This felt like a year of slow progress. I spent some time on the release of version 6.31 of CLIPS, but otherwise I spent my time slowly but steadily honing Adventures in Rule-Based Programming.
Plans in 2020 are the same as plans from 2019: release version 6.4 of CLIPS and publish Adventures in Rule-Based Programming.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Disappointed Yet Again
When I am Earth Overlord, it will be a crime to create a TV series without a detailed plan for bringing it to a satisfying conclusion. This decree will be retroactive for Game of Thrones.
Thursday, January 17, 2019
CLIPS Year In Review: 2018
Beta Releases 2 and 3 of CLIPS were released this year. Due to the amount of interest in using the NRC's FuzzyCLIPS (which was based on version 6.1 of CLIPS) with newer versions of CLIPS, I updated the FuzzyCLIPS source code available on GitHub to be compatible with versions 6.24, 6.3, and 6.4 of CLIPS. I also made substantial progress in writing the new CLIPS tutorial: Adventures in Rule-Based Programming.
Plans are 2019 are to complete the final release of 6.4 and publish Adventures in Rule-Based Programming.
Plans are 2019 are to complete the final release of 6.4 and publish Adventures in Rule-Based Programming.
Monday, January 1, 2018
CLIPS Year In Review: 2017
The API updates for version 6.4 of CLIPS, as well as the release versions of CLIPS JNI 1.0 and CLIPS.NET 1.0, were completed this year. I also found a "good enough" solution for the lack of support for MDI applications in .NET, so CLIPS .NET now includes a CLIPS IDE with support for debugging windows. The makefiles got some attention and I also completed a number of user requests for additional functionality. Finally, the tedious process of updating the Basic, Advanced, and Interfaces Guides were completed allowing the first beta release of CLIPS 6.4 in December.
Plans for 2018 are to complete the release of CLIPS 6.4 so that I can move on to writing CLIPS textbooks. My stretch goal for 2018 will be to include a formal C++ with the 6.4 release.
Plans for 2018 are to complete the release of CLIPS 6.4 so that I can move on to writing CLIPS textbooks. My stretch goal for 2018 will be to include a formal C++ with the 6.4 release.
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
The Hodor Reveal
I have a bad feeling about this.
During season 6 of Lost, my doubts started growing that the writers could bring the series to a satisfying conclusion. And they didn't.
The show was nonetheless fantastic, but that's part of the reason that the mediocre conclusion in season 7 was all the more disappointing.
We're now in season 6 of Game of Thrones and this weekend's revelation of the origin of Hodor's name has given me that same bad feeling—I seriously doubt the series is going to have a satisfying conclusion.
The problem I've concluded is the series' split personality. On the one hand it's a character driven story in a medieval setting with political intrigue, subterfuge, alliances, and betrayals. On the other hand, it's epic fantasy with magic, dragons, ice zombies, and prophecies. In previous seasons the former has worked much better than the latter, but as season 6 has progressed we're getting more of the latter much to the detriment of the former.
The Hodor reveal is clever and poignant, but I suspect in the end will be completely irrelevant to the overall story.
And it involves time travel.
Seriously. Time travel.
And unless your story is actually about time travel, it's usually a bad idea to casually toss it in.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope at the end of the series I'm writing a blog post about the brilliance of the Hodor reveal and how it laid the groundwork for a satisfying conclusion.
But I have a bad feeling about this.
During season 6 of Lost, my doubts started growing that the writers could bring the series to a satisfying conclusion. And they didn't.
The show was nonetheless fantastic, but that's part of the reason that the mediocre conclusion in season 7 was all the more disappointing.
We're now in season 6 of Game of Thrones and this weekend's revelation of the origin of Hodor's name has given me that same bad feeling—I seriously doubt the series is going to have a satisfying conclusion.
The problem I've concluded is the series' split personality. On the one hand it's a character driven story in a medieval setting with political intrigue, subterfuge, alliances, and betrayals. On the other hand, it's epic fantasy with magic, dragons, ice zombies, and prophecies. In previous seasons the former has worked much better than the latter, but as season 6 has progressed we're getting more of the latter much to the detriment of the former.
The Hodor reveal is clever and poignant, but I suspect in the end will be completely irrelevant to the overall story.
And it involves time travel.
Seriously. Time travel.
And unless your story is actually about time travel, it's usually a bad idea to casually toss it in.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope at the end of the series I'm writing a blog post about the brilliance of the Hodor reveal and how it laid the groundwork for a satisfying conclusion.
But I have a bad feeling about this.
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Fear the Walking Dumb
One of the things I like about Aliens is that the protagonists are cocky going into their first encounter with the xenomorphs ("Is this going to be a standup fight, sir, or another bughunt?"), get schooled ("Maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events; but we just got our asses kicked, pal!"), and then quickly start making intelligent decisions ("I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."). It's a series of events that plausibly place the characters in jeopardy.
