spriteleigh

There are no effective legal limits on when and to whom police can disclose unproven charges against you, 911 calls involving mental health incidents, and similar sensitive and prejudicial information; people have been denied employment, been turned back at the US border and suffered many other harms because Ontario cops send this stuff far and wide. Read the rest

Parliament has passed #DRIP, a sweeping, illegal surveillance bill that doubles down on the old surveillance law, which was struck down by the European Court for violating fundamental human rights. Read the rest

Human rights video nonprofit WITNESS created a guide to archiving video, after hearing from hundreds of activists and citizen journalists worldwide that preservation and future access to their media was a crucial concern. Read the rest

In "Persecuted," a forthcoming theatrical release movie, religious conservatives defend themselves against pluralism, secularism, reproductive rights, and feminism. Read the rest

The Senate has approved a bill (which already passed in the House) that makes it legal for you to unlock the phones you own so you can choose which carrier you use. Read the rest

The FCC's site has been so hammered by comments from people angry about its plans to enact Cable Company Fuckery that many haven't been able to get through. Read the rest

An amendment introduced by Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) will block the FCC's plan to allow cities to set up their own broadband connections, competing with Comcast and other monopoly/duopolies. Read the rest

The bill was introduced on Wednesday by Attorney General George Brandis, and it gives the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation the power to imprison leakers (including reporters) for five years, with ten year sentences for anything regarding "special intelligence operations" (illegal spy operations conducted under promise of immunity). Read the rest

 “How do you come up with the characters in your novels? Are they based on real people? Do you make lists of their work, family, education, hobbies? Is it better to describe them in detail, or let readers flesh them out in their minds?”

These are questions novelists hear from readers eager to understand the mysterious workings of a writer’s mind. I’ve heard all kinds of advice about how fiction-writers “should” create fully dimensional characters, but I think every writer finds her own ways.

I confess that I have based several characters on people I know (or knew), and have found “seeds” in characters in films or even music videos. It’s a boost to start with appearance, speech, or personality tics you’ve already observed, then go on to morph that seed into your own character. Most of the time, my models never recognize themselves in the transformed character, which is the way it should go.

Take Heinck, the creepy ringleader of a criminal gang in my second science fiction novel, Win, Lose, Draw. (I hate that title my publisher chose instead of my original Resistance Coil, but that’s another story!) He’s whippy, with slicked-back dark hair and a lot of “pain-dure” tattoos that advertise how tough he is, a sadomasochist who has absolutely no morals. The man I took as my initial model probably never reads, so I don’t have to worry that he’ll recognize himself – besides, Heinck is probably smarter.

Years ago, when I was working as a scuba guide and instructor in the Bay Islands of Honduras at an isolated inn reachable only by boat or rough trails, I was pretty much held hostage by the lowlife temporary manager who was driving away the few tourists and making life miserable for everyone else. He waved around an arsenal of guns, bragged about his previous scams, and kept me and the other employees from taking a boat to the only distant town to radio the absent owner back in the States about the state of crisis at his inn. When the owner finally arrived to fire the manager, he skulked away to the relief of everyone. (spoiler alert) And later, I took secret pleasure in killing him off as my fictional villain. One perk of acting Deity in our own invented worlds!

Flipping the coin, I created a modest tribute to my original writing mentor by making him a minor, helpful character in my Caribbean suspense novel Islands. My mentor was R.D. Brown, a source of inspiration to his many students at Western Washington University. He was a very tall man, with a slouch perhaps as the result of ducking through doorways, a bald head, a jowly face, and an incisive wit animating his eyes. When I created Captain Wilkes, a native police chief who aids my archeologist/sleuth Susan Dunne, I called on images of R.D.: A big native man was unfolding his height from a dusty compact. He slouched over to me in rumpled slacks and a linen dress shirt, dark scalp gleaming above a graying frizz, face drooping in folds like an intelligent basset hound.

You’ll see that I’m in favor of providing appearance details of my characters. I feel that leaving them a blank slate makes it hard for readers to invest or even keep track of who’s who.  BTW, Captain Wilkes is a rare character-based-on-real where I’ve been caught out: When his partner read the novel, she immediately recognized R.D. as the model, and we all got a chuckle out of it.

