{"id":3587,"date":"2009-04-05T14:26:54","date_gmt":"2009-04-05T14:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/?p=3587"},"modified":"2017-09-22T21:06:32","modified_gmt":"2017-09-22T21:06:32","slug":"writing-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/2009\/04\/05\/writing-101\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing 101"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Spoilers Below<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t read this if you haven&#8217;t yet watched the season finales of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and\/ or LIFE ON MARS.  I&#8217;ve finally seen both (we are TIVO junkies, so we don&#8217;t always watch shows the night they air), and&#8230; well&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>BATTLESTAR GALACTICA ends with &#8220;God Did It.&#8221;  Looks like somebody skipped Writing 101, when you learn that a deus ex machina is a crappy way to end a story.<\/p>\n<p>And now LIFE ON MARS ends with &#8220;It Was All a Dream.&#8221;  Curiously, I actually found that a bit more satisfying than the end of BSG.  But still&#8230; really???  C&#8217;mon.  Writing 101.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and while I&#8217;m at it, let me spoil the new Nicholas Cage movie, KNOWING.  I actually enjoyed that one, mostly, although everyone else I know who has seen it hated it.  But the ending&#8230; this time it was space angels who did it.  And when the little kids starting running through the alien grass toward the glowing alien tree, I almost thought the boy was going to say, &#8220;My dad used to call me Caleb, but my real name is Adam,&#8221; and then the little girl would say&#8230; oh, wait, you&#8217;ve seen it?<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, yeah, sometimes the journey is its own reward.  I certainly enjoyed much of the journey with BSG, parts of LIFE ON MARS, and even some stuff in KNOWING.  But damn it, doesn&#8217;t anybody know how to write an ending any more?  <\/p>\n<p>Writing 101, kids.  Adam and Eve, God Did It, It Was All a Dream?  I&#8217;ve seen Clarion students left stunned and bleeding for turning in stories with those endings.<\/p>\n<p>Pfui.<\/p>\n<p>(I sure hope those guys doing LOST have something better up planned for us.  Though if it turns out to be They Were All Dead All Along I&#8217;m really going to be pissed). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spoilers Below Don&#8217;t read this if you haven&#8217;t yet watched the season finales of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and\/ or LIFE ON MARS. I&#8217;ve finally seen both (we are TIVO junkies, so we don&#8217;t always watch shows the night they air), and&#8230; well&#8230; BATTLESTAR GALACTICA ends with &#8220;God Did It.&#8221; Looks like somebody skipped Writing 101, when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3588,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3587\/revisions\/3588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}