeping Beauty,” where the point of view character is Cal the Intellectual. I need to put final edits into my old barber story, which I rewrote to be in first person. And yet, I have started another story.

Kittygirl is a little girl with cat powers. I think she would be great for a short story. I imagine her saving Holly and others from an evil ice cream maker, the Brain Freezer (his evil laugh involves chattering teeth). Kittygirl could be immune to Brain Freezer’s ice cream due to her being lactose intolerant. The story is barely an outline right now. But I think Kittygirl might start using my brain as a scratching post.

Now I have to figure out her costume. I have written her wearing cat ears and gloves with authentic claws. But perhaps claws and cat ears would become part of her natural self after she gets powers, and thus she would not have a costume (maybe just a cape she can put on in a hurry). The main thing is that Kittygirl is a cute, sweet, and very brave little girl. One of the ladies in a critique group said she loved Kittygirl, “she’s such a cliche!” I wanted an adorable little girl who becomes Holly’s biggest fan.

I know my story will be better that the Catwoman movie. But Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels would be better also.

Little girls need superheroines!

Last week at the comic book shop, a tall handsome young man has his cute little daughter in tow. A polite, quiet girl with intelligent eyes. Her father said she had gotten good grades, and was getting some comic books as a reward.

But it was not easy. He had thought about some Wonder Woman comics, but the ones on the shelves were not really for little girls. Yes, he did the peoper thing and screened the comics for his little girl. There were some My Little Pony comics on some shelves near the front (it seems she asked about those). Along with several other more kid-friendly comics. But the vast majority of the comics in the shop were aimed at old farts like me!

I should have pointed out another comic book from Marvel: Ms. Marvel. Kamala Khan is a teenage girl who gets superpowers and tries to deal with them while hiding them from her jovial father and strict mother. It is one of my fave comics: funny and very down-to-Earth. Also written by a woman. That helps.

We need more supers for kids; someday, old guys like me will kick the bucket and we will need younger comic buyers. I’ll do my part. My superheroine Holly might help, but Holly is all grown up at about 25. (No, Hollywood, I will NOT turn Holly into a teenager, so if you ever discover Holly, don’t ask!) I have another character, Kitty Girl, who is an adorable little girl with cat powers, and is the leader of Holly’s fan club. But my stories are not comics, they are just text. For now.

P.S. The man and the girl were African-American. I know of no African-American little girls in comics, maybe some grown-up ones in grown-up comics that her daddy would likely screen out, and he’d probably be right. My Kitty Girl is no particular color for now, although a couple lady writers suggested asian. I hear the latest Annie in the movies will be black, but she won’t have superpowers! I want little girls to have superheroines!

Is there room on the shelf for Holly?

I heard Nina Amir—motivational writing coach—speak at the South Bay Writers Club tonight. I bought her book, The Author Training Manual. Full of advice about finding the market for one’s book, creating a business plan, having a proper author attitude, and other stuff authors need to do other than write. Good advice for indie authors, I suspect.

But there was a time when I was not so sure. Years ago, at another writer get-together, Nina told me that if I want to write a book, I should decide on the market for the book. I had Bruce Campbell’s reaction, who said that “Writing movies for demographics is just Bulls**t!” I put it more politely, Nina being a nice lady.

But guess what. Nowadays, when I tell women that I am writing a superheroine, most tell me they love that idea, and a lot say they would love to see a Wonder Woman movie. (Which isn’t happening anytime soon.) I met a lady at a writer’s conference who was so starved for female heroes that they liked (SHUDDER!) the Catwoman movie. (But she did like the bit of a Holly story that she read, and gave me good writing advice.) Another woman at a writer’s panel at this year’s Baycon mentioned the movie Pacific Rim: she loved the female robot operator who gets only a couple of lines. Love in 30 seconds. And only 30 seconds.

The market has room for Holly. But I still ain’t changing Holly into a teenager. (Nina did not suggest that.)

Dying is easy, open mic comedy is hard!

(From Wikipedia: An open mic (or open mike) is a live show where audience members may perform at the microphone. Usually, the performers sign up in advance for a time slot with the host or master of ceremonies. These events are typically focused on performance arts like poetry and the spoken word, music, and comedy.)

Monday night, I gave up my open mic slot at Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View, CA to four older ladies who sang and played guitar. They had come in from out of town, how could I NOT give them my slot? The host said that was nice of me, the ladies were sweet and told me about another open mic location they did. Cool, another place for me to perform! Ooo, I am such a good person!

At open mics, I do spoken word. I read from my stories, sometimes accompanied by music off my iPad. Open mics have a lot of musicians: Casey Wickstrom is one. He is most excellent. Check out his music on YouTube (like Blues Song #666)!!! Then buy it!!!!!! I got two of his albums!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Over my many years at open micing, I have seen that the audience is polite to comedians, but comedians are lucky to get more than a couple of laughs. Except for last Monday, where a comedian WOWED the crowd! He started with a fart joke (when you hold it in, where does it go?). From there, the laughs got better and better. He was black and from Panama, and asked us if we’d peg him as hispanic. He dissed Walmart, always a good joke in my book, always! (I shoulda got his card so I can plug him here.) Off stage, he wore a hat like the kid in Adventure Time. He was a tall guy with a shaved head. The cap made him look, well, more like a kid. An incredibly big kid.

Over my open mic years, I too have gotten laughs. But my biggest hits have been the sad chapters with a funny punchline. That’s what I’ll be reading next week at Red Rock.

