Patiently standing in the checkout line at Stop & Shop today (which was mobbed because tomorrow is the first night of Passover) I did what so many of us do – browsed the covers of the tabloids. Kim Kardashian has gained more than 40 pounds during her pregnancy. And here I didn’t even know she was enceinte! Kate Middleton, who is also pregnant, fell while attending a royal function because her heel got stuck in a grating! (Oh, no!) Jennifer Aniston reveals her wedding dress! (Somehow I doubt that.)

And then my eyes fell on a special Star magazine edition called Star Trek Collector’s Edition: Into Darkness Special.

Yeah, I couldn’t resist.

It features such things as “100 Greatest Star Trek Moments” (which were strangely not listed in order) and “The Women Who Rule Outer Space” with pictures of Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine and Jolene Blalock as T’Pol on the cover (but no Katherine Mulgrew as Captain Katherine Janeway inside?..

Which gave me the idea to list some of my favorite and most hated Star Trek what-nots. So, in no particular order:

Best cliffhanger – ST TNG, Best of Both Worlds, Part 1. “Mr. Worf – Fire!” Everybody hold your breath for a week.

Worst resolve – ST TNG, Best of Both Worlds, Part 2. “Sleep, Data.” So incredibly anticlimactic.

Best episode – ST TOS, The City on the Edge of Forever. Edith Keeler dies as she is supposed to. The universe wins. The Nazis lose. So does Jim Kirk.

Best line – ST TOS, The City on the Edge of Forever. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” No histrionics from Bill Shatner. Perfect delivery.

Best Captain – Oy. I’m not going there.

Best First Officer – Spock.

Worst. Episode. Ever. – ST TOS, Turnabout Intruder. Total histrionics from Bill Shatner. Also sets back women’s liberation 3,000,000 years.

Best Chief Medical Officer – ST TOS. Leonard H. McCoy, M.D. The good doctor also makes an appearance in the pilot episode of The Next Generation, in which he irascibly tells Data that he sounds like a Vulcan, even though “I don’t see any pointed ears on you, boy.”

Most Wasted Character – ST TNG. Deanna Troi, Ship’s Counselor. Tell your troubles to the bartender, says Guinan.

Sexiest Character Male. – ST TOS, first season. Bill Shatner, you were one hot Canadian Jew!

Sexiest Character Female. – ST TOS. Yeah, I know, if you’re of the opposite sex – from mine – you’re going to say Jeri Ryan, she of the silver catsuit. Me, I’m going with Nichelle Nichols.

Coolest Villain – ST DS9. Gul Dukat. A villain of dimensions.

Best Vulcan – ST TOS and ST TNG. Sarek

Best Human Wife to a Vulcan – ST TOS. Amanda

Best Lt. Saavik – Kirstie Alley. Did Sam Malone know that Rebecca was a

Vulcan?

Best Couple – ST DS9. Lieutenant Commander Worf and Chief Science Officer Lieutenant Jadzia Dax.

Best Bajoran – ST DS9. First Officer Major Kira Nerys.

Cutest Navigator – ST Voyager. Ensign Tom Paris.

Best Episode – ST TOS, The City on the Edge of Forever. With apologies to Harlan Ellison, I think the aired episode is better than his original teleplay.

Best Episode – ST TNG, The Inner Light. Picard lives a lifetime in twenty minutes. He also learns to play the flute.

Best Episode – ST DS9, In the Pale Moonlight. Sisko and Garak maneuver the Romulans into war. Like Bush and Cheney maneuvered us into Iraq. Sisko suffers a moral crisis over his decision. Garak doesn’t. Neither do Bush and Cheney.

Best Episode, – ST Voyager – One Small Step. “The Yankees, in six,” Seven of Nine whispers to the dead to astronaut.

Best Episode – ST Enterprise – Carbon Creek. T’Pol’s grandmother gives the secret of Velcro to a financially needy college student. Let’s face it, they all pretty much sucked.

Live long and prosper!

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

Beautiful Creatures, based on the novel by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, has been a bit of a disappointment for Warner Bros, which has seen a modest domestic box office of $19,205,917. Around the world, the film has also been a so-so performer, which probably means there won’t be a sequel.

Despite positive reviews, the movie was liked better by the audience than the critics according to Rotten Tomatoes, but we suspect it will perform better on home video. Here’s the release details on the DVD, coming in May.

Burbank, CA, March 19, 2013 – An electrifying love story unfolds as Beautiful Creatures arrives onto Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD and Digital Download on May 21, 2013 from Warner Home Entertainment Group. Directed by Oscar® nominee Richard LaGravenese (“The Fisher King,” “P.S. I Love You”), Beautiful Creatures takes you on a supernatural journey as two high school students pursue a tantalizing forbidden romance that leads them into a tangled web of spells and peril from which there may be no escape.

Beautiful Creatures stars Alden Ehrenreich, Alice Englert, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis, Emmy Rossum, Thomas Mann and Emma Thompson. Rounding out the cast are Eileen Atkins, Margo Martindale, Zoey Deutch, Tiffany Boone, Rachel Brosnahan, Kyle Gallner, Pruitt Taylor Vince and Sam Gilroy.