So is it too much to ask that the main characters in zombie stories aren't all Darwin Award winner wannabes? I'm not saying that the stories need to directly acknowledge and address the large body of zombie apocalypse tropes from movies, TV, comics, and books (รก la Scream or The Cabin in the Woods).
But when a character is repeatedly attacked by mute, slow moving family, friends, and acquaintances, maybe it's time for that character to show some caution and foresight around people who, you know, look dead.
Just saying'.
So is it too much to ask that the main characters in zombie stories aren't all Darwin Award winner wannabes? I'm not saying that the stories need to directly acknowledge and address the large body of zombie apocalypse tropes from movies, TV, comics, and books (รก la Scream or The Cabin in the Woods).
But when a character is repeatedly attacked by mute, slow moving family, friends, and acquaintances, maybe it's time for that character to show some caution and foresight around people who, you know, look dead.
Just saying'.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Two Sentence Horror Story
What is the best horror story you can come up with in two sentences?
I held a pistol in one hand and a Molotov cocktail in the other. If I couldn't kill it with bullets, I needed to prevent it from wearing my skin as a disguise.
I held a pistol in one hand and a Molotov cocktail in the other. If I couldn't kill it with bullets, I needed to prevent it from wearing my skin as a disguise.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Sir Terry Pratchett 1948-2015
One of my favorite authors; a master wordsmith of humor and satire.
I can’t think of anyone who did what he did as well as he did. Douglas Adams comes to mind, but he was neither as prolific nor consistently entertaining as Pratchett who, at the time of his death, had forty published novels in the Discworld series.
You know someone’s good at what they do when the only people who could fill their shoes are dead.
I can’t think of anyone who did what he did as well as he did. Douglas Adams comes to mind, but he was neither as prolific nor consistently entertaining as Pratchett who, at the time of his death, had forty published novels in the Discworld series.
You know someone’s good at what they do when the only people who could fill their shoes are dead.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Moving On
2014 marked the end of ten years of consulting with IBM. In that time, I learned invaluable lessons developing and maintaining three expert systems (one with CLIPS and two with JRules). Suffice it to say, there’s a huge difference between using a feature as a tool developer for a few weeks and using it as a tool user on a daily basis for years to develop and maintain a production system.
Moving forward, I want to see if there’s a market for inexpensively priced eBooks (see my prior Textbooks are Crazy Expensive post). I think the available CLIPS documentation compares quite favorably with other expert system tools, but compared to widely used languages such as Java or operating systems such as iOS, there’s a dearth of documentation and high quality examples.
To have a better understanding of the eBook creation process, my first project was to create an ePub version of the CLIPS User’s Guide (written by Dr. Joseph Giarratano many years ago). I used Apple’s Pages word processing app for a variety of reasons: I didn’t want to write the eBook in XHTML because I wanted to use a WYSIWYG editor that supported functionality for generating PDF files that’s not supported when generating eBooks (such as the ability to keep image captions on the same page as the image); I wanted to see if Pages was a suitable alternative to Word for my needs; since Pages can directly export to ePub, I wanted to see how well that process works; and I wanted to see if the ePubs generated by Pages could be easily converted for use with other eBook readers such as Kindle and Nook.
As I discovered, eBook creation is far more difficult than just formatting your content and pressing a button. The most annoying hurdle is that all eBook readers live in a reality where books on programming languages don’t exist. I understand why you shouldn’t expect a reader to support a specific font, but it should be dead simple to specify that one of three generic font types should be used: serif, sans-serif, or monospace. For a programming book, at the very least you need to be able to specify a serif or sans-serif font for the main body of your text and a monospace font for your code.
Pages should have been a slam dunk for Apple. They didn’t need to implement all the functionality of Word, they just needed to implement the most basic functionality and make it intuitive and easy to use. Sadly, in broad strokes, Pages doesn’t seem any better than Word, just different, and like Word, frequently annoying. That’s not to say there’s no reason to use it. It’s relatively inexpensive when compared to Word and you can store your documents in iCloud and access them from your Mac, iOS devices, or web browser. The ePub generation works pretty well, so if you only plan on offering your eBooks in the iBooks Store, using Pages to generate the ePubs appears to be a pretty good solution.
The jury is still out on whether using the ePub generated by Pages to create versions for Kindle and Nook is a viable option. I’m almost satisfied with the Kindle files I was able to generate from the Pages ePub. Hopefully, there’s just a few tweaks I need to figure out to be completely satisfied. Nook is another story. The Nook app for iOS appears to be optimized to display ePub files in the ugliest possible format.
