The Failure of Book Trailers, and the Rare Exception

As I've mentioned before, book trailers are something I'm of two minds about.  As a novelist with a film degree, I really like the idea of them.  But, also,  as a novelist with a film degree, I really hate, for the most part, what I've actually seen.

With rare exception, the best I've been able to say about any book trailer is that it didn't actively impair my interest in reading the book it was advertising.  Though I have seen several that did actively impair my interest.

But I don't agree with the premise that I've heard from some corners, that book trailers are just wrong; that since they are using one medium (audio-visual) to sell a completely different medium (text), they are intrinsically doomed to failure.

I think they are doomed because, at the heart of it, most of them are being made by people who don't understand the video medium.  Many of them use static images-- either cover art or stock pictures*-- and have some Ken Burns effect and kinetic typography to give some sense of motion.  If there's sound, it's public domain music or stock effects. Whatever text it uses is either blurbs from reviews, or synopsis boiled down to Twitter-length. That isn't filmic; it's attempting to make a dynamic experience out of reading the back cover.  Furthermore, since the people making them don't understand filmic language, they don't pace it properly at all.  Trailers take up to two a half minutes to give thirty seconds of information. Add to that the frequent use of stock images and sounds, and the net result is something painfully generic. 

An overlong, uninteresting commercial telling me how your book is so unremarkable, it can be reduced to key words and generic pictures?  Well, I'll run to the book store for that!

But then, there is that rare exception:

This trailer for Warren Ellis's "Gun Machine" is narrated by Wil Wheaton and illustrated by Ben Templesmith.  Right off the bat, it's loaded with some professionalism.  That helps a lot.  What else do we have here?  We've got a solid narration that comes straight from the text, and it's loaded with hooks.  I don't know if this is the very beginning of the book or not, but it feels like it is, and it's got me intrigued. 

So, key point number one: instead of telling us about the book, it uses what the book is.

Secondly, we have original imagery that is specifically created for this video.   Even though the images themselves are static, it is made dynamic by seeing them being created.   They tie directly to the text.  It enhances what we're hearing.  It's specifically engaging and relevant to the audio. 

It clocks in at 2:30, and at no point does it feel like it's wasting my time.

That's how it should be done.
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*- Which are often the same thing, sadly.

Preliminary ArmadilloCon Schedule

I have my schedule, which is, of course, subject to change.  As with any large, live event with a lot of moving parts, things are subject to change.  A rule of thumb I live by is you're never 100% sure something is going to happen the way it's supposed to happen until it's actually happening.

So what do I have?

Sa1800T Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Live Theater:

Sat 6:00 PM-7:00 PM Trinity

M. Finn*, L. Gorinsky, T. Mallory, M. Maresca, J. Neulander,

The history and challenges of live productions (theater and radio), for either SF or fantasy. Our panel discusses of radio productions and stage recreations, fan & semi-pro theater at conventions, SF&F movies that crossed to or from stage, and the special challenges of live theater for the genre. 

 

Right in my wheelhouse!  Awesome.  Plus Jason Neulander will be there.  He's not typically at ArmadilloCon, since he's more a theatre guy-- just a good chunk of his theatre is SF/F.  His company has gotten a good degree of notice for Intergalactic Nemesis-- which started as a radio play and has expanded into much more.  There is even an Intergalactic Nemesis panel following this one.  But this is the panel I'm looking forward to the most.

 

Su1300SB Workshopping to Success

Sun 1:00 PM-2:00 PM Sabine

M. Dimond, K. Jewell, S. Leicht*, M. Maresca, N. Moore, J. Reisman

What the ArmadilloCon / Clarion / Clarion West / Odyssey did for me (as a student or a teacher)

 

So I'm on this one, clearly, to talk about the ArmadilloCon Writers' Workshop.  Which is good, because I'm probably its biggest advocate.  

Su1400T Future Sex: The Shape of Things to Come

Sun 2:00 PM-3:00 PM Trinity

C. Brown, M. Maresca, R. Klaw, J. Nevins, P. Roberts*

As humans reshape their society, their bodies, their culture, how will the most intimate of activities change? 

 

Ooh,  Cybersex?  Alien sex?  Cyberaliensex?  All right.  

I may have another one added, we'll see.  Plus, I have requested a reading slot.  Those aren't assigned yet, but if I have one, I will most likely be reading from Maradaine Constabulary.  And that will be fun.  I promise.  You should come to that.  Really.  You.

Excerpts and Workshops

It's been a busy week on this end, so this post will mostly be links.

First, I've updated the Works page on my homepage.  I updated the samples of Thorn of Dentonhill, Holver Alley Crew and Maradaine Constabulary, as well as adding an in-draft sample of Way of the Shield.  The Bat City Novelcrats will be tearing up Shield in the near future, so if you want an early stab on that, feel free to check it out and tell me how many mistakes I made. 

After all, I can always use more critiquing.  And so could you! The deadline for the ArmadilloCon Writers' Workshop is fast approaching.  (How's that for subtlety?)