Writing to a Musical Muse

I did an open mic reading at the Peninsula Writers Club. The chapter in my novel where Cal “The Intellectual” Critbert experiences a 5D movie preview. 5D is two better that 3D! But Cal is a movie critic, and does not like 3D (Roger Ebert reasons). Then the 5D preview makes him LIVE the heartbreaking climax of Holly’s story, The Last Super. Anyway, I played music during the reading: Unchained Melody from the movie Ghost. A section in this chapter fit the beats and the emotion from that song. The small gathering of club members liked it.

I love music. Music has inspired lots of chapters in my novel. Music plays like a movie scene in my head. Holly’s fight with Dan Mann: Battle of the Heroes from Star Wars III. Holly’s fight with the hundred or so super soldiers: Burly Brawl from The Matrix Reloaded. Holly and Cal watching a sunset: So Much In Love by The Tymes. An angry and heartbroken Holly trying and failing to sleep: Last Night I Didn’t Get to Sleep At All by The 5th Dimension. I write a chapter more easily when a song has helped me see it. I have bought a LOT of music off iTunes to help me write.

However, a lot of music is owned by big corporations who are not going to share. So do not expect me to use my iTunes music in a podcast, or in anything even remotely professional, or at any gathering other than a very very small circle of friends or fans. I do not need a business that zealously defends the copyright to the Happy Birthday song sending lawyers to beat down my door.

Music can be a crutch. My writing must be strong enough to stand on its own, without music or my DRAMATIC performances. I am not gonna tell my readers that they have to buy and then play John Williams’s theme to Superman as they read my story. (Um, probably I won’t.) My short stories have NO music in mind. So far.

And consider this: real time and reading time do not match. In Storyist (the Mac and iPad app I use for my creative writing), each double-spaced, 12-point-courier-text page takes one and a half minutes to read out loud. Do you see the problem? Actions you imagine in music are hard to fit in text. Maxwell Alexander Drake said that you can speed action up, or slow it down, but you cannot read action at the same speed it happens in the real world. Oh, maybe if Holly punches a bad guy, I can write, “Holly punched him.” That’s boring, and it STILL takes too long. I could write “POW!” Not much better. (I’ll write later about superpowered sound effect words.) An early version of Holly’s fight with Dan Mann fit in the 3 1/2 Battle of the Heroes song, and I would never use that early version now. Short, dry, very little flowing prose to draw the reader in, and when my barber read it, he said, “This character Holly. What does she look like?” I was told my chapters read like screenplays. You need more than dialog and bits of action. You need description, feelings, emotions, thoughts, in other words, PROSE! You can match a text passage to a song, but do NOT stuff too many actions into that song’s short timespan!

I will continue to be inspired by music. But I cannot rely on songs to help me write or open-mic-read. (Oh, but I remember a reading where I used music, and the chapter had Holly so very heartbroken, and the open mic audience was RAPT. Boy, that felt good.)

P.S. I still wonder what it would cost to use music. Probably too much for me to consider it. Even if I say, hey readers, this is a cool song, run to iTunes and buy it cuz it is only a dollar! Maybe if I found indie music where I know the people who own it? Or maybe I just need to finish my novel (sound effects: my voice changes to Stewie Griffin), that novel I been working on for about five years now, that nnnnnnnnnovel …

Another lovable jerk, and not keeping my seat

Yesterday at Cinequest was the flick Zoran my Idiot Nephew. A delight. Jerk as main character works again. And the kid is a perfect counterpart. A feel good movie that fits the definition.

I have noticed that when I see a Cinequest movie, I often change my seat. Once, twice, three times. I move when a big guy sits in front of me, when a guy/girl has to mumble little snuggly snookie-wookie stuff into the girl/guy’s ear, when an older lady (it is always an older lady) opens her purse that would be too large for an airline carry-on and fishes around for ten minutes then pulls out a small package made by Super Krackly Packaging Company and for ten more minutes opens the package with a KRINKLE CRACKLE KRUNCKLE KRINKLE RATTLE KRUNKLE KRINKLE and then extracts a candy about the size of an aspirin accompanied by five more minutes of those sound effects I just wrote and extracts another and another every two minutes for the next half hour all the while demonstarting why Super Krackly Packaging got its name, or the people who eat popcorn with a big wide-open-mouth CHOMP where the mouth acts as an echo chamber that threatens to loosen the nearest earthquake fault. Could be worse. The screen could be Smurfs.

I knew there was a pattern here.

I stumbled across an interview Paul Dini had with Kevin Smith about why Cartoon Network does not want female audiences. Or even older boys. Just young hyperactive boys.

http://io9.com/paul-dini-superhero-cartoon-execs-dont-want-largely-f-1483758317

So that’s why they cancelled Young Justice, Beware the Batman, and the rebooted Thundercats. And why I am watching less Teen Titans Go: that is beginning to feel like there is no there there. No continuity, no development, just fast goofy jokes. It is possible to eat too much sugar.

This actually gives me hope when I write about Holly the superheroine. I remember Stan Freberg, who did the funniest, wittiest, and shoot-product-sales-way-up-est commercials of all time. He discussed how he determined if his commercials would work (not an exact quote below, but close):

When you show the commercial to the top executives, and they shift uncomfortably in their chairs, it’s probably pretty good. And if ALL the blood drains outta their faces… (Stan nodded, winked into the camera, and made the OK sign with his hand).

P.S. There is one CN cartoon with nearly all female superheroes: Steven Universe. Except the main character is still a boy. And that cartoon has not grabbed me yet.