Information on the free iBooks version of the CLIPS 6.3 User’s Guide is available at this link. At some point I’ll probably make a version available for the Kindle, but it won’t be through the Kindle store. There are some restrictions with offering public domain content on the Kindle store that the User’s Guide would violate. In addition, free eBooks can not be distributed through the Kindle store.
Moving forward, I want to see if there’s a market for inexpensively priced eBooks (see my prior Textbooks are Crazy Expensive post). I think the available CLIPS documentation compares quite favorably with other expert system tools, but compared to widely used languages such as Java or operating systems such as iOS, there’s a dearth of documentation and high quality examples.
To have a better understanding of the eBook creation process, my first project was to create an ePub version of the CLIPS User’s Guide (written by Dr. Joseph Giarratano many years ago). I used Apple’s Pages word processing app for a variety of reasons: I didn’t want to write the eBook in XHTML because I wanted to use a WYSIWYG editor that supported functionality for generating PDF files that’s not supported when generating eBooks (such as the ability to keep image captions on the same page as the image); I wanted to see if Pages was a suitable alternative to Word for my needs; since Pages can directly export to ePub, I wanted to see how well that process works; and I wanted to see if the ePubs generated by Pages could be easily converted for use with other eBook readers such as Kindle and Nook.
As I discovered, eBook creation is far more difficult than just formatting your content and pressing a button. The most annoying hurdle is that all eBook readers live in a reality where books on programming languages don’t exist. I understand why you shouldn’t expect a reader to support a specific font, but it should be dead simple to specify that one of three generic font types should be used: serif, sans-serif, or monospace. For a programming book, at the very least you need to be able to specify a serif or sans-serif font for the main body of your text and a monospace font for your code.
Pages should have been a slam dunk for Apple. They didn’t need to implement all the functionality of Word, they just needed to implement the most basic functionality and make it intuitive and easy to use. Sadly, in broad strokes, Pages doesn’t seem any better than Word, just different, and like Word, frequently annoying. That’s not to say there’s no reason to use it. It’s relatively inexpensive when compared to Word and you can store your documents in iCloud and access them from your Mac, iOS devices, or web browser. The ePub generation works pretty well, so if you only plan on offering your eBooks in the iBooks Store, using Pages to generate the ePubs appears to be a pretty good solution.
The jury is still out on whether using the ePub generated by Pages to create versions for Kindle and Nook is a viable option. I’m almost satisfied with the Kindle files I was able to generate from the Pages ePub. Hopefully, there’s just a few tweaks I need to figure out to be completely satisfied. Nook is another story. The Nook app for iOS appears to be optimized to display ePub files in the ugliest possible format.
Information on the free iBooks version of the CLIPS 6.3 User’s Guide is available at this link. At some point I’ll probably make a version available for the Kindle, but it won’t be through the Kindle store. There are some restrictions with offering public domain content on the Kindle store that the User’s Guide would violate. In addition, free eBooks can not be distributed through the Kindle store.
Friday, December 26, 2014
They Weren’t Just Zombies
The first zombie, Patient Zero, was admitted to a hospital in Topeka, Kansas suffering from severe respiratory failure. He died three days later. Thirteen minutes after his death, when he reanimated, there were ninety-seven additional cases throughout North America. Seventeen hours, twenty-one zombies, and seven hundred eighty-nine cases later, the US president declared martial law and restricted travel to and from every major US city. It was already too late. In truth, there was nothing that could have been done to stop the world-wide plague.
By the time it was determined the pathogen was spread by pollen, 1.3 billion people had died. Binding the bodies of the recently deceased and burning them en masse delayed the zombie apocalypse for a short period, however, once the living fell below a critical mass, free roaming zombies were inevitable.
A small percentage of humans, the few remaining survivors, were effectively immune; only the bite of a zombie could infect them. At first, survival was all about foraging. Population collapse was slow enough that looting and hoarding were widespread. It was quick enough that there were vast stockpiles available for the taking; you just had to find them.
Lack of modern medical care was the biggest threat to the living. Zombies were just too slow and fragile to pose much of a danger. A slow-moving SUV with four wheel drive was sufficient to take out a herd of zombies. You just needed to knock one down and crush a few bones to render it harmless. Wild animals, carrion eaters, and slow decay would eventually clean up what was left.
Within a year, outdoor zombie sightings became a rarity. Any remains that had not been burned were washed into the sewers of the cities or absorbed back into the earth. The survivors, however, would soon learn a horrifying truth about the undead.
They weren’t just zombies, they were seedpods.
By the time it was determined the pathogen was spread by pollen, 1.3 billion people had died. Binding the bodies of the recently deceased and burning them en masse delayed the zombie apocalypse for a short period, however, once the living fell below a critical mass, free roaming zombies were inevitable.
A small percentage of humans, the few remaining survivors, were effectively immune; only the bite of a zombie could infect them. At first, survival was all about foraging. Population collapse was slow enough that looting and hoarding were widespread. It was quick enough that there were vast stockpiles available for the taking; you just had to find them.