Seriously, the deadline is on Monday.  You may look at it and say, "Hmm, that's $75.  That's a lot."  But you get membership to ArmadilloCon with it, and THAT is worth $40.  Plus you get lunch.  That's, like, another $10.  So, if you think about it, it only costs $25.  You get hands-on critiquing and interaction with TONS of writing and publishing pros for $25.  You can't beat that value.  Again, here's the line-up of teachers:

Elizabeth Bear, Julie Kenner, Scott Lynch, Robert Bennett, Liz Gorinsky, Mark Finn, Martin Thomas Wagner, Martha Wells, Matthew Bey, Nicole Duson, Scott Johnson, Jessica Reisman, Cat Rambo, Joe McKinney, Marshall Ryan Maresca, Anne Bishop, Stina Leicht, Jeremy Lassen, and Amanda Downum.

See?  Awesome.  Well, awesome and that Maresca guy.  But he probably won't make it lame.  

Facts not in Evidence

One of the pitfalls in writing genre fiction is, of course, the dreaded infodump.  Who doesn't see one of those wind-ups where 6000 years of history is about to be dropped on the reader and cringe?  Or, more often than not, start flipping through pages to find where it ends and the story starts up again.

I do my best to avoid it.

However, one thing that's as much a problem, but harder to catch yourself doing, is the opposite problem: underexplaining.  It is, in fact, incredibly easy to do.

For me, the problem stems from, when I'm writing, certain points being SO OBVIOUS in my head, that I forget I would need that I actually have to explain them to the reader.  Funnily enough, where that would come into play more was less about 6000 years of history or the complex internal politics of one nation, and more about the simple dynamics between sets of characters. 

Case it point, though this isn't my own work, but something I did a crit read on a few years ago.  In this manuscript draft, the main character (let's call her "Brianna", though that wasn't her name, but I really can't recall), in a low moment, needing some guidance, wishes she could talk to (to make up another) Rhenna.  As I read this, I thought, "Who the heck is Rhenna?" I dug back through chapters until I found the reference-- much earlier (years earlier in the story), Brianna had traveled with a group from point A to point B (as is the way of things in epic fantasy), and Rhenna was a member of that group.  However, Rhenna is little more than a name drop.  She doesn't have a single line of dialogue.  When I asked the author, "Why would Brianna want to talk to Rhenna for advice?"  "Well, when they traveled together, they talked a lot, and Brianna really looked up to Rhenna during that time." 

In as much as I ever do during a crit session of any kind, I flipped.  "THAT'S NOT IN THE TEXT!"  OK, I didn't shout it, but I did make my point in a strong manner.  The point is, there was all this stuff about Brianna's journey from Point A to Point B, which was three months of time for the character, but two pages of text for the reader, that the author KNEW, but didn't tell us about.  

I'm not claiming my own innocence here.  Lord knows the trunked manuscript Crown of Druthal is FULL TO THE BRIM of that sort of thing.  There I have a ship full of characters in which I pretty much expected the reader to read my mind about the details of the various friendships, enmities and barely-tolerated acceptances between them all.

Frankly, this is a key reason why I think everyone should have a crit group or beta readers, because it's important for someone who doesn't live inside your head to look at it and yell at you for presuming facts not in evidence. 

January is not the Month of Doom, for once

Last year at this time, I was sinus-deep in misery, thanks to Austin Cedar allergies.  It was pretty awful, much like it was in 2010 and 2009.  It actually had been bad for me in Januaries before 2009, but that was when I realized what was causing the problem.  Anyway, in the two years since, I mostly did my best to manage allergy season once it hit.  This year, I was actually proactive, taking daily doses of antihistamines, starting a few months out.  This has made a huge difference.  Cedar levels are ridiculously high, yet despite that, I'm as mentally functional as ever.

(I'll let you all judge how functional that actually is.)

So projects are getting done.  Holver Alley Crew was sent to the agent today.  I've been doing plenty of work on Maradaine Constabulary, and should have that draft finished pretty soon.  Ideas are percolating.  Work is getting done.  I finished reading the manuscript for my critique group ahead of time, for once. 

I like having my January be useful and productive.  How about that?

So therefore, back into the Word Mines.

It always gets better

I'm kind of astounded that John Scalzi's Ten Things Teenage Writers Should Know article (and its follow-up pieces) still get commentary action. Apparently it's a common google hit if you search "Teenage writing", and it always raises up some ire since his opening salvo is "Teen writing sucks".

Not that long ago, I was digging through my old papers (moving the OLD old into boxes to put in the attic, so the less old can fit in the file cabinet.), and found some stuff I wrote back when I was 19.

And DAMN did that stuff suck. At the time I'm sure I thought it was, at least, solid. But, really, it sucked. Empirically. Physicists could prove it sucked.

Hell, stuff I wrote five years ago, in my early thirties, sucked.

I can honestly say that the point where my curve started to move away from sucking is when I started taking the process of critiquing seriously.