Write It Now Part 18: Logline, the writer’s best friend

I figure a logline is one of the best friends a writer can have. A good one will help sell your manuscript to an agent or publisher.  What’s more, loglines are also brilliant writing tools.

A logline is a one-sentence description of a book. Its purpose is to tell the agent or publisher why the public want to read the book. To do that, the logline doesn’t recount the plot; it describes the character arc – in effect, the emotional effect of the book on the reader. It works for non-fiction, too, but it’s usually used for fiction. In novels or plays, the usual form is “[character name] has to [do something] in order to [achieve exciting goal] and so [develop as a character]”.

It has to grab the person reading it at once and convince them why they should represet or publish the material. The keys to writing a good logline are active language and being able to hone in on why people want to read the story.

“Halfling hero has to face dangers to drop a magic ring into a volcano.”

Uh…yay, but no cigar. OK, try this:

“Unwilling halfling has to find the courage to face the power of the Dark Lord in a quest to destroy a cursed ring that threatens the world.”

There’s character dynamic, purpose, drama, and the stakes of failure are clear.

Some books don’t render a good loglines, because they don’t meet the requirements of dramatic convention. Yet that convention, like it or not, is what sells. The only cure is to re-write the book.

Is there a way to avoid that re-work? Sure. This is where the logline comes in as a writing tool.

Got an idea for a book? A phrase – ‘In a hole in the ground lived a…’ for instance? Excellent. But don’t start writing the novel from that (yes, I know someone did…) These days the bar is slightly higher.

Sit down and write the logline. Make those the very first words you write on a book. Make it the real thing – grippy, dynamic, all the stuff you think you’ll need to sell the book. If it looks lame – well, that’s a good litmus test as to the book itself.

If you have a Good Idea half way through? No problem. Loglines can be revised. But it’s important to sit down and look at the whole structure of the book if you change direction part way. More on that next time.

Meanwhile, do you use loglines? Have you ever sold a story or book with one?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013 

Coming up: more writing tips, Neanderthal geek adventures with Amazon – and more.

Sixty second writing tips: how J K Rowling twisted the tropes

One of the secrets to successful writing is offering something readers can identify with, but that has enough originality to be new. The same…but different.

Modern meets fantasy in another way – a pic I took a few years back of Kastel de Haar, near Utrecht, Netherlands.

J. K. Rowling’s shown us how it’s done. Back in the 1990s, Brit boarding school stories were dead, dead, dead. The world of ripping wheezes at the expense of The Beak, followed by clandestine visits to the tuck shop  with Bunter Major, was soooo 1930s.

Trad magic stories were pretty much dead too – I mean, spells, wizards and potions were so cliched. Put together, they should have worked even less well.

What Rowling did was genius – mashing up two cliches and giving them a twist. That came partly from the way she reinterpreted the spell-and wand trope, partly from the seven-story plot cycle, and partly from her style – easy, unadorned and well pitched for the readership. And now writing has its first billionaire author.

Time for the rest of us to follow suit. But not with school magic mashups. They’ve been done…

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Write it now, part 16: hurrah for the sensitive new age vampire

What is it about our obsession with vampires? Vampires, it seems, are where it’s at today. And I don’t mean real vampires – you know, the ones who suck self-esteem. I mean the fantasy types, currently in pop-literature and movies in their sensitive new-age guise.

These days, novels about these reinvented suckers are  a license to print money, if  done right. Actually, it seems to happen even if they’re the literary equivalent of dribble.

I thought I’d finish this brief series of posts on the history of novels with a few thoughts about this rather – uh – pointed genre. I think it tells us quite a bit about our own society. And that’s Step 1 on the way to writing books that sell – which doesn’t mean ‘best sellers’, but does mean books that sell enough to generate a viable living.

That, alone, is a triumph for authors. I am not kidding.

Vampires always were a part of human mythology. Their first boost into western popular psyche came during the nineteenth century – heralded by penny dreadful stories like Varney the Vampire. The whole thing was given a kind of respectability, if you could call it that, by Bram Stoker, whose Dracula of 1897 defined the genre in one best-selling shot.

Superficially it was a horror story. Actually it was about something else – tweaking the sensibilities of Victorian-age, idealism. The salacious subtext – the subversion of morality – wasn’t much hidden, and readers loved it. Vampire stories were a socially acceptable frame around which to wrap what readers really wanted.

Part of the reason why Stoker and his imitators got away with it was because the vampire was also portrayed as evil. That stereotype persisted through the twentieth centry – right up until the 1970s when Fred Saberhagen turned the genre on its head with his hilarious The Dracula Tapes.

