Tag Archives: Storytelling

Transformed

By A. Lee Martinez | Published: September 5, 2012

While playing Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, I was struck by the realization that what started out as a line of toys became something more dynamic and dramatic than it really has any right to be. I don’t know exactly when it happened or at what point a bunch of space robots locked in eternal war [...]

Posted in Blog, Video Games, Writing | Also tagged Character Work, Decepticons, Dinosaurs, Fanfiction, Few Movies, G I Joe, Heroism, Jets, Obsession, Personalities, Premise, Rainbow Brite, Realization, Shockwave, Short Answer, Space Robots, Story Continuity, Transformers, Tremendous Marketing | 3 Comments

Synchronized

By A. Lee Martinez | Published: August 1, 2012

Lately, I’ve been pondering synchronicity. That’s just a fancy way of saying I’ve been pondering the artist and the audience and how often their expectations meet. In an ideal world, the creator and the audience would share the same expectations. This would ensure that, for good or bad, the artist’s work would be judged for [...]

Posted in Blog, Movies, Writing | Also tagged Audience, Christopher Nolan, Exposition, Gross Oversimplification, Merits, Monologue, Monologues, Shakespeare, Subtlety, Synchronicity, Tarantino, Technical Standpoint, Wrong Way | Leave a comment

Scar Issue

By A. Lee Martinez | Published: July 24, 2012

Storytelling is all about emotion. Oh, sure, it helps if you can craft a good plot or have a way with a sentence. It helps a lot. But all the technical skill in the world isn’t going to make a difference if your audience doesn’t connect emotionally with what’s going on. This isn’t just true [...]

Posted in Blog, Writing | Also tagged Amusement Park, Distant Stars, Emotional Experiences, Fluff, Good Stuff, Holocaust, Insignificance, Large Groups, Meaningful Stories, Mortality, One People, Perceptions, Rest Of Your Life, Roller Coaster, Scar, Scars, Simplistic Explanation, Starry Night, Technical Skill, World Without A Superman | Leave a comment

Finding Your Thark

By A. Lee Martinez | Published: March 15, 2012

There’s storytelling. There’s plotting. While they’re loosely related, they are not the same thing. Most books about writing I’ve glanced through tend to focus on plot, and there’s a reason for that. Plotting is a technical process. It’s definable elements like conflicts, goals, complications, and resolutions. It’s the blueprint of which many a story is [...]