Hollywood Darwinism: What Makes An Adaptation Good?

"Charlie Kaufman: The book has no story. There's no story. Marty: Alright. Make one up."
~ Adaptation.

After recently seeing (and enjoying) The Lightning Thief, despite it's massive changes from the book, I started to think. Most people loathe movies that aren't faithful to whatever it is originally based on (books, video games, other movies, etc.). But this first Percy Jackson film has been getting pretty good reviews all around, despite its changes. So that brings me to the question: what makes an adaptation a good one? Some might argue it has to be exact. Others will say an exact replication is boring. Some might argue that you can forget the plot as long as it keeps the spirit of the original. Others will argue that the spirit is nothing if it misses the point of the plot.

So throughout this article, I want to delve into what I feel makes a good (and bad) adaptation, whether it be from a book or something else.

THE BAD

"Charlie Kaufman: Okay. But, I'm saying, it's like, I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car chases, you know... or characters, you know, learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end, you know. I mean... The book isn't like that, and life isn't like that. You know, it just isn't. And... I feel very strongly about this."
~ Adaptation.

Before we can talk about what makes an adaptation good, we gotta see what makes one bad. And why not start with some of the worst? Most wouldn't say the book version of Eragon is high literature. It's hardly high fantasy. In fact, Christopher Paolini was probably just high when he wrote it (after watching Star Wars in between readings of Lord of the Rings--yeah, yeah, I know, the Monomyth and all that. I'm an advocate of that as well. I just wanted to throw in a 'rip-off' joke. Everybody else does). Point being, while it's not the best book ever written, it at least deserved a better film than what it got. I mean, I felt bad for the guy after seeing that travesty of a film.

So why was it so bad? Well, whatever they didn't cut, they changed. The movie cut major characters, changed others, and diminished the role of one of the only interesting characters in the story (like... from half the book to 15 minutes of screen time). They merged scenes, rushed the plot, and destroyed everything else left behind. In other words, it took out the good and left in the bad (and made it worse) of what was already a mediocre book.

But that's pretty much a given. You take out the good and leave the bad, and you end up with a bad movie. And this can happen mostly in trying to cram an 800 page book into a 2 hour movie (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire had a similar 'cram-tastic' issue, but at least that one didn't have the cut/change-for-the-worse extravaganza). That's pretty straight forward. So what other kinds of problems can make a bad adaptation? Well, completely ignoring the source material, or reading a misinformed Wikipedia entry of plots and characters can really damage your adaptation.

For instance, look at either Dragonball Evolution or Super Mario Bros. When you can go "WTF is this? These aren't the characters I know" every 5 minutes, you know you have a problem. I mean, every Dragonball fan knows Goku started as a teenager in high school interested in girls, or that in the classic video game, Mario (Mario) and Luigi (Mario) went to an alternate dimension created by a meteorite where dinosaurs turned into humans and, even scarier, Dennis Hopper.

One step down from ignoring source material is not even knowing the source material enough to ignore it in the first place. Thus is Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. This movie tanked so badly that Squaresoft went bankrupt and had to merge with its rival, Enix (thus becoming Square-Enix), just to stay afloat. Its problem? It had absolutely nothing to do with the Final Fantasy video games. Sure there was a guy named Cid, but they even managed to mess that up by spelling it Sid. In other words, they just slapped the FF title on there to make some money, and it backfired utterly and completely. Granted, the movie isn't bad in and of itself. It's terrible as a Final Fantasy film adaptation... but as a film, it's actually decent. But since we're talking about adaptations, we'll go with the former for now.

A step up from the "ignoring" dilemma, however, would be the "Close but No Cigar" dilemma. Such is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Is it stylish and good to look at? Heck yeah. Is it darker and more adult than the first two films? Totally. Does it take the spirit of the book, at the very least? Sorta. Does it pass the adaptation test? No. No it doesn't. And why? Because it missed the point of the plot. The plot of the book was written for two main reasons--both backstory reasons--and both are completely missing from the film. In other words, the movie totally missed the purpose the book was written to begin with, making the film pointless in essence.

THE DECENT

"Charlie Kaufman: Okay, we open with Laroche. He's funny. Okay. He says, "I love to mutate plants." He says "Mutation is fun." Okay, we show flowers and... okay. We have to have the court case. Okay, we show Laroche. Okay, he says "I was mutated as a baby. That's why I'm so smart." That's funny. Okay, we open at the beginning of time. No! Okay, we open with Laroche. He's driving into a swamp."
~ Adaptation.