This told the story from Dracula’s perspective. Vlad Tepes – Dracula – was a polite nobleman who wanted to set up house in Britain and live quietly and privately in the centre of civilisation for a while. He got shipwrecked at Whitby (I mean, he wouldn’t sabotage his own ship – what sort of idiot did people think he was?), then ended up being harassed by an imbecile self-appointed vampire hunter named van Helsing who couldn’t be reasoned with. Very, very funny inversion of the genre.

About the same time Anne Rice wrote Interview with a Vampire, which presented much the same concept of vampires as dimensional, multi-faceted individuals. That set off the whole new-age vampire schtik – everything since has been, to my mind, a follow up to and in many ways diminuition of her concepts.

As far as I can tell, these days the writing of it has got down to one-dimensional teen angst style romance stories along with fifty shades of – well, salacious Mills and Boon. With blood. Uh…yay…

But that stuff still sells. Why? Just like it did for Stoker, over a century ago, the genre meets an immediate need – keys into something society feels it lacks. Vampires offer the twenty-first century a style of escape that is – well, interesting.

It’s to do with the underlying psychology. It’s about validation through being attracted to power, and the ability to achieve desire (represented by the vampire) – although that attraction carries a cost (blood sucking, a metaphor for power and strength). Interesting, made more so by the fact that the vampire  is supernatural. And that begs questions about why we’ve latched on to this – what is lacking in oursociety that attracts us to validation via supernatural means instead?

What’s your take on this one?

And let’s hear it for SNAVS. They’re what might make writing profitable…

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Next time: fantasy genres, more geekism, comedy and some other stuff. Watch this space.

Sixty second writing tips: coining the right name

Some time after The Lord of The Rings was published, J. R. R. Tolkien fielded a letter from Sam Gamgee. A real Sam Gamgee.

It wasn’t surprising. Tolkien – a philologist –  mined English convention for his Shire and Hobbit names. Another was Peregrin Took – the first name is known, though Steve Peregrin Took wasn’t born with it – his real name was Stephen Ross Porter.

A few authors deliberately use real names. I’m thinking George McDonald Fraser, whose Flashman stories were riddled with real historical figures doing real things. Fun stuff.

Occasionally authors add a real name for other purposes, like the time Michael Crichton included a critic as one of his incidental bad-guys.

My tips? I think that…

1. If you’re writing fantasy, it’s important to have names that sound ‘real’ together – not random collections of syllables kludged up on the spot. Make lists before you start.

2. If the story is set in the present, it has to be a name that won’t leave anybody with the same name offended. One book I read included an unlikeable US Secretary of State named (wait for it…) ”Trachea”. Little risk of lawsuit there. Lawsuit? Sure. Your bad guy turns out to have the same name as a genuine individual you weren’t aware of. It’s happened.

3. Coined names that reflect characteristics can work if done judiciously. J K Rowling is a master of it.

Do these tips work for you? Have you ever had trouble creating names for characters? And how have you got around it?

 Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Coming up this weekend: ‘write it now’ – pantsing vs structure; and fun with comets.

Write it now, part 4: beware the death trap of illusory competence

So far in this series on the A-Z of writing, we’ve looked at why people write. Now we’re moving on to what it takes to be a writer – what does learning to write actually entail?

As I’ve mentioned before, writing is a skill like any other. The usual time it takes to master a skill is 10,000 hours. About 1,000,000 words, for a writer. Yeah, lots of zeroes – but as I said last time, it’s a passion. It’s going to be fun. The learning never stops. Not ever. If you think you’ve ‘learned’ how to write, guess again. True writers are always learning, even the experienced ones. I’ve been in the business for 30 years – and I make sure I push the edges all the time.

There is a four-stage psychological model for learning, invented by GTI employee Noel Birch, nearly half a century ago. A journey from ‘unconscious incompetence’ through ‘conscious incompetence’ to ‘conscious competence’ – and, finally, ‘unconscious competence’.

It makes a lot of sense, but to me it’s not an exact fit for writing; writing encompasses many skills, all separately learned, and the skills may be at different stages. Writers not only have to learn the ‘craft’ of writing, they also have to be skilled in the subject they are writing about. Writing also has a hidden pitfall right at the start – the ‘death trap of illusory competence’.

