How to end a story about a war – Lessons from World War Z

So I saw World War Z a few days ago. It turned out to be a better story than I’d anticipated. I expected it to be either too soft or too macho, but it struck the right balance. After I finished the movie, I realized that there were some lessons in it for me, specifically, about writing fiction.

The story is about a war, a war against zombies. Quite simply, it’s a war that cannot be finished in one book, one film or even one lifetime. That reminds me, I have to compare this story to how Resident Evil handles war. Continue reading

Short Story: A moment

She looked back, slightly annoyed. The pedestrian light had turned green the second time and her friends had still not shown up. It didn’t matter much, it was summer time and they were free the entire afternoon to do as they pleased; but she didn’t like waiting. As the cars came to stop in front of her, the lead was taken by a black sedan that was a hybrid between a luxury car and a sports car. In other words, it was beautiful. She didn’t care much for cars, but if it was flashy, it was awesome and this one fit the bill. Her eyes rolled to the driver and she was stunned. There sat one of the most beautiful men she’d seen in her life. His jaw looked like it had been sculpted by God patiently. His hair fell on his cute face divinely. He smiled slowly as he sung along the decently-volumed music from the car stereo. The windows were down as he was enjoyed the summer wind, which caressed his face and ruffled his hair playfully. He looked grown up enough to be in a job and much like his car, he seemed to be the perfect blend of business-like seriousness and boyish charm and  recklessness. Her mind was in disarray with emotion. She was instantly and forever, in love with him. He embodied everything that she’d thought of in a gentleman and hero.

As she swooned, thinking of romantic getaways and unexpected surprises, he smartly, suavely and nonchalantly, lifted a hand to go through his hair, as any perfect man would, and then, quite surely, took a finger of the same hand, to poke into his nose. He cleaned up a bit and simply discarded the refuse with a flick of his fingers. She smiled. Not all dreams are meant to be.

The futility of dieting: Sandra Aamodt at TEDGlobal 2013 | TED Blog

Apparently, there’s no point in my dieting. I just need to chew better.

“giving yourself permission to eat whatever you want, slowly, and without distractions, paying attention to how your body feels when hungry or satisfied, and letting hunger determine when you’re done”

Neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt reveals how the brain regulates body weight, making dieting futile and often counterproductive.

Link

You Won’t Finish This Article Either

Just today, I was having a discussion on ADN about how there’s too much noise on the Internet and if I had the choice of a broadcast medium, I’d go with newspapers. Some time after that, I noticed the link to an interesting article on Slate about how people are not reading entire articles on the Internet and are just skimming through, or even just reading the headline, and tweeting the link if they like the headline or an eye-catching photo.

At this point, it’s my duty to inform you that this is a post about Social media, sharing, reading on the Internet and is a bit of a rant, so if you’re not interested, you’ve already left the article. I’d also like to tell you that I wanted to name the article – “Dealing with loss, of Readers” but that seemed rather grim and I wanted to mimic the Slate headline, because it’s just that good. There’s another reason that I’ll tell you later about. Continue reading