Lack of modern medical care was the biggest threat to the living. Zombies were just too slow and fragile to pose much of a danger. A slow-moving SUV with four wheel drive was sufficient to take out a herd of zombies. You just needed to knock one down and crush a few bones to render it harmless. Wild animals, carrion eaters, and slow decay would eventually clean up what was left.
Within a year, outdoor zombie sightings became a rarity. Any remains that had not been burned were washed into the sewers of the cities or absorbed back into the earth. The survivors, however, would soon learn a horrifying truth about the undead.
They weren’t just zombies, they were seedpods.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Textbooks are Crazy Expensive
Doug Kari, writing for Ars Technica, on How an eBay bookseller defeated a publishing giant at the Supreme Court:
Using my royalty statement from the first half of 2011, I calculated that each domestic sale of Expert Systems generated twenty-four times more income than each international sale. That’s a huge disparity. Domestic royalty rates are twice international rates and the books are twelve times more expensive. It’s not surprising that international sales frequently exceed domestic sales by a factor of five or more.
I used figures from 2011 because that’s the last year I received any royalty income. My publisher filed in 2013 for chapter 11 relief under the bankruptcy code. They’ve since reorganized, but I have to wonder if their pricing strategies are the root of their problems.
Supap’s saga started with an idea for a dorm room sort of business. Since 1978, textbook prices in the US had soared by 700 percent, but the pricing wasn’t uniform worldwide. Publishers charged more in the affluent North American market and less in other regions. They called this practice “market segmentation,” but to many it seemed like price-gouging. Supap discovered this himself: a textbook priced at $50 overseas might cost $100 in the US.What interested me about this article is that I have some experience from the other side: I’m a textbook author. In 1989, I coauthored the first edition of Expert Systems: Principles and Programming. It was successful enough that we did three additional editions—the fourth was released in 2004—and it’s been translated to Spanish, Russian, and Chinese.
Using my royalty statement from the first half of 2011, I calculated that each domestic sale of Expert Systems generated twenty-four times more income than each international sale. That’s a huge disparity. Domestic royalty rates are twice international rates and the books are twelve times more expensive. It’s not surprising that international sales frequently exceed domestic sales by a factor of five or more.
I used figures from 2011 because that’s the last year I received any royalty income. My publisher filed in 2013 for chapter 11 relief under the bankruptcy code. They’ve since reorganized, but I have to wonder if their pricing strategies are the root of their problems.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
It’s Just A Dream
When I’m Earth Overlord, all dream sequences in movies and TV shows must be approved by my Ministry for the Eradication of Overused Tropes.
AUTUER: Oh no! Little Johnny fell down a well and can’t get out!
MINISTRY: What?!
AUTUER: Ha ha. I’m kidding. It’s just a dream having little to no importance to the plot, but it made a great clip to put in this week’s preview. Can I interest you in a cat jumping out from an unexpected place?
MINISTRY: Oh no! It’s the dungeons for you!
AUTUER: What?!
MINISTRY: Ha ha. We’re kidding. Your show is cancelled.
AUTUER: Oh no! Little Johnny fell down a well and can’t get out!
MINISTRY: What?!
AUTUER: Ha ha. I’m kidding. It’s just a dream having little to no importance to the plot, but it made a great clip to put in this week’s preview. Can I interest you in a cat jumping out from an unexpected place?
MINISTRY: Oh no! It’s the dungeons for you!
AUTUER: What?!
MINISTRY: Ha ha. We’re kidding. Your show is cancelled.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Crossing the Time Stream
Crossing the time stream occurs in episodic storytelling when a plot device is introduced that should have far-reaching implications, but is not routinely used after its introduction, even in situations where it would be an ideal solution for the problems faced by the heroes or villains. The most common example is time travel that allows the past to be changed and there is no more egregious crosser of the time stream than Star Trek.
The time stream was first crossed in the original series, but it wasn't until the subsequent movie and TV series that its frequent use snowballed into huge continuity issues. Star Trek II, III, and IV illustrate the problems caused by crossing the time stream. In The Wrath of Khan, Spock and numerous other crew members of the Enterprise and Reliant are killed. In The Search for Spock, Kirk steals the enterprise and in the ensuing adventure Spock is resurrected, but Kirk’s son is murdered and the Enterprise destroyed. In The Voyage Home, Kirk and crew travel back in time using their captured Klingon warbird in order to retrieve whales to save Earth’s future.
Wait, what? You can travel back in time to solve problems?
Uhmm, OK. Hey Kirk, how about this plan? After you’ve kill Khan in the present, why not just travel back in time and kill him in the past instead. Show up the day after you marooned him on Ceti Alpha V and launch a photon torpedo at him from orbit. Khan’s wrath will be incinerated with thermonuclear fury and since no one from Star Fleet has bothered to check on him for the last fifteen years, there's minimal impact to the timeline.