1. The death trap of illusory competence.
Some of the basics of writing – grammar, especially - are taught as life skills at school and often get extended in the workplace. Good stuff. But it’s not the whole skill writers need – a trap, later, for those wanting to go further. I’ve found people who have an interest and want to write about it, thinking they already know the writing part. Or they’ll decide to ‘become’ a novelist as a fun retirement activity.  ’How hard can it be? I did High School English…right?’ Or they may think ‘I read a lot, therefore I know how to write’. To me, that’s like ‘I listen to Beethoven a lot, therefore I know how to play his piano concertos’- see what I mean?

The results are often awful – but the writer isn’t informed enough to know. In fact, they may well think they are very good. The technical name for this, I believe, is the ‘Dunning-Kruger’ effect.

I got my first writing gig when I was 18 – working for the university newspaper. Like most of my fellow students, I thought I knew what I was doing. So I thought. Actually? No, I didn’t.

2. Scrambling up from the pit of doom.
Some people plunge down that death trap and don’t even know it. But a lot of writers do escape – or even avoid it altogether. One of the tools for it is self-critique. There can be an epithany, or it can happen slowly; but one way or another, the writer realises how much they have to learn. And maybe gets frustrated. But  thinking your own writing is terrible is the first step to improvement. And a honed sense of self-critique is a sign of a potentially great writer.

I remember being at this point. There was a day when I made a specific decision. ‘My stuff’s no good. I’d better figure out how to get good.’

3. A view of the sunny uplands of writing joy.
After a while, the elements are there, but the author has to consciously think through them. (‘I need to add a metaphor here…done. Now I have to add an adjective. Done.’) The styling can be wooden, or the writing process itself very slow. Thing is, learning to write is a LOT more than simply knowing the techniques. The key to it is doing the hard yards – to applying those techniques, writing a lot – as in, every single day, even if it’s only for 15 minutes – and making them part of your soul.

4. Confident and competent writer.
This is the 10,000-hour, million word point. Suddenly all the skills become part of your soul; they become automatic. Usually this happens first with the mechanics of style. You think of an idea, and the words emerge. Your writing sings. That lets the author focus on content – and one day, hey presto, that all clicks together too. Writing becomes fast – and good at the same time.

5. ’How did you know that?’
There is a further step that comes only from experience. Pride goeth before a fall. Do not think you have learned everything. You haven’t.The process of learning never stops. It can mean learning from someone else, or attending specialist courses-  but it also means being able to self-analyse, to figure out what’s needed. To discover – to move forward and to be abstract. The writer learns not to define self-worth by what they write, even while pouring emotion into the work.

So how do writers go down this road? Every individual journey is different. It’s also do-able and not daunting at all, if it’s approached step-wise. This series is designed to help you along the way, whatever stage your writing may be at.

But I’ll share one of the secrets now. Actually, it isn’t really a secret. It’s OK to make mistakes – providing you figure out how they happened and what to do about it. That’s how you learn things.

Actually, that’s true of everyday life.

Any thoughts?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

How Tolkien became part of my life. Is he part of yours?

Forty years after I first encountered the work of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, I am still on a wonderful journey of discovery in his world.

I had moment to think about it on the weekend when my wife and I passed through Miramar, Wellington and stopped at the ‘Weta Cave’. It’s a store run by Weta Workshop, who made the props for Peter Jackson’s adaptations of Tolkien’s work.  In typical Kiwi fashion it’s in an unprepossessing building of late 1930s austerity construction.

Weta Cave – unprepossessing ordinariness masking the home of something truly extraordinary.

Most of the buildings in the area are like this. It’s the heart of Peter Jackson’s movie-making empire. You wouldn’t think so, to look at it. But that’s the magic of movies for you.

It’s all in an ordinary industrial-style street. I don’t know if these warehouses, directly opposite Jackson’s post-production building, are part of the studio or not, though interesting drumming noises were coming out of them when I took this photo.

Though the Park Road Post Production building is pretty impressive.

I took this from the street.

The visit – coupled with last week’s viewing of The Hobbit movie - got me thinking. I wouldn’t call myself a ‘fan’. I approach Tolkien with a critical eye, I don’t consume every word.  Each volume in my copy of The Lord of The Rings is from a totally different paperback edition and I’ve never bothered to get any of the different illustrated, one-volume or ‘collectors’ versions issued since.

But I like his created world and his writing very much indeed, and have ever since I was eight or nine - about as long,  in fact, that I’ve been writing myself.