So we've looked at the bad, but we can't look at the great just yet. So what about those adaptations that are just good? They aren't the best adaptations in the world, but they didn't completely screw it up. At the very least, they left it entertaining. However, there's something about them that stops them from being great.

First I wanna talk about a rare case: the source material just wasn't all that good to begin with. Such is Twilight and New Moon. I've always declared that the films are better than the books for a couple main reasons: first, it takes away the terrible writing and just gives you the story as-is (and is also forced to get rid of the pointless scenes... which is a lot of it). Second, it adds much-needed action that was very lacking in the books. So are these by any means good movies? Not particularly. But they are good adaptations, capable of making the stories actually bearable. So that's why I included them here.

But then there are the movies that stick a little too closely to the books. Normally this isn't a problem, but when you have a sometimes word-for-word 2.5 hour movie, it can drag. Especially when you substitute substance for style. This is the case with the first two Harry Potter films (Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets). Putting the page to screen, these are excellent. There's very little that was cut, and what was cut wasn't really anything major. However, where Chris Columbus took some insane liberties with Percy Jackson, he took almost none here. The movie isn't very stylish (outside of Quidditch, which is even outshone by the time we get to Half-Blood Prince). The colors are bright, the clothes are stuffy, the landscapes are flat... visually speaking, compared to the later movies, the first two are boring. Sure, they are adapted nearly word-for-word, but only at the expense of risk-taking. In other words, sometimes being too close can have its issues.

But sometimes the details are what are needed. Sometimes the details are what made the books so good (not saying Harry Potter isn't all about the details... it is. But I'm getting at something different here). For instance, take films like Battle Royale or Blindness. The book version of Battle Royale is one of my favorites. Sure, it's roughly translated, but the level of character development is insane. So I was a bit disappointed with its film adaptation. It cut out all of the character development in lieu of a straight-forward action/horror film. Some say it's one of the greatest foreign films of recent years. I say read the book if you want a deep story with more developed characters. It's not a terrible movie by any means, but as an adaptation, it suffers from cutting out what made the book so good.

Blindness, on the other hand, was literally in the details. The book was raw, gritty, disgusting, and disturbing. The film seemed like a sanitized version. The book detailed how crap (literally) covered everything, how people looked ravished, and just all sorts of disturbing details. Not to mention the terrible situations these characters were put in, such as the rape. Now, the films conveyed some of this just fine, and I actually commend the film for doing as much as it actually did. I also enjoyed how they shortened the ending, which in the book seemed to drag endlessly. The movie just got right to the point.

Similarly, another thing that can make or break an adaptation is how they handle the source's ending. Sometimes they change it to make it more family friendly (Chamber of Secrets). But sometimes they have to change the ending for other purposes--controversy being a good one. Two good ones to talk about here? The Golden Compass and The Mist. Both are on opposite ends of the spectrum on the controversy issue. The Golden Compass changed its ending to avoid controversy. In fact, the movie switched around the second and third acts of the book and then cut the ending completely. There's no religious explanations, no portal into another dimension... none of it. Because of these massive changes, the movie didn't reach the expectations of what not only fans of the book wanted, but what the Catholic Church promised during its boycott. Therefore, the movie tanked. But it wasn't really all that bad.

The Mist, on the other hand, changed the ending from its original story to add controversy. This ending can make or break this movie for you. It can make you say "how original" or "this movie has balls" and think it's one of the greatest horror films in the last decade. Or it can make you hate the film with a passion. At the very least, it leaves your mouth agape like "did they really just do that?" Regardless of what you think, it was a bold move, and I believe more people liked this move more than hated it, so it's essentially regarded positively.

Then you have the open ending. Sometimes the open ending can work. Sometimes they just don't make sense. Two good examples here are Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Both (loosely) based on video games, these films show both sides of the open ending. Resident Evil, while hardly close to the games, has an open ending that leaves the film open for a sequel (which turned out to be a little closer to the games). And this particular ending worked. How? It introduced the character of Nemesis, adding some depth to an otherwise mindless monster. And it worked in the sequel. It was a hint to and an expansion of the games that was mostly ignored throughout the rest of the movie.