Of course, there’s a lot of work to do once the original image and basic personality forms. Voice is perhaps the biggest challenge for me: What kind of diction would this person use, and does it fit his background and upbringing? Or deliberately contrast with it, for plausible reasons of education or choice? Is each character meant to be sympathetic or not? Even if she’s “the bad gal,” does she embody at least a little ambiguity as a complex person? When I teach fiction-writing at the university, I point my students toward good advice from writing guru Janet Burroway: “Give your character a consistent inconsistency.” In other words, some habit or preference that seems at odds with the initial presentation or “type,” so he has a realistic individuality.

I do depart from some writerly advice (including Burroway’s) to create a detailed summary about every character, including history, family, hobbies, etc. I feel that it constrains the characters if everything about them is pinned down at the start, and prevents them from “acting out” to inform me that they would do this or wouldn’t do that. But I do have to work during revision to make sure they “add up” to realistic personalities.

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Because my novels are often set in foreign countries where I’ve lived or travelled, I face a special challenge in creating characters from different cultures, working to present them as authentic, with believable voices that might mirror their different diction or accents from English/American speech. I usually present these characters through the observations of an American point-of-view character, hoping to avoid “cultural appropriation” or just plain blunders in accuracy.  The more you experience and observe people in actual life, the closer you’ll come to capturing the essence of characters, whether from familiar cultures or foreign. In my travels, I’ve found that there are definitely cultural variations in beliefs and social interactions, but also that most humans at heart have much in common and are willing to make a connection.

One more example from my latest novel set in Greece, The Ariadne Connection, to be released in October 2014 from Book View Café. My heroine’s uncle Demetrios has retired to a mountain village on the southern coast of Crete. In real life, I was backpacking in this region with my former partner, when we found ourselves stranded in a remote, rocky village without a place to stay during the Easter holidays when all the busses stopped running.  We were trying to find a level, unrocky spot (not likely!) to pitch our tent, when we were befriended by a local dignitary, Stelios Mamalakis, who offered us the famous Greek hospitality of a place to stay and a tour of the local landscape. Here is a bit I borrowed from him for my character Demetrios:

Wild asparagus. Ariadne touched the slender soft buds Uncle Demetrios had always favored. She could still see him, all those years ago, climbing ahead of her up a narrow ravine beside a rain-swollen stream, pushing through thorn thickets to find the new asparagus shoots, tearing his trousers to get the last one.

“But I can’t resist it! This one is the best, Kri-Kri, just look at it. Tender youthful perfection, the most sublime Platonic ideal of a sprout. Now this is beauty. We will eat it tonight and be strong and beautiful, too.” His white teeth flashed beneath the long pirate mustache.

 I will leave you with this thought: We writers have to love our characters, even the villains. With love, and patience, they will live and breathe.

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Sara Stamey’s romantic suspense novel Islands is described by reviewers as “an intellectual thriller” and “a superior suspense novel….a stomping vivid ride.” A new eBook edition is available from Book View Café. BVC will also release her new metaphysical thriller set in Greece, The Ariadne Connection, in October 2014.

You've got just hours to write to the FCC and stop the plan to nuke Net Neutrality, putting your phone company in charge of which of the services you love will go in the Internet "slow lane." College Humor's got a great take on the issue. Watch, then do. (Thanks, April!)

(YouTube link)

Enjoy clips from 93 different movies in this toe-tappin’ video set to the song "Tongues" by Joywave. They're not all musicals -it seems that most movies have at least a little dancing in them. We Can Dance is part three of a series of dance videos from Robert Jones featuring movie clips. See part one and part two as well. -Thanks, Robert!

Only 36 hours are left to comment on the FCC's proposal to allow for Net Neutrality-shredding "Internet fast lanes" that let phone companies pick Internet winners and losers—it's time to act. Read the rest

Now that you mention it, Steve Martin and Harrison Ford sound eerily similar to one another. (Thanks, Tom!)

A paper from University of Kansas economist Koleman Strumpf (whose work we've featured here for years) empirically examines the impact of file-sharing on box-office revenues. Read the rest

A paper in Industrial Relations A Journal of Economy and Society performs a meta-analysis of a wide range of studies the impact of trade unions on productivity and finds a complex puzzle. Read the rest

David Kravets reports on the decision from U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman, with respect to negative reviews of Ubervita's "Thermogenic Hyper-Metabolizer" pills.

Read the rest

A simple, straightforward website full of indie games. Bookmarked!