Spock doesn't have to die; your son doesn't have to die; your crew members don't have to die; the Enterprise doesn't have to be destroyed; and you can avoid a court martial for stealing a starship.
Let’s assume, however, that there’s a Federation Temporal Prime Directive and Kirk is only willing to violate it if the Earth is about to be destroyed by an alien space probe that communicates using catastrophic power-draining planetary weather changes and/or whalesong.
That would fill one plot hole, but there’s an adage that says “when time travel is outlawed, only outlaws will use time travel.” In other words, if the Federation has qualms about changing the timeline, most of its enemies would not.
Take the Borg for example. In First Contact they traveled back in time to assimilate Earth and almost succeeded, but that pesky Picard followed them through their temporal vortex and thwarted their plans. If only they could learn to adapt, they’d try it again and travel back in time somewhere the Federation fleet couldn’t observe them before heading toward Earth.
And surely after discovering the secret to time travel, at least one clever Klingon, Romulan, or Cardassian would come to the realization that if you travel back far enough in time, you can easily defeat your enemies with a starship. If there’s one thing that I learned from the Star Trek reboot, it’s that a U.S deep sea drilling platform sent back in time could have defeated the entire British navy in the War of 1812.
There are numerous other examples in the long history of Star Trek where crossing the time stream involves something other than time travel. How It Should Have Ended lampooned the use of transwarp beaming and magic blood in the most recent movie, Star Trek Into Darkness:
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but after 35 years of watching Star Trek I suppose I’ve been conditioned to accept that its depiction of technology in the science fiction genre follows fewer coherent and consistent rules than the depiction of magic in a typical series from the fantasy genre.
It really is a lost opportunity. When the franchise was rebooted, the creative team could have cast aside decades of continuity baggage. Instead they crossed the time stream right from the start to live on the side where nothing makes sense if you think about it.
The time stream was first crossed in the original series, but it wasn't until the subsequent movie and TV series that its frequent use snowballed into huge continuity issues. Star Trek II, III, and IV illustrate the problems caused by crossing the time stream. In The Wrath of Khan, Spock and numerous other crew members of the Enterprise and Reliant are killed. In The Search for Spock, Kirk steals the enterprise and in the ensuing adventure Spock is resurrected, but Kirk’s son is murdered and the Enterprise destroyed. In The Voyage Home, Kirk and crew travel back in time using their captured Klingon warbird in order to retrieve whales to save Earth’s future.
Wait, what? You can travel back in time to solve problems?
Uhmm, OK. Hey Kirk, how about this plan? After you’ve kill Khan in the present, why not just travel back in time and kill him in the past instead. Show up the day after you marooned him on Ceti Alpha V and launch a photon torpedo at him from orbit. Khan’s wrath will be incinerated with thermonuclear fury and since no one from Star Fleet has bothered to check on him for the last fifteen years, there's minimal impact to the timeline.
Spock doesn't have to die; your son doesn't have to die; your crew members don't have to die; the Enterprise doesn't have to be destroyed; and you can avoid a court martial for stealing a starship.
Let’s assume, however, that there’s a Federation Temporal Prime Directive and Kirk is only willing to violate it if the Earth is about to be destroyed by an alien space probe that communicates using catastrophic power-draining planetary weather changes and/or whalesong.
That would fill one plot hole, but there’s an adage that says “when time travel is outlawed, only outlaws will use time travel.” In other words, if the Federation has qualms about changing the timeline, most of its enemies would not.
Take the Borg for example. In First Contact they traveled back in time to assimilate Earth and almost succeeded, but that pesky Picard followed them through their temporal vortex and thwarted their plans. If only they could learn to adapt, they’d try it again and travel back in time somewhere the Federation fleet couldn’t observe them before heading toward Earth.
And surely after discovering the secret to time travel, at least one clever Klingon, Romulan, or Cardassian would come to the realization that if you travel back far enough in time, you can easily defeat your enemies with a starship. If there’s one thing that I learned from the Star Trek reboot, it’s that a U.S deep sea drilling platform sent back in time could have defeated the entire British navy in the War of 1812.
There are numerous other examples in the long history of Star Trek where crossing the time stream involves something other than time travel. How It Should Have Ended lampooned the use of transwarp beaming and magic blood in the most recent movie, Star Trek Into Darkness:
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but after 35 years of watching Star Trek I suppose I’ve been conditioned to accept that its depiction of technology in the science fiction genre follows fewer coherent and consistent rules than the depiction of magic in a typical series from the fantasy genre.