On the other end, Silent Hill was pretty close to, at the very least, the atmosphere of the games. In fact, I'd say it's one of the few excellent video game adaptations... if it weren't for the ending. I'm no hater of open-ended movies (I love Cube), but this one just didn't make sense. It tries to be a clever twist ending, but it's just weird and left me staring at the screen like "Um... alright then." The ending nearly ruined what was an otherwise really good adaptation.

THE GREAT

"Robert McKee: I'll tell you a secret. The last act makes a film. Wow them in the end, and you got a hit. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you've got a hit. Find an ending, but don't cheat, and don't you dare bring in a deus ex machina. Your characters must change, and the change must come from them. Do that, and you'll be fine."
~ Adaptation.

So what makes a great adaptation? Here's my opinion: it takes the spirit of the source material, takes the best parts of the source material, cuts the bad parts of the source material, and remains stylish and entertaining. I'd like to talk about five main movies that I feel are great adaptations.

The first two, of course, are Harry Potter films (since they've been in the other categories). Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is considered by many fans as the worst book of the series. Why? Because it's 832 pages of absolutely nothing. There's no plot, and it takes 800+ pages to get to a plot point that takes maybe 50 pages to explain (the prophecy). Sure, there are important aspects of the book, but these important aspects are, like the rest of J.K. Rowling's books, very subtle and unknown until the last book. So what does the film do? It removes all the unnecessary bits (like Quidditch, which is the majority of the book) and manages to take a much-disliked portion of the book (Grawp) and turn it into an endearing moment in the film. In other words, it keeps the spirit, keeps the important scenes, removes the unnecessary bits, and remains stylish. It also added a line that the book didn't have that I felt should have been there ("Sorry, professor... I must not tell lies.").

I might get arguments here, but I also believe Half-Blood Prince to be an excellent adaptation. Yes, it cuts out a ton of Voldemort's memories. Sure, it cut out the funeral (which was only a couple pages anyway). But most people forget that Half-Blood Prince is mostly a comedy full of the romantic goings-on of the students. There's a decent balance between the light and dark, and the movie captured that perfectly. Does it go anywhere? Not really--it's just a precursor to the final book by introducing Horcruxes. But the film adequately portrays the book, not to mention looks beautiful from a cinematography level. And there are so many clues toward the last movie, you can really tell they thought ahead as they were making this. Some might not like the ending, but it was exactly how the book ended, and I felt it worked just fine. You say "maybe a book can end like that, but this is a movie." I say... segue!

Sometimes the ending of a film wouldn't work if it stayed exactly the same as a book. Prime example... Watchmen. The biggest controversy around this adaptation is its ending. Squid vs. Squidless. Personally, I found the "squid" ending of the graphic novel to almost ruin the entire story. However, it was salvaged by the Rorschach's journal ending. Now the movie completely removed the squid ending, but kept the Rorschach's journal ending. And everything else besides that was nearly panel-for-panel of the book (and equally as stylish). Therefore, I found the movie to be a nearly perfect adaptation.

To tie in the quote at the beginning of this section, you must "wow" the audience with the ending. No adaptation has done that better in recent memory than Speed Racer. Now, I've discovered that most people either love this movie or think it's incredibly stupid. I personally love it. It keeps with the "cheesy and quick" spirit of the original show. It's stylish (in a crayola kinda way). But I have to admit, the movie finalized its brilliance with me in its climax. The final sprint to the finish line was like a kaleidoscopic orgasm of awesome.

But nothing beats what I can only say has to be on of the best adaptations ever: The Princess Bride. In a rare case, I actually read the book after I'd seen the movie (so that might have affected my thoughts). But still, I had trouble getting through the book. Some characters bordered on painful, while the book itself kept a steady line of women-hating, antisemitism, and racism. I'm pretty tolerant when it comes to offensive jokes. But this book was almost too offensive for me at times. Thankfully, they cut all of this out in the film. And this is how the film shines. It cuts out the bad, keeps the good (and sometimes makes it even better), and maintains the overall spirit of the story. There were only a couple instances where I enjoyed what was in the book more than the movie (expanding on character backgrounds and such), but besides that... the movie was far superior.

CONCLUSION

"Charlie Kaufman: The script I'm starting, it's about flowers. Nobody's ever done a movie about flowers before. So, so there are no guidelines..."
~ Adaptation.

So I guess that answers my question. With Percy Jackson so different from the book, why did I like it so much? I'd say it falls under the "decent" category because, while it maintains the spirit of the book and even enhances the story at times, its third act annoyed me too much. And as we've discovered, it's all about the third act.

To wrap things up...