Beautiful Creatures will be available on Blu-ray Combo Pack for $35.99 and on single disc DVD for $28.98.  The Blu-ray Combo Pack features the theatrical version of the film in hi-definition on Blu-ray, and the theatrical version in standard definition on DVD.  Both the Blu-ray Combo Pack and the single disc DVD include UltraViolet which allows consumers to download and instantly stream the standard definition theatrical version of the film to a wide range of devices including computers and compatible tablets, smartphones, game consoles, Internet-connected TVs and Blu-ray players.*

SYNOPSIS

A supernatural love story set in the South, Beautiful Creatures tells the tale of two star-crossed lovers: Ethan (Ehrenreich), a young man longing to escape his small town, and Lena (Englert), a mysterious new girl. Together, they uncover dark secrets about their respective families, their history and their town.

BLU-RAY AND DVD ELEMENTS

Beautiful Creatures Blu-ray Combo Pack contains the following special features:

•        Book to Screen

•        The Casters

•        Between Two Worlds

•        Forbidden Romance

•        Alternate Worlds

•        Beautiful Creatures: Designing the Costumes

•        ICONS by Margaret Stohl (Book Trailer)

•        Deleted Scenes

•        Theatrical Trailers

Beautiful Creatures Standard Definition DVD contains the following special features:

•        ICONS by Margaret Stohl (Book Trailer)

•        Deleted Scenes

DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION ELEMENTS

On May 21, 2013, Beautiful Creatures will be available for download from online retailers including iTunes, Xbox, PlayStation, Amazon, Vudu and CinemaNow.

The film will also available digitally in High Definition (HD) VOD and Standard Definition (SD) VOD from cable and satellite providers, and on select gaming consoles.

ULTRAVIOLET

*UltraViolet allows you to collect, watch and share movies and TV shows in a whole new way. Available with the purchase of specially marked Blu-ray discs, DVDs and Digital Downloads, UltraViolet lets you create a digital collection of movies and TV shows.  Services such as Flixster and VUDU allow you to instantly stream and download UltraViolet content across a wide range of devices including computers and compatible tablets, smartphones, game consoles, Internet-connected TVs and Blu-ray players.  Restrictions and limitations apply.  Go to ultraviolet.flixster.com/info for details.  For more information on compatible devices go to wb.com/ultravioletdevices.

BASICS

PRODUCT                                                                            SRP

Blu-ray Combo Pack                                                               $35.99

Single disc Amaray (WS)                                                       $28.98

Standard Street Date: May 21, 2013

DVD Languages: English, Latin Spanish, Canadian French

BD Languages: English, Latin Spanish, Canadian French

DVD Subtitles: English SDH, Latin Spanish, Parisian French

BD Subtitles: English SDH, Latin Spanish, Parisian French

Running Time: 124 minutes

Rating: PG-13 for violence, scary images and some sexual material

DLBY/SURR   DLBY/DGTL   [CC]

None of us are the same person all the time. We change according to the people we are around; they draw different aspects of us out of ourselves. A sibling may draw us into the role of younger or older sibling automatically. A guy talking with other guys may talk and act one way and, on seeing a pretty girl, turn around and talk and act completely differently. Have you ever said or felt that a certain person brings out the best or worst in you? It’s probably true. You do it to others as well.

What’s true in life should be true in our writing. One of the major purposes of supporting characters, major or minor, good or bad, is to draw out aspects of the protagonist. There are differences between who we think we are and who we actually are and it’s other people and/or difficult situations that draw these out and reveal them to ourselves or to the readers of our stories.

Nothing reveals a character more than contradictions. The deeper the character, the more profound the contradictions. Let’s do an exercise. Take a sheet of paper and on one side in a vertical column write attributes or virtues that a character may have. For example, our character Jimmy Bill Bob is friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. That’s right – a real Boy Scout. Now, draw a line down the center of the page and in a column opposite the first attributes, write their opposite. Be creative. You can’t use un – as in unkind or ir- as in irreverent. Find words that you feel mean the opposite of the word on the left hand side of the line. I’ll wait.

Done? Fine. Here’s the thing – if everything you’ve written on the left hand side of the line is true about the character, so will everything on the right hand side be true in some way to some degree. Not at the same moment, but it can flip from one to the other in a nanosecond. It doesn’t have to be a total change which would be kind of psychotic but it can and does happen just that fast. You’ve seen it in others and I’m sure you can see it in yourself, in your actions.

It also comes down to how you define each term. In what way is a given character courteous; in what way are they rude? An act of bravery can be a small thing as well as a big thing. If this is true in real life – and I submit that it is – then it should be true in the characters that we write.

I also want to pass on something I gleaned from a terrific book on acting called Audition by Michael Shurtleff. He noted that actors loved to do “transitions” from one moment to the next, from one emotion to the next. Fates know that I was guilty of that in my acting days. He proclaimed that transitions were the death of good acting. We didn’t do it in real life; we just went from one emotion to the next often showing them hard against one another, in great contrast.

This is true in writing as well. Don’t explain the contradictions; state them and move on to the next moment. The reader will sort them out. Just make sure that the moments are true; that you’re not doing a contradiction as a short hand for a character. They are meant to reveal things about the character. A gimmick is a gimmick and makes for bad writing. Let contradictions reveal the character to you and then you can show them to your reader.  The reader will be stunned and then nod in agreement because you’ve explored something that, deep down, they know – that people, and life, are a nice messy ball of contradictions.

That makes it true.

MONDAY MORNING: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten