Writing thoughts and Masters of the Air · 11:07pm January 25th
We'll get to thoughts on writing — but first, I am fucking stoked:
I listened to this podcast on the drive in to work today: "We Have Ways of Making you Talk: Interview with 'Masters of the Air' writer John Orloff."
Orloff also is know for writing several episodes of "Band of Brothers." He made a very, VERY interesting point in the interview. I don't have a transcript, so I paraphrase from memory: "'Band of Brothers' was about Easy Company, about these few guys and their friendship. 'Masters of the Air' is about scale. It starts with a raid of thirty B-17s, and by the end, the raids are fifteen hundred bombers and four hundred fighters. It took the bomber stream three hours to pass over Berlin that day. Imagine, three hours of B-17s!"
This stuck with me. When write my Big, Serious™️stories, I always have one word that is the THEME. I often don't find this word until I've completed the first draft, but by focusing on it, I know what my story IS, and therefore what to cut and what to enhance. For "Luna's Daughters," the word was duty. For "Redheart's War," it was perseverance. For "With Her Majesty's Coast Guard," it was valor. "The Ponies in the Caves" didn't have a one word and is therefore the weakest of my big stories. My early and not-very-good attempts at big, serious fics, like "Princess Luna's Unconvincing Disguise" or "Starlight Glimmer (Accidentally) Raises the Dead" were similarly unfocused and weak.
So it's interesting to see that this professional seems to be operating the same way I am: make sure you're writing to a target.
Regardless, I'm re-watching Band of Brothers and will burn into Masters of the Air when I'm done with the re-watch. The Pacific has always been my WW2 history of choice, given that my ancestors fought there, but the Mighty Eighth has always been the non-Pacific history I've read the most of.
Recent episodes of We Have Ways focused on the Battle of the North Cape — famous for being the last big-gun battleship duel in the Atlantic basin and the penultimate in history, after Surigao Straight. Very good episodes.
Too bad it's only on Apple TV+.