Bad: Nothing like the source, wrong types of changes, too 'cram-tastic', missing the point

Decent: Parts better than (or at least close to) the source, missing some details, risky endings

Great: Stays in spirit, takes the best of the source, cuts the worst of the source, remains stylish

And... that's that.

R2D2... The One With Me.

I haven't done an R2D2 in a while, and I have a few random personal announcements... so here we are.

- Two weeks ago now, I finally got my diploma in the mail. I guess I officially know English, grammar, writing, and Literature (as opposed to before I got the bit of paper, where I hadn't officially known any of that stuff).

- This past week, my Teacher's Certification came in the mail. So now I can officially take all the aforementioned knowledge that I now officially know and pass it on to other, younger people who don't really care to know it in the first place.

- Regardless of knowing all that stuff and being qualified to pass it on, I still can't find a bloody job. I think I'm cursed or something, because every time I put in an application with a school district that has an open position, the position is almost immediately filled by somebody else. The shortest turn-around has been a few hours, and the longest has been about a week.

- A couple weeks ago (the last full week in January, I believe), I finished another novel. For the past three years now (this one being the third), I've written the first draft of a novel within the month of January. The one I finished last month is actually a sequel to a book I wrote last year, The Most Wonderful Fairy Tale (formerly known as Some Kind Of Real). This one is called A Beautiful Melody. Here's the synopsis:

It's been three years, and Georgia is finally returning to her hometown of Hunchly, Texas after a lengthy book tour for her bestselling hit, The Most Wonderful Fairy Tale. But when Resistance Alchemists Marty and Fitz show up in Hunchly to arrest her, Georgia realizes that telling the truth, the complete truth, about the Book of Tales may have been a mistake. She's charged with violence against the Resistance, and they have nearly two dozen witnesses to back it up. And what's worse, they say that Georgia had also declared she would use the mysterious and frightening Fancy War Doctrines.

But Georgia's never heard of the Fancy War Doctrines. Lina, the leader of the Resistance, entrusted the Doctrines to a spy more than a hundred years ago, and no one but she knows who it is. With Lina in a coma as a result of the attack, Resistance Agent Felicia will stop at nothing to make sure Georgia stays in her custody. Fortunately for Georgia, nothing can stop her brother Al from getting his sister out of custody. He teams up with Li and Leah, two renegade Alchemists, to save his sister. Once reunited, the brother and sister team revisit old friends and make new ones as they try to find the spy, find the Doctrines, prove Georgia's innocence, and stop whoever is framing her before it's too late.

Anywho, that's all for now!

Unrelated to Movies: Yet Another Finished Book.

It's that time again! Another novel has been completed (my fifth to date). My one main test-reader is still to finish reading the final chapters, so I have yet to find out what anybody thinks of the finished project/rough draft. But anywho, I really like how it turned out, even though I took a lot of risks with it. But you don't care about all of that right now. You just want to know what it is and all the stats and whatnot. So here we go!

(And before we begin, let me preface by saying that the book is largely based around and/or inspired by the poem "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe).

Page Count: 341.
Word Count (According to WORD): 73,261.
Chapters: 27.

(NOTE: Ironically, it is the same number of chapters as my previous novel. And also, in comparison to the rough draft of my previous novel, while it is a whole 9 pages shorter, it is only a few hundred words shorter, almost beating it out in the word count war for longest first draft. Anyway, onto more interesting things.)

Title: The Kingdom by the Sea.

Story synopsis (as of right now, anyway):
---------------------------

The world had come to an end—just not in the way anybody foresaw. When the world became overrun by mythical creatures and other strange monsters, humans were driven into hiding in their underground Safe Havens until they could once again re-claim the planet. And the only hope the human race has in doing such a thing resides in the New Military, a faction of individuals who work together to both keep others safe as well as find a way to clear the Mainland. Annabel Lee, raised by the New Military from infancy, is one of the best, and nothing truly tested her skills until 8-year-old Melanie was discovered traveling the Mainland with no clue to her past.

But a Faerie warrior by the name of Kailen, who has the ability to see Annabel Lee in his dreams, knows a secret about both her and Melanie of which neither are aware. And after Melanie's catalytic arrival, the cycle of fate begins to turn, starting the change needed in order to reclaim the planet. There are two heroes—one in the Human Realm, one in the Magical Realm—and both are about to learn that the one place they need to go to discover truth and bring peace back to an anarchic world is the heart of both realms, the ruins of the ancient Faerie Kingdom, the Kingdom by the Sea.