It was the Pauline Baynes map that captured me first. Her artwork  was evidently frowned upon by Tolkien himself. But it spoke of adventure, of exploration – of the unknown. I wanted to experience that magic – to live that world. I started imagining. A little later, I read The Hobbit. And I was hooked. I still have that copy of the book, the third edition paperback with Tolkien’s own ‘Death of Smaug’ sketch as cover art. It’s totally battered. I don’t know how often I’ve read it. Lots.

A year or two after that I read The Lord Of The Rings. And read it again. And again. And again. And many times again after that. I’ve read it only twice since I was a teenager – but I can still pretty much quote passages from it.

Check out the wear and tear. Is my copy of ‘The Hobbit’ much-loved, or what?

Tolkien’s work spoke to me on many levels. He conveyed a sense of wonder on an epic scale, yet in terms that brought that wonder back to ‘ordinary’ through the hobbits. I could share their sense of discovery, of growth, as the world unfolded for them – and which they had to find the strength to handle.

Later, as I learned more about literature and writing, I came to realise just how much of the essence of the western mind Tolkien had put into his work. My enjoyment of his world became a journey of discovery - re-awakening a sense of wonder when I read his material.

I am still on that journey, and it is a wonderful journey indeed.

How about you? Are you a Tolkien enthusiast? What drew you to his work? And if he’s not your cup of tea – well, what doesn’t appeal? It’s all valid. I don’t like some of his material myself, actually – too inaccessible, too academic; or written in ways that don’t capture. As I say, I approach this with a critical eye – not adulating fandom. But what he imagined remains very much a part of my life.

What are your thoughts?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

A small eternity watching ‘The Hobbit’: a personal view

On the weekend my wife and I went to see The Hobbit.

The Hobbit is one of my favourite books, Jackson is one of my favourite directors, and we live where it was made – there has been a buzz around Wellington for years. Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings – all three parts – was stunning. It was stunning as a story, stunning for Jackson’s deft handling of an epic canvas. Stunning for its effects.

Gollum in Wellington airport passenger terminal – a marvellous example of the model-maker’s art.

So we had plenty of build-up for this one. And in many ways it did not disappoint. The actors were superb. The effects were brilliant. The set dressing was astonishing. The attention to detail was incredible. I wasn’t worried that the movie bore only passing resemblance to the book, either. Movies are different media – they require different handling, especially this time. Jackson has taken Tolkien’s low-key story of a quest for treasure – explicitly, Bilbo’s hero journey – and turned it into a nine hour epic. That meant it had to be significantly deepened.

Weta’s 10-metre high Gandalf above the Embassy theatre, Courtenay Place, Wellington.

There was just one small problem.  Nothing happened other than a relentless bang-bang-bang succession of chases and (literally) pit-falls.  The movie was about half over when my wife whispered in my ear. ‘Are we there yet?’ We weren’t. Eventually the end credits rolled. ‘Well,’ my wife said. ‘That was awful.’  I nodded. ‘Yes, that’s three hours of our lives we won’t get back.’

What happened? To me, the main problem was that it hadn’t been deepened enough – or properly structured. The existing Hobbit plot was stretched, thinly, across a three-hour movie-scape in which other material seemed to intrude, sometimes for no obvious reason. It opened with a loving, nostalgic reprise of The Fellowship of The Ring, which didn’t seem to do anything for the plot other than add fan-fic style ’completeness’. It took over an hour for the story to actually get going, and then, as my wife put it, the thing felt at times like a succession of out-takes from The Fellowship of the Ring, slung into a bucket. I got the impression, at times, that I had been watching The Hobbit re-written as rather mediocre fan fiction.

That diorama from another angle.

Structure is everything with fiction – novels and movies alike. In the specific, to me the main over-arching plot, leading to the ‘big boss’ battle at the very end – was Azog’s quest for revenge. This was a new element, not envisaged by Tolkien. Unfortunately, Azog kept turning up to intensify danger or push chases along, without real build-up or tension – more melodrama than drama. But in any case, the whole thing needed a more epic plot to match the scale of movie, the scale of effects, and the scale of the settings; and Tolkien’s legendarium has many gigantic elements that could have been brought in – from the origin of dragons as corrupted Maiar and servants of Morgoth, to the full back-story of Sauron deceiving the elves into forging rings.

The other problem was tone. It came across to me as an awkward juxtaposition between Jackson-style slapstick – not much related to Tolkien’s gentle brand of intellectual humour – and deep, dark seriousness, which the plot elements didn’t quite match.

