Six
The unknown intrigued me as a kid – the supernatural, UFOs, anything unexplained. The real world was just too concrete. There had to be something more, something that transcended even imagination. My cousins were like-minded. Whenever we got together for birthdays or whatever (and with such a big family, there were lots of occasions), we’d talk about this stuff endlessly. I loved it, loved these conversations, but come the night, I would struggle getting to sleep. Talk about ghosts? Well, I was sure to see them. Hauntings? My bedroom would be unveiled as a hub of poltergeist activity just ready to emerge. Demons? They’d be coming. I would lie there…
Wonky World Building and JJ
All storytellers have different strengths and weaknesses. In telling a story, they’ll play to their strengths, and hopefully that compensates for their weaknesses. But what happens when a storyteller’s weakness is storytelling? I can’t fault director JJ Abrams’s ability to make visually stunning movies (lens flares and all). But his storytelling is terrible, which is born from his appalling world-building. Word-building is paramount to me. Get it right, and you can sell me anything. I’ll believe immortals are living among us who can only die if they lose their head; I’ll believe an eccentric inventor builds a time machine out of a DeLorean; I’ll believe an archaelogist is retained by…