-------------------------

Yes. It's a novel about Faeries and other mythical creatures. But these are not your Tinkerbell Faeries or happy-go-lucky faerie tale creatures. I based them all on the original source material, the original folklore, wherein Faeries lived in hierarchies and could be more fearsome, even warrior-like. And they are not small and pixie-like, either. They are very much like humans.

And then there are the other creatures throughout the story. I borrowed from many different mythologies, bringing in such nasty monsters such as Wendigo (zombie-like creatures) and Redcaps (ferocious, blood-crazy goblin-like creatures). There's the middle-ground creatures, too, such as the Will-o-the-Wisp (AKA Spooklights). And then there are the more benign beings, such as Sprites and Nymphs (the Sprites being quite similar to the Faeries). Of course, there are more that I haven't mentioned on all levels, as well.

That's it for me for now!

R2D2... The One With More Blog News.

Alright... it's time for more random blog news!

-I decided to just go ahead and end the poll, because it's only had 3 people vote on it (one of which was me) since I put it up. The scores show that people like my R2D2 (much like this one) and DVDs Or Death! posts the most, each with 3 votes. All tied at second place with one vote each were Thoughts On..., LKMYNTS, Regular Reviews, and P.E.S.T. (which I missed this Thursday, sorry). Thanks to the two of you that voted.

-I would like to give another shout-out to the LAMB. I know there's a few new viewers to my blog, and I know at least one of you isn't a LAMB member yet, but you do have a movie blog. I really recommend joining up! It's pretty cool and fun being a LAMB member.

-I also wanted to give a shout out for fellow-LAMB Piper over at Lazy Eye Theater, who is about to start his Bizarro Blog-A-Thon on Monday. It should be fun.

-I've already gotten some good feedback for my first book review posted, so thanks guys and gals for the support!

-Speaking of books, now that I've decided to do book reviews here, I turned my The Missing Page blog from a book review blog into a blog about my own personal writing. If that interests you, you can check it out there. Also, I've added links on my sidebar to the left here that will take you to specific pages on that blog that will either give more information on specific novels, or will give a sample chapter for a specific novel. If anybody wanted to check any of that out, that's cool.

-I am now officially (and have been for a few days) a contributing member of Unheralded reviews. Though there's nothing over there of mine that you wouldn't find here, they also have plenty of other movies that they've reviewed with either different opinions than mine or movies that I have yet to cover. Check us out!

I think that's about it for now. Sorry I missed this week for P.E.S.T. but I had a huge teaching certification test this morning (Content English 8-12), and my mind has been elsewhere this week. So thanks to everybody who reads!

Unrelated to Movies: Another Finished Book.

I posted this over at my newer book blog, The Missing Page, but I felt since I shared last time here, I could share here again, as well.

So I started working on this at the end of the last year (I actually stopped writing this one to write the one I linked to above). But then I picked this back up a little over a month ago due to a co-worker's demanding nature that I write more. So I've been working diligently on it every week since. And it's finally finished! And not only is it my longest first draft ever, it's my longest book thus far (according to word count, and not by a super lot, but still the longest)... so that's pretty cool. And now... for the moment maybe a couple people have been waiting for...

Page Count: 350.
Word Count (according to WORD): 73,934.
Chapters: 27 (plus a prologue and an epilogue).

Title: Some Kind Of Real.

Story synopsis (with help from previously mentioned co-worker):

When 12-year-old Alabama Turnkey meets the magic mirror from fairy tale legend, he doesn't know what to make of the fact that the mirror is real and can talk to him, or of the cat-like woman staring back at him. Calico, as she's called, warns Al that his life is in danger and promises to come to his aid. Al thinks he's dreaming until a fight with the Big Bad Wolf, and he soon learns that fairy tales are real and that The Man With No Name, The Wolf, and others are after him and a book known as The Book of Tales. The owner of The Book of Tales would wield awesome power: whatever is written into the book will come to life.

Al is swept into the battle to protect The Book of Tales and is joined by his new friend Calico; his sister, 16-year-old Georgia; Calico's partner, Avalon; and Clover Lane, a girl who makes everyone around her lucky. Together, this mismatched group must travel the world, seeking the guardians of The Book of Tales, in hopes of obtaining the book before it falls into the wrong hands. Unfortunately, even for fairy tales, not everything has a happily ever after.

