LOST: Ji Yeon

Dear writers of LOST (especially Drew Goddard and Christina M. Kim):

You probably think you’re really clever by putting a flashforward and a flashback in the same episode. I know you were trying to make it seem that Jin was on his way to the hospital to be with Sun. I know you were trying to build tension in the show and make the surprise ending (Jin is dead!) even more of a bombshell. Well, it worked. However, it came with a price: It made the entire audience feel like a bunch of dupes.

Flashback and flashforwards are a great storytelling technique. However, they’re only effective when they help us understand the motivations, character, and personality of a character better or fill in some vital part of the story. For example, the flashbacks in the episode “The Other Woman” we learned a little more about Juliet’s connection to Godwin, their history, and that she doesn’t mind sleeping with married men. However, what made her flashback really interesting was what it revealed about Ben. We all knew he was narcissistic and evil but that flashback showed us just what a creep he is while setting the stage for a future showdown between Ben and Jack.

Jin’s flashback in “Ji Yeon” didn’t reveal anything about Jin that we didn’t already know. Instead, it served only one purpose: To confuse and misdirect the viewer. The entire flashback was completely unnecessary especially when there were better ways to hide Jin’s fate until the end of the episode. Since we knew Sun’s scenes took place off the island, you could have made her even more delusional and had her calling out for Jin more or asking where he was. Or, you could have focused more on making the doctors seem like they were going to steal her baby. Either way it would have made the same tension you were trying to achieve with the lame flashback.

Aside from that one mistake you crafted a powerful story. You introduced just enough of Michael to make us all wonder why he’s working for Ben. The interaction between Sun and Jin on the island after he learned about the affair was great and felt real. And the scene at Jin’s gravesite at the end was wonderful and touching end to the episode. (Of course we’re all wondering what happened!)

In the future, please refrain from making LOST fans feel like dupes. It’s not that we don’t mind being confused for most of an episode. Rather, at the end of the ride, we don’t want to feel like we were suckered into getting emotionally involved in something that really had nothing to do with the actual story.

Looking forward to future episodes.

Sincerely,

Abel

Satisfaction

Go_Go Yubari was recently approached by a large company that was interested in employing her. They whisked her off to a big city and wined and dined her in order to persuade her to come join their team. Despite their persuasive sales pitch, she decided to stay where she was at because, in part, the proposed employment reminded her of an old job and the long hours and stress that accompanied it.

After parting ways with a well-paying but highly stressful job back in November, I applaud her choice. There’s so much more to a job than money, fancy titles, and the strings those usually accompany those two things. It’s not that I don’t find compensation or what I do for a living isn’t important. I do have a family support and life’s more enjoyable knowing you can make a mortgage payment and put food on the table. And writing makes me happy. I would perform much better at a job that required lots of writing as opposed to doing something else.

In addition to the above, a good job has always had three other important elements: 1) One that allows me to come home in a relatively stress free 80 percent of the time, 2) one that allows me to spend time with Marathon Girl and the kids and 3) doesn’t deplete my (creative) energy so I can write books after the kids are in bed.

When I set off on a job hunt back in November, I hoped that I could find a job that met all the criteria. Five weeks into my search, I ended up with three solid job offers. All paid very well and involved writing. So the determining factor was how well the job would allow me to accomplish the things I wanted to do after I came for from work. Like Go_Go Yubari, one of the offers reminded me too much of my old job in all the wrong ways. I turned it down. Two jobs left. My gut kept telling me which one to take. And since my gut feelings have never turned out to be wrong, I took the one I felt good about the first time I interviewed with the company.

I’ve been at my new job about four months. The family is clothed, fed, and has a roof over their head. There’s no worries about finances. I’m doing more writing with this new company than I ever did with my previous employer and seeing more results from my efforts. I usually have a good two to three hours to spend with the kids after work. And despite all the writing I accomplish during business hours, I’ve managed to make tons of progress on my second book after I kiss the kids goodnight. In the last two weeks, I’ve complete four chapters – about the same amount I was able to accomplish in a previous year with at my old job. Last night I went on a writing tear and wrote two thirds of another chapter in just under two hours.