It really is a lost opportunity. When the franchise was rebooted, the creative team could have cast aside decades of continuity baggage. Instead they crossed the time stream right from the start to live on the side where nothing makes sense if you think about it.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Friday, October 11, 2013
Movies, Pacing, and Books
For economic and practical reasons, most movies have a run time of 1½ to 2½ hours. But what if time constraints could be removed and audiences would sit through an entertaining movie of any length? How much longer would films run and would their content have to change to keep the audience in their seats?
There are many examples of movies that are both long and successful. Avatar, the top grossing film of all time, had a run time of 2 hours and 42 minutes. Titanic at 3 hours and 14 minutes is the second top grossing film. The three movies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy were all around three hours in length and individually are the 33rd, 24th, and 7th highest grossing films.
But The Lord of the Rings, both the movie and the books on which it is based, is really one story told in three parts. A single “super movie” would be over 9 hours in length with combined grosses placing it ahead of Avatar.
Because the story is a sweeping epic, it’s hard to envision these movies being shorter and still doing justice to the source material. You can even argue that the extended versions of the films, which bring the total length to over 11 hours, fill in missing pieces making the story more enjoyable.
So if a 9 hour movie can be good and an 11 hour movie (possibly) as good or better, would making movies longer make them better?
The Avengers, perhaps the best (or at the very least one of the best) superhero movies ever made clocks in at 2 hours and 23 minutes. It’s the third top grossing film. Would this movie have been twice as good if it were twice as long? I don’t think so. You could add additional subplots and lengthen the actions sequences, but I doubt this would have made the movie better.
On the other hand, every M. Night Shyamalan movie feels like it’s thirty minutes too long. Even The Sixth Sense, which I liked quite a bit, drags at points. Cutting at least ten minutes out of the running time of 1 hour and 47 minutes would have made it a better film.
Why is this?
Pacing.
Stories have rhythm. If it’s too fast, then we wonder why things happen. If it’s too slow, then we wait for things to happen. If it’s just right then we get caught up in the story and lose track of time.
The Sixth Sense presents too little story in too much time. A point is reached where we understand that Cole is a troubled child who has disturbing supernatural events occurring around him. We also understand that Malcolm, the child psychiatrist who is trying to help him, is troubled in his own way. We’re ready to move on to the next thing—for the characters to begin working on a resolution for their problems—but instead the film keeps focusing on the problem for far too long before finally coming to a resolution and satisfying conclusion.
The editing process, driven by practicality of run times, generally makes movies better. No amount of editing is going to turn hours and hours of bad footage into an oscar winner, but it stands to reason that if you take the best footage, sequence it properly, and leave the rest on the cutting room floor, you’ll probably have the best film you can make.
For good films this often means the hard choice of not including some footage. In Alien, a cut scene reveals the fate of Dallas and Brett who had been earlier captured by the xenomorph. It revealed some intriguing information about the alien’s life cycle, but placing it in the middle of Ripley’s frantic escape from the Nostromo before it self-destructed would have disrupted the pacing of that sequence. Similarly in Aliens, there is a cut scene in which Ripley learns that her young daughter lived out her life and died during the 57 years she was adrift in space suspended in hypersleep. This short scene makes it easy to see how Ripley would view Newt as a surrogate daughter, risking her own life to rescue her from the depths of the alien hive. But is it an essential scene to understand Ripley’s motivation? I would say the answer is no. From the interaction shown in the movie, it’s believable that Ripley would risk her life to save this child and thus the scene can be cut without diminishing the film.
What these cuts illustrate is that in well-made movies, every scene should be questioned before being included in the final cut. Does this scene serve a purpose? Is this scene needed to advance the plot? Is the movie better with this scene in it and worse without it?
I wish every book author went through this process, especially once they became successful.
When a film franchise becomes successful, the films don’t typically become longer and longer. If anything increases, it’s usually the budget and production values—once you’ve proven something is successful spending more money on it is less of a risk.
When a book franchise becomes successful, the same is not always true. I’ve graphed the page counts of a number of fantasy book series I’ve enjoyed reading: Discworld, Xanth, Harry Potter, and Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. I’ve only graphed the first ten books in these series with the exception of Harry Potter which consists of just seven books.
First, I love the Discworld books written by Terry Pratchett. Every book he writes is just as long as it needs to be. And funny never gets old—his dialogue, descriptions, observations, and plots always ooze with his unique sense of humor. I’ve read 33 out of the 40 books currently in the series and haven’t grown tired of them yet. His books show a modest increase in size as the series became successful with the 33rd being only 50% longer than the first.
The Xanth series by Piers Anthony is one I started reading when I was in High School and I still have very fond memories of them. I started reading them again as an adult and finished 25 out the 38 currently in the series. The books have always had pun-derived humor, but the latter books began to focus less and less on plot and characters and more and more on puns (which eventually became too pun-ishing for me), so I lost interest in the series. As the graph shows, the length of his first ten books was the most consistent of the four series. This trend continued in his latter books with the 25th being only 9% longer than the first. He clearly has a feel for the length for the stories he wants to tell and crafts his plots to fall within the desired range.