So yeah, there it is. It's awesome, I tell you. It's young adult fantasy (obviously), which ranks my novels up to 2 adult, 2 young adult. And a random fun fact of information for this book? Georgia wasn't even one of my original characters when I started out. And when I wrote her in, she was just going to be minor. By the end of the book, she had become not only one of my favorite characters, but one of the most important characters. Funny how stuff like that happens.

Unrelated to Movies: Finished Book.

This has nothing to do with movies or anything. I just wanted to share that I just finished writing my third novel. Though, I have been told numerous times that my writing style has a very cinematic feel to it (Gee, I wonder why). So anyway, it's just the first draft, but here's all the details...

The length isn't too bad for a first draft. It's slightly longer than my other first drafts have been. I'll probably end up adding another 100 pages or so (maybe a little less) in the next couple drafts. But this has been a story that's been in my head for at least 3 and a half years now, and includes a character that's been constantly evolving in my brain for about 7-8 years. So without further ado...

Page Count: 270.
Word Count (according to WORD): 58,828.
Chapters: 28.

And the moment that y'all have been waiting for...

Title: A Whisper Softly.

I fought with the title for a long time. I actually just decided to make it that. For the longest time it was The GodBreath: A Whisper Softly... but that doesn't fit right to me, and it hints that it might be a series or trilogy, which it might not be. I thought about just making it 'The GodBreath', but that only comes in near the end, and I really wanted 'A Whisper Softly' in the title. But the latter eventually won over the former... so there it is. And now, to continue...

Story Synopsis:

Sadistic pedophile and serial killer Laurence Fyche has finally been caught; there's just one problem: his latest victim, Darren Meraux, is still out there somewhere, possibly alive. Detective Akemi Endo and her partner, Malcolm Phoenix, are desperately trying to figure out where he has hidden Darren before the boy dies of dehydration. But when a mysterious man who calls himself Stockholm sets up what seems to be the perfect hostage situation at a local bank, with Malcolm as one of the hostages, and states that his only demand is to speak with Akemi and Fyche in private, Akemi is forced to oblige. Once alone, Stockholm's sole request is for Akemi to listen to a Legend that stems back to the old west, while Fyche begins to finally tell his own story, bit by bit. Meanwhile, Malcolm and Captain John Harrison try to figure out what exactly is going on with the hostage situation and if there is any way to get the hostages out. Nothing is pointing toward this being an actual robbery. The mistakes are too obvious for such a perfect scenario. So what is Stockholm really after? Is he merely trying to help the police find Darren's location through drastic measures, or is the reasoning something far more complex, something that can only be found in the words of his Legend? All Akemi can do to find out is sit, wait, and listen…

And because the Legend is a -huge- chunk of the story...

Legend synopsis:

Three decades after the Texas Revolution, whispers of a secret war loomed. Entire families would be taken and never heard from again. 13-year-old Antonio belonged to one such family. Taken to a run-down containment camp and split up from his mother, Antonio meets Maria, a kind 16-year-old girl who becomes his closest friend. However, after an awful massacre, of which Antonio believes he is the only survivor, he leaves with only the shirt on his back and a bible in his hand. He is eventually found by a strange religious group who live in a nearby Monastery, and they tell Antonio that he is special and has to complete three tasks, one of which includes finding the mysterious GodBreath. Meanwhile, Maria, barely alive and having also survived the massacre, stumbles upon a down-on-his-luck con man named Jack, who conned the wrong outlaw. Jack takes Maria back to a nearby town in which he resides with only the worry that the outlaw he had conned will show up to confront his brother, the town's Sheriff. So the two children who were once the closest of friends go separate ways, leaving only room to wonder how their stories will intertwine once again.

So there it is! I'm actually pretty surprised, as it really turned out to have a lot of social commentary in it. I don't think it's preachy, but it's just there... kind of like that quote says that I put at the beginning. The quote, by the way, is this...

"I'm so sick of sarcasm and irony, I could kill! Sincerely, the real root of things is love and sacrifice. Everything else is an illusion. I'm not trying to preach here. I can't tell anybody anything. But I will say, if you're available to them, there are so many great secrets in the world, so many signs. It's when we stop for a moment and listening that the world gets interesting."

~ Ben Foster (Actor)

Yeah... I used a quote by an actor... but it was so fitting that I just had to. So yeah, I'm really happy with what I have in this draft. Now I get to have my celebratory headache (I always get a headache after finished a book. I don't know why).