Yeah, I made the right choice.

Why-oming

It takes a lot to make me laugh. That being said, a satirical piece in The New Yorker about rich investors buying Wyoming for the purpose of renovating it had me in stitches. An excerpt:

I feel sorry for people who still think of their places in terms of square feet. My partner, Scott, and I recently purchased Wyoming, which we are in the process of having renovated, and, yes, I do know the square footage (something like two trillion seven hundred and thirty billion square feet, give or take). But that’s just not a very practical type of measurement when we’re dealing with all the plumbers and contractors and security staff and reporters and other non-wealthy service personnel we have to give instructions to. Nowadays, everybody involved in redoing substantial properties like ours uses Global Transverse Mercator Units (GTMUs), which you get off a satellite feed. GTMUs, we’ve found, are much more accurate for detail work like wainscoting, and are able to deal with vast alkali flats and so on, too.

Basically, we are looking at this purchase as a tear-down. There’s really not a lot here you’d want to keep, except one or two of the Wind River Mountains and some old nineteen-twenties Park Service structures in Yellowstone. Scott and I bought for the location—it’s convenient to anywhere, really, if you think about it—and for the simplicity of line. We wanted someplace rectangular, a much easier configuration from a design point of view, and we won’t have to fuss with panhandles and changeable riverine property lines where we’re going to get into disputes with the landowner next door. Spare us the headaches, please! We’ve had plenty already, with the former occupants (thank heavens they’re gone) and all the junk they left behind—the old broken-down pickup trucks, houses, eyesore water towers, uranium mines, the University of Wyoming, Yellowtail Dam, Casper.

Maybe it’s because I lived in Wyoming for two years that I found it so funny. My hat is off to the writer Ian Frazier. He did his homework. He described the state perfectly.

You can the entire article here.

LOST: The Other Woman

I’m still a little stunned how much the latest episode of LOST revealed. We learned that Charles Whidmore is the owner of the boat looking for the island (not a big surprise), Ben loves Juliet and will find a way to eliminate any man that loves her (watch out, Jack!), the whispers are somehow related to the ability of the Others to appear and disappear (this has been hinted at but never fully shown until now), and that Ben was apparently trying to release the gas and kill everyone on the island (or so we’re told). Oh, and let’s not forget that Jack and Juliet finally decided to let each other know that they really liked each other with a kiss. How sweet.

The flashback of Juliet filled in some story elements rather nicely. I liked how Ben worked to eliminate Goodwin by sending him on a mission he knew he wouldn’t survive ala the King David story in the Bible. In some ways Juliet’s flashback revealed more about Ben than it did about Juliet. I think Locke’s in for a big surprise once he realizes that Ben once again has used him as a pawn.

I still think the new characters are the weak link in this season. I really want to learn more about them and their mission. Maybe next week’s episode will focus on that a little more. Remember, o ye writers of LOST, holding secrets back only works for so long. Sooner or later you have to start coughing up some information or the audience is going to flee.

And, as Marathon Girl pointed out last night, it’s no secret who Ben’s “man on the boat” is. Doesn’t anyone remember Michael? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Memoirs: Stranger than Fiction

Publishers should be kicking themselves. For the second time in less than a week, a critically-acclaimed memoir has been exposed as a fraud.

In "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.

The problem is that none of it is true.

Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed.

This story comes less than a week after it was revealed that the Holocaust memoir, “Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years” by Misha Defonseca, was a complete fabrication, and it's been only two years since most of James Frey's best-selling “A Million Little Pieces” was proven to be wildly embellished, exaggerated, and falsified. The accuracy of another best-selling memoir, “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” by Ishmael Beah are also being raised after series of articles by an Australian newspaper. (Beah, stands by what he wrote.)

