I suppose it was inevitable that the insanely popular MMORPG World of Warcraft would get its own movie eventually– something that successful can’t go very long without Hollywood getting ahold of it. And that’s not always a bad thing. Some really good movies have been made of properties that were already huge, that might have simply been giant cash-cows but turned out to have merit  in the film medium. And then others have just been that– cash cows.

As our very own Dillon (D-Dub) has pointed out in his blogs, very few good screen adaptations have ever been made of video games. I’m not a WoW player, but from those I’ve talked to, WoW seems to be a vast enough universe to have the right story potential to pull off a good film. And most of those bad movies are based on console games, so maybe the first to be based on an MMORPG has a better shot, just because of its over-all freshness.

And it’s good to see a major director has been selected– that could go a long way to keep it from being  just another video game movie (although, let’s face it, the last Spider-Man film certainly fits into the milk-for-more-dough category). But I’m not sure Raimi is the right guy for this project. Isn’t WoW going to have to be a big, scoping fantasy epic? Raimi’s never done anything like that to my knowledge. I suppose the Spider-Man films are “epic,” but not nearly as sweeping in scope as this thing’s going to be. By it’s very nature, Raimi’s going to be making a film about a universe, not about a major character (though hopefully it focuses on the interesting people who live there, regardless of the fact that the game lets you create your own characters). Raimi does comedy and action well, but fantasy seems like brand new territory for him. That could be great, assuming he isn’t overwhelmed by it. Having him might make the epic fantasy seem new again– my first fear was that this would just be Lord of the Rings all over again, or look too much like Harry Potter, and directors who have done those films would have been a bad call precisely for the opposite reason I’m not sure about Raimi: they’ve been here before.

But he is good at dark, provided a studio isn’t tying his hands behind his back like with Spider-Man 3. Although the choice is strange to me, it could be enough to get me into the theater for this film, just for the sake of morbid curiosity.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

You have your story idea and you’ve done some world building.  The stage is set, but who are your players?

The beautiful part about writing in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres is that you are really only limited by your imagination and your ability to make your story believable.  The same ideas that come into play for world building (see World Building 101) also come into play for your characters.  Unlike television and the movies, you are not limited by what make-up people and special effects artists can pull off.  The page is your canvas, and you can paint whomever, or whatever, you want on it. 

What is your creation? 

Human characters are one thing, and a whole other blog posting in its own right, but sludge monsters and aliens are characters too, and ones that come with special considerations.  Though your creatures can be anything your imagination can inspire, you have to make sure that they are appropriate to the environment you have developed for the rest of your story, and again, you need to make them believable.  Think of everything.  What form does their body take?  How do they breathe?  What orifice do they eat through?  How do they move around?  What does their skin (or fur, or scales) feel like?  That is the physical side of your creation, but there is more to it.  How do they think?  What are their cultural values, if any?  What is the hierarchy of their society, if they have one?  What is the depth of their emotional capabilities?  Inside and out, this is where you match your creature to its environment, and carve out its physical and psychological attributes.

The Communication Factor

Your creature is a character.  A character must communicate to be effective, so how does it do that?  Your goal for using different creatures in your stories will be different.  Think about the aliens in the movie Alien versus the alien in E.T.  Pretty different portrayals of extraterrestrial life forms, eh?  One threatening and frightening, the other loveable and curious.  So what attributes does your creature need?  I say creature, because you could be talking about anything that doesn’t exist in our world, alien or mythological or “other,” and that comes from your imagination.  So how is your creature threatening?  How does it show curiousity?  And the issue of language is a whole other factor.  Most made up creatures will not come into being knowing English, yet for your story to move forward, dialogue will definately come into play.  So is there a way for your human characters to understand them?  Is there a device that will translate for them or something else that can make the point for your creature?  Is there some kind of telepathy that will allow for inter-species communication?  Has their been so much inter-species interaction by the time your story takes place that communication is no longer a problem?  Only you will know how this will work in your story.  Just remember that you have many senses at your disposal that you can use to convey information and emotions to your readers: smells, sounds, sights, etc.  Use them, and your character will simply come to life on the page.

Practice, Practice, Practice

As you are writing about characters not from nature as we know it, it may not come naturally to you.  So play with it.  Give yourself a scenario that you can write in a couple of pages involving one of your creatures, and just try it out.  Does your character feel forced?  Is there something about him/her that just rings untrue when you reread it?  Then change things up and try again.  Given time and a little practice,  you will know when your writing feels right, and you will know when you are just kidding yourself.  If you aren’t quite there yet, let someone else read it and give you feedback.  Writing.com has free memberships that allow you to get feedback on your pieces, so long as you are willing to reciprocate the good deed, and can be a great sounding board when you are feeling unsure or are trying out something unusual.  Just remember that you are putting your writing out there on the internet for anyone to see, and though you maintain copyright of your work, according to their site, you are still exposing yourself to some degree and you will want to be careful.

Until next time, write on!

GhOsTwRiTeR KiM