To me the strength of the 1937 Hobbit novel was tightness and the fact that the magic and wonder of Bilbo’s world unfolded for us as it did for Bilbo. Along the way we watched Bilbo grow as a person.  All was presented with Tolkien’s gentle humour and pitched for its reading audience, initially his children. Tolkien’s characters were also discomfited by ordinary problems, such as rain and storms, which we can all identify with. It led them into adventure with trolls and goblins. The ordinary became the extraordinary – but one we could share because we had been led gently into it. I got none of that feel with the movie.

I am a huge fan of Tolkien. I am a huge fan of my fellow Wellingtonian, Sir Peter Jackson. But this movie didn’t do it for me.  The Gollum riddle game, which was truly masterful, went some way towards redeeming the whole. But not far enough.

What did this movie do for you?

In post-scriptum, we found succour on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrKXH1CeXck

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Coming up this week: Write It Now, Part 2; more on kindness; and picture inspirations from earthquake-hit Christchurch.

A visit to some old Tolkien filming sites in New Zealand

The Hobbit has been breaking box office records both here in New Zealand and in the US, and showcasing our scenery (blush).

Hutt River or Anduin? Well, maybe the houses are the give-away. I took this picture a while back.

Quite a lot of it, though, wasn’t shot “on location” exactly – a fair chunk was made in Wellington, partly in Jackson’s studios, partly on an outdoor lot on the hill adjacent to the studio complex, well hidden by trees from prying eyes. And that marked one of the big differences between the shooting of The Hobbit trilogy and The Lord Of The Rings a decade or so ago.

The Hobbit was secret – filmed behind closed doors to the point where security guards accosted people entering the park above the studio lot. But a dozen years ago, Jackson filmed a large chunk of The Lord of The Rings in public less than 10 km from my house. Starting with the Saruman death-by-fall-from-Orthanc scene which was filmed in a small park adjacent to suburban houses, against a green screen. Right out in the open, and boy did it puzzle fans who knew that no such scene occurred in the book.

The other day I went out to have a look at the Dry Creek Quarry, where Jackson’s crews once built the walls of Helm’s Deep and – then – Minas Tirith. The set was enormous, and directly visible from the road. Here it is today. That grassy ridge is where the fortifications were built. Back in 2000, my wife and I drove past the set in its Minas Tirith configuration. ‘Wish we could get a look at that,’ I said wistfully. Neither of us knew it was open day, right then. Sigh.

I took this photo the other week, 12 years after the Helm’s Minas Tirith Deep set was demolished. You’d never know today. But hey – it’s a working quarry.

Here’s Queen Elizabeth II Park – er – the Pelennor Fields. They filmed the dead Mumakil scene here.

Either the Pelennor Fields or a public park…

It’s near Paekakariki, and the site of a US military base during the Second World War. And here’s Shed 21 on Aotea Quay, in central Wellington. Back in 2000 it was a warehouse. Jackson had the interior set for the Minas Tirith throne room built into it. Later the set was demolished and the building refurbished – today it’s apartments and a small office park.

Shed 21 – was Minas Tirith throne room set. Now apartments.

All this underscores just how much of the movies, these days, seems to be made inside the blade server with Autodesk, Terragen and Massive. But the magic’s still there in the original locations, if we let our imaginations work.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

Writing tips: building bridges to readers with tension

Writing thrives on tension. It’s the force that pulls agents, publishers and readers into the book. It keeps them there – draws them into the story and drives them to turn the pages.

Sometimes that tension is overt. For all his faults Dan Brown was a master at it. Indeed, I think this was the only redeeming feature of his The Of Vinci Code (I know what I said).

Tension is also true of non-fiction. You have but to read anything by Dava Sobel to understand how tension can be written into non-fiction – and make it compelling. Or Antony Beevor. I disagree with many of his historical interpretations – in 2004 I appeared on New Zealand national TV, arguing against his ideas. But there’s no doubt about his skill as a populist and stylist – and his ability to pull readers on with tension.

Tension doesn’t happen by itself. It works itself into all sorts of levels in writing. In fiction it happens in the general plot. It happens in the characterisations and dialogue. It happens in the writing style. They don’t all have to be present – witness Brown, whose character at best were cardboard caricatures. Yet his stories were compelling.

I look on it in engineering analogies. In the early twentieth century, bridge-builders used vast tonnages of reinforced concrete to get load-bearing strength. There was no dynamic. Then someone came up with the idea of actively twisting the reinforcing, like winding up a rubber band. Hey presto – bridges got strong, dynamic, elastic and light. So did parking buildings and office blocks.