What's going on here? Are publishers too lazy to investigate stories that seem too good to be true? Do authors feel their story won't be published or taken seriously unless they make up parts of their life?

Granted, memoirs are an imperfect art and are only as good as the author's memory. But there's a difference between recalling that an advent happened on a Monday when it, in fact, happened on Wednesday, and simply making up scenes, characters, or an entire life.

Whatever is happening, it's not good for the memoirs genre. Not only does it make it less likely that publishers will pass on memoirs in the future, but that readers are less likely to purchase a memoir when browsing bookstore shelves.

To restore readers' trust in the genre authors and publishers need to come up with a voluntary set of standards to which they're willing to adhere. Though not a comprehensive list, here are three ways to start.

1. If asked by the publisher, authors should be prepared to verify as much of the story as possible. This includes names and contact information of people who can corroborate the story, places, and approximate dates when events occurred. This may not always be easy to do if someone is writing about events that happened several decades ago but the author should be willing to authenticate as much as the story as possible. If authors knew there was a good possibility their story could be vetted before it hit the press, it would probably discourage liars like Seltzer and Frey from trying to get published.

2. Publishers need to be willing to investigate. If the scenes, dialogue, or the overall narrative sounds contrived or too good to good to be true, it's time to do some fact checking. Reviewers of Love and Consequences mentioned that the dialogue seemed "embellished" and scenes felt "self-consciously novelistic at times." Such red flags should lead the publishers to do some simple fact checking. A background check and a few phone calls could have been done quickly and revealed that Seltzer's story was a lie.

3. The reader should be notified up front if names and places have been changed or events have been compressed or told in a different order than they actually happened. Some memoirs have such a disclaimer but it's by no means an industry standard. If authors changed something, let the readers know why it was done. Such a disclaimer doesn't make a memoir any less powerful but goes a long way to establishing trust with the reader.

Memoirs can make powerful and entertaining reading. Standards would go a long way to rebuilding readers’ trust in a genre that is suffering from brazen acts of dishonesty and deceit. Without some standards in place, future memoirs run the risk of being bypassed by readers altogether, or worse, becoming classified as fantasized fiction.

Note: This article was originoally published at A Ton of Authors and a Wannabe blog

LOST: The Constant

Since the last two episodes of LOST were below par, I worried that the show was headed in a downward spiral since it looked like the writers didn’t have a clue how to handle the new characters, flash forwards, and answer some of the questions that piling up.

Thankfully this show put everything back on track. Not only did we get to see more of Desmond and Penny (great characters and a beautiful, complex relationship), but we’re starting to understand what keeps the island hidden from the rest of the world. There’s obviously a time disconnect that makes it invisible to outsides unless they know exactly how to find it. And the show revealed that the island is about two days ahead of the freighter. The unanswered question, of course, is why.

Daniel Faraday, I think is going to become an increasingly important character and is probably the one most likely to help the crash survivors instead of completing their mysterious (and probably deadly) mission. It was nice that Desmond’s flashes included a little more background on this interesting individual. Let’s hope we get some flashbacks on him before too long.

The best part of the show, however, was the ton of clues that were dropped in about 15 seconds at auction where The Black Rock Diary was being auctioned. My ears perked up when the auctioneer said the contents of the diary were unknown except by its owner Alvar Hanso. Sound familiar? Alvar Hanso was the guy that founded The Hanso Foundation which financed the Dharma Initiative. The diary probably holds the secret of how to find the island. And now that Mr. Whitmore owns the diary, I’m willing to bet the freighter in the middle of the ocean is somehow connected to Penny’s father.

The Love of Money

The company I work for shares an office building with several other businesses. There’s a common area with a refrigerator, microwave, sink and a large tables, chairs, and whiteboards. Though occasionally the room is used for meetings by some of the other businesses, I’ve rarely seen anyone else in the room – at least while I’m microwaving lunch. The room must be used somewhat because every week or two someone writes a question on the whiteboard closest to the door. Every afternoon there are new answers to the question.

