{"id":738,"date":"2004-05-03T09:13:36","date_gmt":"2004-05-03T09:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/?p=738"},"modified":"2004-05-03T09:13:36","modified_gmt":"2004-05-03T09:13:36","slug":"wrestling-with-the-proper-mix-of-action-and-art-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/archives\/738","title":{"rendered":"Wrestling with the proper mix of action and art."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After that last post, I thought I should follow up with some clarification on where I&#8217;m going with this novel.  <i>Bones of the Angel<\/i> is, if anything, an &#8220;art house action&#8221; type of story.  Yes, there are things blowing up, lots of high-tech gadgetry and some supernatural elements flying around, but it&#8217;s also got a very deliberately herky-jerky approach to its plotting.  The aforementioned &#8220;special-effects shots&#8221; are interspersed with long periods of people just <i>talking,<\/i> primarily about the things that shaped their lives (like Michael explaining his history with one of the might-be-a-villains to Pi) and about how each character is spiritually reacting to the discovery of a fossilized angel.<br \/>\nI&#8217;ve been <i>stuck<\/i> for so long with this book for different reasons.  I&#8217;d been hung up on whether or not something like that could work, or even if it should.  I&#8217;d been peeved that the original concept was done on <i>The Simpsons,<\/i> and the whole thing was feeling too much like an <i>X-Files<\/i> knockoff.  I&#8217;d been flummoxed because Pi, the narrator character, wasn&#8217;t cooperating with my attempts to flesh him out, and neither was Vicky, the love interest.  I was annoyed because the names of the characters were themselves sort of silly: Michael Coldman, Pi St. John, Victoria Ravenswood and Simon Blacknail.  I mean, c&#8217;mon, they sound like they&#8217;re right out of a comic book, or a bad TV show.<br \/>\nLately, though, I&#8217;ve finally managed to shrug all this off and say &#8220;Screw it!&#8221;  I&#8217;m crafting the story I want to tell, and if it fuses all these weird postmodern cliches together and lurches forward, plotwise, <i>so be it.<\/i>  It&#8217;s going to be my little stew of weirdness, and I will love it and squeeze it and call it George.<br \/>\nAnd besides, then I can finally get on with things and go on to my next book!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After that last post, I thought I should follow up with some clarification on where I&#8217;m going with this novel. Bones of the Angel is, if anything, an &#8220;art house action&#8221; type of story. Yes, there are things blowing up, lots of high-tech gadgetry and some supernatural elements flying around, but it&#8217;s also got a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-journal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4e5QR-bU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}