Blog Entries from Xoic

  1. A way to explain the Dunning Kruger effect

    Put simply, the Dunning Kruger effect says: Beginners are unable to see that their work isn't as good as the work of more skilled artists. First to dispell a very common misunderstanding—it doesn't mean they're stupid. It just means they haven't learned certain things yet. I first ran up against this in drawing, and I think using some visual aids can help get the principle across clearly. One of the ways I've heard it put best is by drawing instructor Robert Beverly Hale in one of his...
  2. Writing From Life Experience

    Often when people hear you should write from your own life experience, they think of it on a very surface level—like if you played a lot of football you should write about football. In one sense this is what it means, or rather it's one aspect of it, but there's a much deeper, broader, and more universal aspect that this understanding misses. This is the aspect I want to write about—not the external things you've done (play some sport, live in a particular region or neighborhood, work on a...
  3. Getting all Emotional

    Almost a year ago I made this post: A few really good articles on Deep/Close POV A recent post on the First Three Sentences thread made me look back into it, and I read through some of the articles again. My opinion of deep POV changed several times as I learned about it, but eventually I realized it's one of those things that can be good or bad depending on how it's handled (isn't that everything related to writing?). From the second link I discovered a course. She has two modules that...
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  4. Looking into the Creation of the MCU

    Don't be put off by the name of the channel (It Was a Sh*t Show)—this guy actually does a deep dive into the making of various movies, and he's extremely fair in his reporting. I think the name is mostly clickbait, though when you look deep enough, the making of most movies really is a shit show, even the ones that come out excellent. It's basically a miracle when Hollywood is able to make a good movie. He gives plenty of praise where it's due, and Marvel deserves a lot up to a certain...
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  5. The Altered Self

    I hadn't heard of a sci-fi genre called The Altered Self before, or of Evolutionary Horror. And yet some of the most powerful books and movies I know of fit into one or both. I guess it's because I never really looked into sub-genres. But honestly, I don't think truly evolutionary horror would be frightening at all, since evolution takes like millions of years and affects, not you directly, but your very distant descendents. The reason these movies and stories are so intense is because it...
  6. Alan Watt (not Alan Watts) on writing from the unconscious

    Just stumbled across this, and so far I'm loving it. He talks (among other things) about the need to allow story to emerge from the unconscious (he calls it the subconscious, but it means the same thing). That's just the first video of a playlist—if you click through on the YouTube logo down in the corner it should open the playlist. If not, here's a link: Alan Watt playlist @ Film Courage
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  7. Examining the writing in Sail and The Man Who Liked Dogs

    These are my two favorite hardboiled stories I've run across so far, both of them in the same book—The Hard Boiled Omnibus, published in 1952 and edited by Joseph T Shaw. It's a collection of some of the best stories from Black Mask magazine. I've already linked to Sail twice, but I feel I should include links here for both stories: Sail by Lester Dent The Man Who Liked Dogs by Raymond Chandler I find the beginnings of both stories to be the strongest parts. With Sail the main body almost...
  8. What can be learned from Buffy?

    When I first joined this message board, I had just finished watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the series, from beginning to end. I think it was the best show ever made, bar none. Despite some heavy contenders like Breaking Bad, or Jessica Jones—none of them have anything like the perfect mix of creativity, humor, and fun Buffy offers, along with intense drama, sometimes to the point of tragedy. I bought the entire series as a DVD box set, which included behind the scenes for some episodes,...
  9. Characters in King and Spielberg

    I want to tie together several threads, most of which come from recent blog posts. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, it's exploratory. Sometimes I use my blog as a journal to delve into ideas like this and see where they lead. In both Carrie and Salem's Lot, Stephen King was, among other things, depicting a town that was too coarse, that didn't allow for the people in it to grow up decently, because the general populace was crude and uncultured. Actually in The Body too. And he...
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  10. Lithium Ion batteries (rechargeable) and safety

    Recently I was looking into getting an eBike and ran across the fact that many of them are known to suddenly burst violently into flames, either while charging, while riding, or just while sitting somewhere. And not only that, but the flames can't be put out. I posted some info about it on the message board a while back, but I've been looking into it more and I've found some better info now. I mentioned on the Science thread that I have a few flashlights with rechargeable lithium-ion...
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  11. Exploring the origins and psychology of slasher flicks

    Watching Halloween for October fright-fest. This is notes toward a movie analysis, so it contains spoilers, for several slasher flicks. It all just came together for me. I was puzzling all through the movie (once again)—why all the Freudian pathologized superego stuff in all these killers—Michael Meyers, Jason Voorhees etc? Why the weird blending of mother and son in the first 2 Friday the 13ths? I started thinking I should look into the production history of Halloween, maybe it was based...
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  12. The Inner Life (when characters come to life)

    I'm using this entry to collect together certain threads where I've expounded on my ideas about the inner life—of human beings and of characters. Here's the thread that sparked this: Whence the theme? But the underlying ideas connect up with my thoughts on characters having an inner life of their own, which I wrote about rather extensively in these threads: Downloading Characters Characters are not listening to me. Help. Do you feel a responsibility to your characters? ... And maybe a...
  13. Transcendent Writing

    Transferred from What are you Reading Now?— Oh crap!! One look at the title and you have to know I'd be all over it in a heartbeat: Transcendent Writers in Stephen King's Fiction: A Post-Jungian Analysis of the Puer Aeternus. Two of my favorite writers, and it's about not only psychology, but transcendence! It's like the quad-fecta (is there such a thing? Well, there is now!). Moreover, it covers pretty much my favorite King stories—Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Body, and The Shining (though I...
  14. Can writing be a meditation?

    This idea has been on my mind for a while, just as idle speculation, but now I want to run a bit of an experiment. I know drawing and painting function as active mediations for me, at least at times. It happens when you fall into the flow state, when time seems to stand still or you forget all about it, forget to eat a meal or two becuase you're so absorbed in the creative work, and when you do bring the session to an end you realize a lot more time has gone by than you thought, and you...
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  15. Some great videos on spiritual/psychological topics

    One of the best videos I've ever seen on Jung's psychology and alchemy as a spiritual quest. Actually this channel is extremely fascinating.
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