Day: August 11, 2022

Last night I watched Vengeance with my partner. I must admit I didn’t know what to expect. That became even more muddled once I realized this was a project from Focus and Blumhouse. Nope, not horror. I worried about that for the first scene. This is something else entirely. Vengeance is able to take a critical look at one of the reddest bases in America and pry the ideas of that place apart and place in there a magnifying glass that allows us to see what could actually be and who we actually are to them.

The film was more cerebral than I thought it would be–especially the moment where the ‘stereotypical’ Texan asks the New Yorker what people from the coast must think of them. It was honest in a way that I’ve lost touch with living where I live. It was also well written tho didactic at times. Overall, I had fun. I laughed (sometimes where the rest of the crowd would not) I felt odd (sometimes where the rest of the crowd was laughing) and I felt like it was on point–perhaps too closely at times. It felt like a film that had a lot to say and played with the conventions of how to relay that theme without breaking through the fourth wall.

Vengeance is a reminder of how big and different the states can be–even within a state. In a time where we look at other countries as completely weird and foreign it is a none to subtle reminder how foreign this very large yet relatively sparsely populated country is to itself.

Some Thoughts:

1. Finding acceptable compromise in designing a workspace is common but difficult. Finding happiness in planning a space together is a rare thing. I’m fortunate to have that rare thing in my life. Here’s to moving forward with the new office.

If you’re around writing long enough you’ll hear about a specific concept called Beats. Beats, or Story Beats, are moments in the narrative where you shift the tone intentionally. It’s like in a song where you move through the four count and land on that hard thump and then back to one. Those shifts define the pace of the story and create a sense of what is to come. Now we see this more in script writing because it is more obvious there. Scripts are visual blueprints, and the beats or changes are vivid on screen–especially on network television where the shows hit that cliffhanger moment before every commercial break in order to force you to stay in your seat in anticipation of the moment leading out of the break.

Larger works such as novellas, novels, or particularly long ‘short’ stories have beats. At least they ought to. My last novel struggled with the beats. I had a few things go well but that was not one of them. It is a thing I intend to fix in the sequel. I also expect to write more about this specific idea of beats in the future–perhaps even doing a visual layout of beats here over a ten minute run. Definitely worth the energy.