Always Be Doing Two Things

It’s no good to be halfway in when it comes to writing a novel. This summer has been hot, and I’ve been out in it for most of every day, and every night after getting home and hanging out with the family I would open up my Atticus document and dutifully begin typing. Notice the word “typing.”

I saw a post on Instagram from Emma Johnson, I believe, where she mentioned that she takes the summer off from writing because there was lots of farm work to be done. And I thought to myself, Oh yeah…of course! Sometimes it’s a small thing that makes the lightbulb go off.

I thought back to how I wrote Gods Fare No Better, which took place over the course of three winters. And then I thought back to how I wrote Berserker Club, which took place over the course of three months, from early September of ‘25 to the end of November ‘25.

And then I thought back to how I wrote By the Time over two weeks in March of ‘09, and Low Down over two weeks in December of ‘12, and Black Gum sometime in the spring of ‘15. Not a single novel written during the summer months!

Matt Cardin wrote about needing fallow periods to recharge. That’s the summer for me. Next year I’ll block this time off intentionally, July and August especially. The heat just burns you out! I come home without a thought in my head.

Instead of writing, I’ve been watching TV and playing video games. Here are some worthwhile things to check out:

East Palace & Kingdom

Addictive Joseon-era K-dramas with great action.

East Palace is an 8-episode series about a shaman hired by an evil king to exorcize a vengeful spirit that lives in a lake. As the series goes on and layers are unraveled, the hero will have to make deals with demons to defeat the evil haunting the palace. The coolest part of the show’s formula is that when it’s time for the hero to fight a ghost, he goes into ghost world and does karate on them.

Kingdom is about a prince who leads a rebellion against throne-usurpers while in the midst of a zombie outbreak. Much more cinematic and heavy than East Palace, but still fantastic storytelling.

I learned a simple rule that never occurred to me until I noticed it in both of these shows: a scene is required to do two things, minimum. If you ever have a scene that just does one thing, it’s worth taking another look to see if you can’t add something else.

What do I mean by this?

Let’s say you have a character development scene. You’re trying to get across that a character is afraid of mice, maybe. This is related to something tragic and mouse-related in their past. The character gets frightened by a mouse, another character steps in to kill the mouse, they talk about it. Now that character development piece is sorted.

BUT if you just end the scene right there, you’ve forgotten to add the hook onto the end of the scene that carries your audience through. So instead, you might have the dead mouse come back to life. Or you might cut to a hole in the wall, where the mouse’s sworn brother just watched him get murdered, and so he vows revenge.

Always be doing two things.

Last Samurai Standing

Case in point, this show quite often does not do two things at once in its scenes. You notice the drag.

This is Battle Royale at the end of the Boshin Wars, where samurai have been stripped of their swords and integrated into a lower caste. A mysterious figure sets up a tournament where 292 samurai make their way from Kyoto to Tokyo, with a prize of ¥100k to the last man standing. It has great characters and awesome sword fights, but a lot of the scenes drag a bit.

For example, early on we’re introduced to a young woman who joined the tournament to help her mother, who is dying of cholera, afford the medicine to survive. We already know why she’s there. But then, in episode 2, we have a whole flashback where her mother gets sick and she vows to join the tournament to help cure her. Totally pointless! And even worse, in that scene (and many others) the only thing we’re learning from that scene is the one thing they want you to know.

But such is the addictiveness of the battle royale structure that you keep watching. I did enjoy it, and will watch the next season, but this one has some parts that drag out.

Sweet Home

I watched seasons 1 & half of 2 a year or two ago. Since I’m on a TV kick, I figured I’d wrap this up from where I left off and just catch up as I went along.

This is a post-apocalyptic “zombie” story where people turn into monsters if they give into their deepest desires. It feels like it has 200 characters, and I remembered why I stopped watching in the first place: it is just a relentlessly grim, humorless slog. Not a single joke in episodes that often run over an hour. What it does have is a lot of crying, screaming, and slow motion scenes set to piano.

It does, however, have scenes that do two things. Maybe this is a rule they teach in Korean screenwriting classes?

I’m powering through because the imagery is great…and I’ve got a sunk cost thing going on. Would not recommend this one.

This one is a hoot. Me and my son play this and scream and laugh. It’s only $10, good bonding material if you have children.

I’ve been playing this nonstop since it was released. A Dark Souls clone with enough new advancement systems and gameplay tweaks to make it interesting. Great level design, smooth combat, controller-breaking frustration. There’s just nothing like carrying enough souls to level up, dying, and having to retrieve those souls without dying again (because you’ll lose them forever). It’s an addictive risk-based gameplay loop that I will always return to.

On the handheld side, I got both Sprawl & Vholume for my ROG. The Mirror’s Edge parkour gameplay is insanely fun. These are both mood pieces that will keep you playing.

That’s all for now.

Have a great week!

-JDO