Note that MineCraft was made by one guy with a budget in the thousands, whereas mainstream professional titles are made by teams of people over several years with budgets in the multiple tens of millions, and that the YouTube videos my boys like to watch are usually made by one person with a budget in the tens of dollars and a production time of less than an hour.

Never mind that MineCraft doesn’t look all that great – the man who made it was a programmer, not an artist. He is unapologetic about that, and rightly so because if you have to choose, it’s better to have a fun game that’s not pretty than a pretty game that’s not fun. It’s just that as an artist, and as a consumer, I’d rather not have to choose. I’d like to think you can have both, but if your resources are limited, you have to choose.

Never mind that the YouTube videos they prefer to watch are as entertaining as watching paint dry, narrated by amateurs with all the charisma of a high-school nerd but without the sense of humor and charm. And as for production values, the term “amateurish” is really too kind. Blurry video, audio that sounds like it was recorded inside a tin can under water, a preponderance of little blocks of text appearing all over the screen… wow.

None of that matters. When it comes to entertainment, Content is King. If the content speaks to you, you love it no matter the imperfections in the delivery, and no matter the more attractive alternative.

The entertainment landscape is changing so quickly. If Web 2.0 was all about allowing user-created content to become part of the experience (ie, comments as a companion piece to blogs, Facebook postings that invite conversation), then maybe this is Entertainment 2.0, which is all about user-created content as actual content.

And if indie or amateur-produced pieces are more popular then their slicker, more professional older cousins, what does that mean? Seems like a good time to be a small, nimble mammal than a large, slow dinosaur. I think I see an asteroid.

My friend was having trouble constructing a story that had at its base a conflict not unlike that in Star Wars Episode 1, sort of massive, corporation-based predatory behavior. In EP1, it’s a trade dispute, but you get the picture. I don’t happen to believe those sorts of conflicts are inherently compelling. I prefer conflict on a character basis, a human story, person against person. I suggested that the corporate stuff could be the backdrop to the story he’s telling – think of the way the Korean War is the backdrop to the stories in M*A*S*H – but that he should consider letting his characters be the basis of the confict, putting them in opposition to one another, and see what developed.

A Sting quote came to mind, wherein he’s commenting on conflict in his storywriting, as described by the following situations:

I love you, you love me – not very interesting.
I love you, you don’t love me – a little better.
I love you, you love somebody else – now you’ve got something.

It occurred to me that these rules applied in constructing the basis of the conflict in his story, letting the characters’ desires bump up against each other, and see what sorts of disagreements develop. What does character 1 want? How does that affect character 2? Does he want it, too? Does he just not want character 1 to get it? What places them in opposition?

In what ways are you letting your characters conflict with each other?

Finally home. These jeans are STILL dirty.

The job we were given was to shore up the support underneath a mobile home that was beginning to slump. The job involved crawling under the house and digging 8 holes, each 22 by 22 inches wide and 26 inches deep, and then setting up concrete footers, setting cinderblock piers and setting everything with concrete.

When it came to the digging, luckily, we didn’t run into the ridiculously rocky soil we encountered in last year’s trip to Buchanan County Virginia. But our celebration was short lived, as this soil was pure clay – still extremely hard to dig in. Worse, in some places we had an overhead of 18-22 inches in which to dig (remember, we’re under a trailer home, here), much too short to accommodate anything so grand as a shovel. So, the job involved digging with the back claws of hammers, and pulling the dirt out of the holes with our hands. It looked very much like 7 people trying to dig out of jail.

Not much headroom

It was long, hot, dirty work. In addition to the fact that it rained every day at 3 or 4 o’clock, there were several leaks in the home, some from the washing machine, some from the sewage pipes under the house, some from the bathroom. You get the idea. The lot was very muddy, smelly, and permanently wet. We all got muddier and filthier on this trip than I think any of us have ever been, but of course the reason we were there was to help the family in that home, and they were very appreciative of any help we could give them, which is gratifying. After a week of digging footers, moving cinderblocks and cutting rebar, we were exhausted, but at least felt we’d done some good in the world.

The A-Team (right to left - Thomas, Kyle, Marty, Tim, Og, Austin, Mike)

On the last day we were there, I was as covered in mud and filth as I had been the rest of the week. As we set the last support and drove the last spike, I ripped a hole in the knee of my jeans. Later, we went out to lunch at a local Bar-B-Cue place to celebrate the completion of our work (an outdoor place, thank you, so the other patrons wouldn’t have to smell us).

So we stood there, muddy men waiting for our food, me with a hole in my muddy jeans. As we waited, I saw a guy walking down the street. He was filthy, with a hole in the knee of his jeans.

I don’t know what his story was, but I knew what I had been through to make me look the way I did, and he looked pretty much the same as me. He probably still looks that way, though I’m now 8 hours away and finally clean after a much needed shower.

My heart goes out to that man. Images of God we are.

Ever want to make one of your male characters sound like a jackass, let him espouse some of these sentiments.

Now that Amanda Hocking has sold one million books through self-publishing, maybe we’ve passed the point where publishers and agents are seen as the only great gatekeepers. (Though, it should be noted Amanda wrote 17 books in her spare time before taking this route. Anyone who thinks he or she is going to have a runaway success with their first-ever attempt at writing a book, comic, novel, film, etc, is really being quite the Pollyanna. Sure, it’s possible, but you’d stand a better chance of winning the lottery, so keep buying those tickets.)

And although this rejection of the crumbling, outdated agent-and-publisher model seems like a brand new phenomenon, there is a long and storied tradition of authors getting fed up and putting their own books out. Check this list – there are a lot of big names. If you’re self publishing, it seems you’re in good company.

If not, what are you waiting for? Isn’t it time you got your book out there?

She’s out there, the Suit with an opinion but no sense. You’re required to pass your work in progress past her, and she’s supposed to know it’s in progress. The temporary music will get changed. The temporary Voice Over will be re-recorded. The color will be processed. Everything will get smoothed out eventually.

But you still get Comments from her. We need better V.O. here. We need different music here. The color doesn’t match. Well, no duh.

Great satire of the Budweiser “Real Men of Genius” bit, directed at this Genius of the Production Office. Hallelujiah.