Next is the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. It’s insane to argue about the formula for books as wildly successful as these, but I’m going to remove my tin foil hat and make an attempt.
I can’t think of better examples of how to craft plots than the first three books in this series. Everything in the stories serves a purpose. The pacing is just right and you’re never left waiting for things to happen. The latter books, however, feel bloated in comparison. Subplots abound that serve little purpose in the greater arc of the story and it takes far too long to resolve many issues.
I’m not arguing that the last four books are bad; I enjoyed them. I just think they could have been better. Look at the modest increase in size for books 2 and 3 in the series. Now look at how the page count sky rockets for books 4 and 5. The fifth book in the series is 278% longer than the first. It’s certainly not 278% better.
That’s because more of the same thing is not always the same thing. The experience of eating one piece of candy is not the same as eating one hundred pieces of candy—in one case, you wish you could eat more and in the other you wish you had eaten less.
Making your books twice as long is not twice as much of the same thing—it’s something different. It’s a different formula. It’s New Coke vs. Classic Coke. Even if you like New Coke better, you can’t reasonably argue that it’s the same thing as Classic Coke.
The same is true for the Harry Potter series. The formula for the first three books is clearly different than that for the last four. The expanding plot changed the pacing of the stories for the worse, not the better. It wasn’t enough of a change that I stopped reading the series, but it was enough that I enjoyed the latter stories to a lesser extent.
Finally, there’s the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter novels by Laurell K. Hamilton, which started out strong, but slowly bloated over time. The tenth was the last I read before giving up on the series. It was 241% longer than the original novel—it was also 241% worse.
Here’s the deal. If you have common scenes in every book you write, you have to be really careful with pacing. Once your reader gets through one elaborate description of someone getting dressed, eating a meal, channeling supernatural power, or pulling out a gun during a tense confrontation, reading similar passages becomes less and less interesting. If your books remain the same length, no worries. But if they become longer and longer by including more and more of the same old thing, then you really need to find an editor who’s willing to challenge everything you write, regardless of how well your books are selling.
As a reader, this is my plea to authors. Edit your books like movies. Set a reasonable limit, say 400 pages, and then trim your story, keeping only the best parts, until it fits within that self-imposed limit. Then add pieces back only if you can justify their inclusion.
I’m not saying you can’t write a masterpiece that would be diminished by the omission of a single word—I’m saying that if you think you can, you probably can’t.
There are many examples of movies that are both long and successful. Avatar, the top grossing film of all time, had a run time of 2 hours and 42 minutes. Titanic at 3 hours and 14 minutes is the second top grossing film. The three movies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy were all around three hours in length and individually are the 33rd, 24th, and 7th highest grossing films.
But The Lord of the Rings, both the movie and the books on which it is based, is really one story told in three parts. A single “super movie” would be over 9 hours in length with combined grosses placing it ahead of Avatar.
Because the story is a sweeping epic, it’s hard to envision these movies being shorter and still doing justice to the source material. You can even argue that the extended versions of the films, which bring the total length to over 11 hours, fill in missing pieces making the story more enjoyable.
So if a 9 hour movie can be good and an 11 hour movie (possibly) as good or better, would making movies longer make them better?
The Avengers, perhaps the best (or at the very least one of the best) superhero movies ever made clocks in at 2 hours and 23 minutes. It’s the third top grossing film. Would this movie have been twice as good if it were twice as long? I don’t think so. You could add additional subplots and lengthen the actions sequences, but I doubt this would have made the movie better.
On the other hand, every M. Night Shyamalan movie feels like it’s thirty minutes too long. Even The Sixth Sense, which I liked quite a bit, drags at points. Cutting at least ten minutes out of the running time of 1 hour and 47 minutes would have made it a better film.
Why is this?
Pacing.
Stories have rhythm. If it’s too fast, then we wonder why things happen. If it’s too slow, then we wait for things to happen. If it’s just right then we get caught up in the story and lose track of time.
The Sixth Sense presents too little story in too much time. A point is reached where we understand that Cole is a troubled child who has disturbing supernatural events occurring around him. We also understand that Malcolm, the child psychiatrist who is trying to help him, is troubled in his own way. We’re ready to move on to the next thing—for the characters to begin working on a resolution for their problems—but instead the film keeps focusing on the problem for far too long before finally coming to a resolution and satisfying conclusion.
The editing process, driven by practicality of run times, generally makes movies better. No amount of editing is going to turn hours and hours of bad footage into an oscar winner, but it stands to reason that if you take the best footage, sequence it properly, and leave the rest on the cutting room floor, you’ll probably have the best film you can make.
