Reaching Your Audience: Culture and Media

A lofty goal for any writer is finding and reaching your audience. As writers, we start out with a great idea, nurture it and grow it until it sprouts. Once it attains full growth we release into the world much like the seeds of a dandylion. Some stories reach across cultural boundaries and some fall short.

A good example of stories reaching beyond cultural boundaries are the Lord of the Rings trilogy. When JRR Tolken sat down and penned those stories, he was writing for a British audience. Over the past 75 years or so, those stories have been adopted by audiences worldwide. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies have also crossed those barriers and gathered a worldwide audience.

An over night explosion was the Harry Potter series, regardless of where you stand with it’s author. Children and adults the world over were sucked into those books. Book stores couldn’t keep them in stock when they were first released. Midnight openings with thousands of eager readers flocked to bookstores to get their shiny new copy of the latest book. I came much later to the series, and I have read them all. My personal favorite is Book 3, but that is a tale for anthor post.

An example of a story that should have crossed barriers was the Keanu Reeves film, 47 Ronin. On the surface this movie had everything and then some so why did it fail? Because the western audience it was intended for didn’t understand the Japanese culture it came from. I was one of those folks. I was wholly into the movie until the ending, and it killed the whole movie for me.

The Associated Press did an interview with the director before the movie was released and he expected the movie to do great things.

Rinsch said he took on the film subject and sat down with Keanu Reeves about two years ago. They wondered how they were going to take on a popular Japanese tale and do it justice. Rinsch said they decided to make the story their own, making “it a Hollywood blockbuster and see it through that lens.”
“These themes of revenge, loyalty, perseverance, were things we knew from the very beginning were universal,” said Rinsch. – Yuriko Nagano, Associated Press, Nov. 18, 2013

While the themes are universal, the presentation was very much Japanese. And it takes an understanding of that culture and it’s history for the ending to make sense. My husband, who is very much into anime, Japanese culture and grew up watching the samurai movies of the ’80s, wound explaining the way of honor and why it had to end the way it did.

As I was researching for this post, I found this is actually loosely based on historical events. I read some of the Wikipedia article and I may do a deeper dive just to satisfy my curiosity.

Movie poster for 47 Ronin

Quote of the Day: JRR Tolkien

If you have been following this blog for any length of time, you know that Tolkien is my gold standard for writing. This poem, riddle from the Lord of the Rings has my favorite line of all time.

“Not all who wander are lost” I feel this describes my life and my writing life. Although I get lost on both plenty. I love the journey. Take time to really see and enjoy your own journey of life. Cheers, james

Summer Storm

As I write it is past my bedtime just after midnight. A storm is grumbling outside and has been for the last several hours. One dog is huddled under the blankets in a tight ball of nerves. Poor baby. She doesn’t handle any loud noises well. The other is sprawled across the foot snoring away, completely oblivious to anything.

It strikes me that sometimes I love watching and listening to a thunderstorm. And sometimes it triggers a fearful reaction. So far I never can tell which reaction I will have. The further away it sounds, the more interested in listening to it I am. The closer or if the light strikes are over top of me, the more inclined I am to want to hide.

As a small child, my mom said I was terrified of storms. So they would turn the lights out and light candles. That way I wouldn’t freak out if the power went out. And back in those day, the power would go with the smallest breath of wind. Things are a lot better now. The power companies trim the trees back away from the power lines. If the power goes out now; there has either been a pretty significant weather event or something happened to a transformer or line.

I seem to have lost track of where this post was supposed to be going. Probably because it is past my bedtime and the barometric pressure plays havoc with my head.

I probably intended to write something about the force of nature and how it effects the characters and events in your story. And yet sometimes it is overlooked and nothing happens. In Tolkien’s The Hobbit, when the trolls where arguing about how to cook the dwarves and the dawn catches them turning them to stone. That could have been the end of the story if he hadn’t used the force of nature and given the trolls a weakness to sunlight.

Another thing a writer should think about is how weather and the force of nature effects the characters. Do they fear tight cramped spaces? Thunderstorms? Rushing water? Heights? Rivers? Mountains? What reaction would they have to encountering these hardships? Those are questions to keep in mind as you write.

Cheers and good night or good morning depending on where you are in the world. james

Quote of the Day: Humor

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It was too Tolkien not too. A little humor to start the week off write.

Cheers, james

Writing on the go

Hidden words by moonlight revealed.

In The Hobbit, it has always intriqued me the elves deciphering the dwarves’ map. Mr. Tolken was a master storyteller and writer, but I wonder what he would have thought of modern writers and our new fangled tech. He would have used a pen and notebook for the those writing times on the go. But would he have embraced our new ways of writing?

I use both old school ink pen and legal pad and I also use my cellphone, my tablet and my laptop if its handy. I wonder if having my writing spread over so many mediums weaks or strengthens my message. Tonight I am fuzzy brained due to weather shifting. So forgive me if my post is more scattered than normal.

When on the go and the writing urge hits, how do you capture it? Or do hold on to mentally trying to get home before the thought/urge is lost? Cheers, james