See also: 12 Stanley Kubrick Strategies for Perfecting a Film and Staircases to Nowhere: Making "The Shining."

(Via Kottke.)

Are you are a Stanley Kubrick fan with 20 minutes to spare? Great. Watch this short documentary going deep on Kubrick's various unfinished projects. Guess who Kubrick wanted to play Napoleon? Jump to the 8-minute mark if you're curious. Enjoy:

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Driving Miss Daisy

There are good movies. There are even great movies. But every moive--and I do mean every movie--can be improved simply by adding Batman as a character. The blog It's Better with Batman is dedicated to proving that by photoshopping the Dark Knight into famous scenes.

American Beauty

Full Metal Jacket

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

The Lion King

Jaws

See? Just like I said: every movie.

But all of us at Neatorama promote an open exchange of ideas, even heretical ones. So if you wish to argue that a movie could not be improved by adding Batman, please state your case in the comments.

-via Nerd Approved

A group of NGOs, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, offer a suite of tools for diagnosing and mitigating the kinds of attacks faced by dissidents and independent media all over the world, especially when they threaten the powerful. Read the rest

Brian Knappenberger, who made the Internet's Own Boy Aaron Swartz documentary, has made an excellent, vital short film about network neutrality (or cable company fuckery). Read the rest

The UK government is has put MPs on notice that a bill will be considered and moved on July 14, but they won't say what it is.

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There's a lot of companies whose business-plan starts with "First, we remove all personal identifiers from this sensitive personal information, then we make a bundle selling it." Cory Doctorow summarizes the problem: computer scientists are pretty sure that's impossible. Read the rest

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Maybe you’ve thought about finally getting around to watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but those are three really long movies, even without the Hobbit prequels. In the time it takes to watch them all, you could write a dissertation. Or at least it seems that way. For you, Miss/Mr. Impatient, Mashable has created a TL;DW version of the movies condensed into 90 seconds. Oddly enough, outside of what happens to Sean Bean, which is to be expected, there are no spoilers in this video. -via HuffPo

A deep, carefully argued, carefully research report from Debt and Society makes a strong case that sky-high tuition (and brutal, lifelong student debt, up 1000% in 15 years) is not primarily caused by bloated administrations or high professors' salaries. The explanation is a lot more banker-y. Read the rest

An Indian certificate authority in the Microsoft root of trust has been caught issuing fake Google subdomain certificates that would allow nearly undetectable eavesdropping on "secure" connections to services like Google Docs. Read the rest

People love having goats around for all kinds of reasons, from their incredible ability to eat just about anything to the fact that they like to headbutt stuff and stand on top of barrels, but it's safe to say goats aren't raised for their beautiful singing voices:

(Video Link)

A goat's bleat can sound like someone screaming while being strangled, a baby crying, or just as sheepish as you'd expect from a crying kid, which is why using the bleat of a goat is the best way to give your theme song a suspenseful edge.

Jurassic Goats definitely brings an air of suspense, and hair raising goatiness, to the inspiring theme song from Jurassic Park, and once again Marca Blanca has proven that every good theme song needs a goat version!

-Via Nerd Approved

A huge cache of NSA surveillance data found that for every person of suspicion whose communications are caught in the spy-net, nine more people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing are also surveilled. Many of these innocents are Americans, whom the NSA is legally prohibited from spying upon. Cory Doctorow looks at what the NSA means when it says "targeted." Read the rest

Tor (The Onion Router) is a military-grade, secure tool for increasing the privacy and anonymity of your communications; but it's been the subject of plenty of fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Read the rest

Fans of the seminal sci-fi TV show The X-Files haven’t lost any love for the far out adventures of Mulder and Scully even though the show went off the air nearly twelve years ago.

However, The X-Files superfans aren’t making animated shorts, or live action YouTube videos, because they’re too busy writing fan fiction featuring ridiculous pop culture crossovers and the obligatory romantic moment between Fox Mulder and (insert another popular main character's name here).

There's a fun tale about the time when Mulder and Scully met the apartment dwelling gang from Seinfeld, one about the totally plausible idea of Scully & Mulder being sucked into the Hunger Games universe and forced to compete in the games without any backup from Skinner or the Lone Gunmen, and the timeless tale Scully O'Hara meets Rhett Mulder.

The X-files crossovers only get stranger from here folks! Read all about these mind bending X-Files fan fic crossovers at Vulture.