For good films this often means the hard choice of not including some footage. In Alien, a cut scene reveals the fate of Dallas and Brett who had been earlier captured by the xenomorph. It revealed some intriguing information about the alien’s life cycle, but placing it in the middle of Ripley’s frantic escape from the Nostromo before it self-destructed would have disrupted the pacing of that sequence. Similarly in Aliens, there is a cut scene in which Ripley learns that her young daughter lived out her life and died during the 57 years she was adrift in space suspended in hypersleep. This short scene makes it easy to see how Ripley would view Newt as a surrogate daughter, risking her own life to rescue her from the depths of the alien hive. But is it an essential scene to understand Ripley’s motivation? I would say the answer is no. From the interaction shown in the movie, it’s believable that Ripley would risk her life to save this child and thus the scene can be cut without diminishing the film.
What these cuts illustrate is that in well-made movies, every scene should be questioned before being included in the final cut. Does this scene serve a purpose? Is this scene needed to advance the plot? Is the movie better with this scene in it and worse without it?
I wish every book author went through this process, especially once they became successful.
When a film franchise becomes successful, the films don’t typically become longer and longer. If anything increases, it’s usually the budget and production values—once you’ve proven something is successful spending more money on it is less of a risk.
When a book franchise becomes successful, the same is not always true. I’ve graphed the page counts of a number of fantasy book series I’ve enjoyed reading: Discworld, Xanth, Harry Potter, and Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. I’ve only graphed the first ten books in these series with the exception of Harry Potter which consists of just seven books.
First, I love the Discworld books written by Terry Pratchett. Every book he writes is just as long as it needs to be. And funny never gets old—his dialogue, descriptions, observations, and plots always ooze with his unique sense of humor. I’ve read 33 out of the 40 books currently in the series and haven’t grown tired of them yet. His books show a modest increase in size as the series became successful with the 33rd being only 50% longer than the first.
The Xanth series by Piers Anthony is one I started reading when I was in High School and I still have very fond memories of them. I started reading them again as an adult and finished 25 out the 38 currently in the series. The books have always had pun-derived humor, but the latter books began to focus less and less on plot and characters and more and more on puns (which eventually became too pun-ishing for me), so I lost interest in the series. As the graph shows, the length of his first ten books was the most consistent of the four series. This trend continued in his latter books with the 25th being only 9% longer than the first. He clearly has a feel for the length for the stories he wants to tell and crafts his plots to fall within the desired range.
Next is the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. It’s insane to argue about the formula for books as wildly successful as these, but I’m going to remove my tin foil hat and make an attempt.
I can’t think of better examples of how to craft plots than the first three books in this series. Everything in the stories serves a purpose. The pacing is just right and you’re never left waiting for things to happen. The latter books, however, feel bloated in comparison. Subplots abound that serve little purpose in the greater arc of the story and it takes far too long to resolve many issues.
I’m not arguing that the last four books are bad; I enjoyed them. I just think they could have been better. Look at the modest increase in size for books 2 and 3 in the series. Now look at how the page count sky rockets for books 4 and 5. The fifth book in the series is 278% longer than the first. It’s certainly not 278% better.
That’s because more of the same thing is not always the same thing. The experience of eating one piece of candy is not the same as eating one hundred pieces of candy—in one case, you wish you could eat more and in the other you wish you had eaten less.
Making your books twice as long is not twice as much of the same thing—it’s something different. It’s a different formula. It’s New Coke vs. Classic Coke. Even if you like New Coke better, you can’t reasonably argue that it’s the same thing as Classic Coke.
The same is true for the Harry Potter series. The formula for the first three books is clearly different than that for the last four. The expanding plot changed the pacing of the stories for the worse, not the better. It wasn’t enough of a change that I stopped reading the series, but it was enough that I enjoyed the latter stories to a lesser extent.
Finally, there’s the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter novels by Laurell K. Hamilton, which started out strong, but slowly bloated over time. The tenth was the last I read before giving up on the series. It was 241% longer than the original novel—it was also 241% worse.
Here’s the deal. If you have common scenes in every book you write, you have to be really careful with pacing. Once your reader gets through one elaborate description of someone getting dressed, eating a meal, channeling supernatural power, or pulling out a gun during a tense confrontation, reading similar passages becomes less and less interesting. If your books remain the same length, no worries. But if they become longer and longer by including more and more of the same old thing, then you really need to find an editor who’s willing to challenge everything you write, regardless of how well your books are selling.
As a reader, this is my plea to authors. Edit your books like movies. Set a reasonable limit, say 400 pages, and then trim your story, keeping only the best parts, until it fits within that self-imposed limit. Then add pieces back only if you can justify their inclusion.
I’m not saying you can’t write a masterpiece that would be diminished by the omission of a single word—I’m saying that if you think you can, you probably can’t.
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