Mistakes were made
Recently I watched the cinematic trainwreck "I Know Who Killed Me" starring Lindsay Lohan as both demure student Aubrey Fleming and potty-mouthed stripper Dakota Mars. Never mind the agony of seeing Miss Lohan play parts that reference her first great role, as freckled twin moppets in "The Parent Trap," in such startling and heatrbreaking contrast: this film is terrible. I knew it would be, but I was hoping for entertainment-level awful of the kind afforded by such masterpieces as "Deep Blue Sea" or "The Wicker Man." Nope, this is run-of-the-mill lazy awful.
But it made me think (that's more than we can say for much of the cast and crew). Specifically, it made me think about crime suspects in regards to mystery novels. When the suspects barely make it onto the page and their identity(ies) revealed, readers feel cheated and with good reason. Now, I could see who the villain of the film was a mile off but it was still annoying that he didn't have more than eight minutes on film. That there was no investigation so to speak. And there really wasn't. The cops? The federal agents? About as present and useful as the fricking tooth fairy when you're thirty years old.
This made me realize that my novel's cast of suspects has to be more than mentioned and revealed. And my cops? Going to have to be more present than I had planned originally. Why's that? Because I was planning on being somewhat lazy. It's always interesting when I catch myself out in lazy-writer mode. It involves me scolding myself, resolving to do the right (write) thing, and then bitching about my naggy ass self to myself. Yup. It's a regular carnival in my head.
So thank you, Jeff Hammond (writer) and Cris Sivertson (director) of the worst movie I've seen in a looooong time. You taught me something. How to ruin a story, and, hopefully, how to avoid doing so.