A picture I took a few years back of the pre-stressed ferroconcrete bridge at the mouth of the Hutt River. Lots of hidden tension giving dynamic to the form – and not a bad analogy for the way we can write.

That’s what writers have to do – tension with lightness. Let’s look at some of the ways writers can do this. All of these work together, of course:

1. Writing style
A. E. Van Vogt had a system of writing ‘hook words’, typically an adverb that seemed mis-placed but which created a sense of mystery. I could see the logic – he was trying to pull readers into the next sentence. I was never a fan of this system, because it created styling contrivances, but it does seem to work for some authors.

2. Micro-plot structure
Each scene in a story, or sequence in non-fiction, needs to have its own driving tension. There does not just have to be a reason why scenes play out as they do; there also has to be a thread to them –something that will, in some small or large way, create anticipation.

3. Macro-plot structure
The entire story needs broad dynamic tension to pull readers through. This is true of fiction and non-fiction. Think of it as those rods of twisted steel. You have to be able to wind it up across the span of the book.

4. Character interaction
Much of the tension in a novel – at all these levels – comes from the way characters clash. It doesn’t mean characters argue in every dialogue, but there needs to be a tension– a dissonance of goals.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

Soaking up the down-town party buzz on Hobbit premiere day

It’s been Hobbit party time today in Wellington, and I took a walk to party central – Courtenay Place – early afternoon to check it out.

Probably Bert and Tom, I think. Two of the three ‘life size’ trolls. Cool.

Yes, THIS is the red carpet laid out for the stars…later…

Don’t do anything orc-ward,’ my wife told me when I left the house. We have lame conversations like that quite often.

Courtenay Place is the main café district. It’s our equivalent of the Rue de Lafayette in Paris - only on fast-forward and micro-sized.

It’s often crowded – but the crowds this time were thicker than I’ve ever seen, the mood electric, happy, excited. People have been camping out since last night to get good places for the red carpet walk by the stars before the evening world premiere showing of The Hobbit -  An Unexpected Journey.

Hobbit food?

Crowds are expected to top 120,000 – 2.6 percent of New Zealand’s entire population, all jammed into a half-kilometre stretch of inner city street. That’s also a fair chunk of the population of greater Wellington. Special trains were laid on for everybody coming in.

Put another way, a proportionate crowd in the US would top 8.08 MILLION people, all going to this one event.

Blowing the dirt off the red carpet.

Now, which star do these people like?

But even 120,000 is a fair crowd, especially when they’re rammed into a linear kilometre (and where the public toilets at the southern end just got turned into a cafe).

That is why my wife and I decided not to go to the premiere street party. Jostling through packed people while failing to get a view isn’t our thing.

Besides, it’s being shown on national TV, live. A way better view, up front.

But I still wanted to soak up the buzz and feel of the event. So I went down early afternoon anyway to see what was happening.

For me it was just as important to get a feel for the emotion of it – for the excitement as it built – as it was to attend the moment itself. This movie has captured Kiwi imaginations in a fantastic way. More so than The Lord Of The Rings. It bas become OUR movie, OUR national triumph.

And I found the mood electric. There were people with Gandalf hats, people with themed shirts. People with signs. People waiting out the day in the sun – all of them happy, having fun, laughing, just having a great time.

It’s a lot more, for us, than just a movie of a great fantasy story made into a movie by a local boy-done-good. Why? I’ll blog about that in the next and – for the moment – final post on this very exciting local engagement with John Tolkien and his fantastic creation. And I have to wonder. What would Tolkien have thought of this? Of a whole nation taking to the streets in joy and celebration, because their imaginations had been captured by something he’d written? Food for thought.

Meanwhile – here are the pictures. Enjoy.

Even early afternoon there were lots of people. Some had been camping overnight.

Says it all, really.

Readying for the VIP’s and dignitaries.

A stage had been set on Kent Terrace – cleverly positioned to give the illusion of continuity with the Bag End door on the fascia of the theatre about 30 metres behind. Double cool.

Courtenay Place is also a main bus route – but not today.

Sneaking around behind Bert. Well, it was daylight…

I’m going to wait for the rush to settle down a bit before heading off to see the movie. I’m not sure whether with all the whistles and bells yet either. Kind of tossing up which cinema to go to. The Embassy – where the premiere is showing –  is set up for full 48 fps, the sound system, and 3D. But the seats are pretty uncomfortable. Um.

Are you going to the movie when it opens worldwide in a fortnight? I’d love to hear from you!

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012