On Monday someone wrote the following question: What would you do if money weren’t an issue? Here’s this week’s responses:

• Become a teacher • Live in Paris • Eat beef and chicken • Coach soccer • Run for president • Go to school forever • Make myself look like Rambo • Hire a hit man to whack my boss.

Frozen in Time

No, these pictures aren’t from the planet Hoth. They’re views of frozen Utah Lake and the surrounding area that I took February 17, 2008 as reminder of how cold this winter has been. Since then, temperatures have risen and the snow has begun to melt. Maybe spring will arrive after all. It should be noted though Marathon Girl and I are sick of the cold, our kids had a good time digging through the snow to find the ice and walking on the frozen lake. They didn’t want to leave even after the sun set and the temperatures dropped.

Looking northwest across the lake

Looking northest toward the mountains

Looking southwest as the sun sets

LOST: Eggtown

So Kate ends up with Claire’s baby, Aaron. As Hurley would say, “Didn’t see that one coming.” And we spent the entire episode wondering if the baby’s father was Sawyer or Jack.

This is the first episode with flashforwards that I really enjoyed. Sure, the other flashforward episodes have been great but really haven’t answered questions that we have about the characters. Instead, they’ve just deepened the mystery and left viewers scratching their heads in confusion. Kate’s flashforwards didn’t do that.

We know that Kate is wanted for murder and other crimes and has a strained relationship with her mother. And, if she ever left the islands, we all wanted to know if the law would eventually catch up to her. Not only did we get an answer to the legal questions, but we saw that her complex relationship with her mother was still rather strained.

If the writers could do flashforwards like this in every episode instead of using them simply to sew mystery and confusion then I think as a storytelling device, they’d work a lot better.

Unlike some, I have faith that the writers will tie everything together in the end and we’ll see that they’ve woven a wonderfully crafted story. It just sucks that we have a million questions that need to be answered in the meantime.

Five Years – Two Weeks Early

I know. I know.

I told the world I was going to write about last week’s LOST episode this weekend. I didn’t do it. And because I didn’t, my inbox was flooded with thousands of emails (well, two, actually) asking me to opine on why Sayid is now Ben’s assassin (I have no idea) and who is he trying to kill (I think it’s the same people that sent the boat people to the island – a.k.a. The Dharma Initiative).

Before someone sends another email, let me explain. The weekend didn’t turn out the way I planned it.

After work Friday I was driving home and thinking about the rest of my day: playing with the kids, eating dinner, and watching a movie with Marathon Girl after they went to bed. If I had enough energy, I was going to make some popcorn for the movie.

I came home and instead of kids eating at the table or seeing Marathon Girl working on dinner, the house was eerily quiet. Too quiet. I double-checked to make sure the van was in the garage. (It was.) Then I thought that Marathon Girl and the kids were playing in the family room and we’d be ordering pizza or something for dinner.

I went to the bedroom to hang up my coat and put away my laptop. Much to my surprise Marathon Girl was sitting on the bed and looking rather sexy.

My first thought was: You look great!

My second thought was: Maybe you should put some real clothes on before the kids see you.

My third thought was: I don’t hear the kids. Where are they?

I must have been completely stunned because Marathon Girl got of the bed and put her arms around me and explained that we were celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary two weeks early because this was the only weekend she could get someone to watch the kids overnight.

Did I mention I knew nothing about this and it was a complete surprise?

So instead of writing about LOST or anything else, I spend most of the weekend alone with Marathon Girl celebrating five wonderful years together.

I wouldn't have had it any other way.

And, yes, you can look for a post about the latest episode of LOST tomorrow.

Unless, of course, Marathon Girl has another surprise for me when I get home tonight.