Short questions, short answers
In the Big Fish Sequence Outline posted in the Library, you have boxes around certain sequences (i.e. sequences 3,5,8 etc.), but not around others. What do these boxes reference?
– Gerald
Mississippi
The boxes indicate which sections of the movie are Edward’s stories. I wanted to show the balance between real-world stuff and fable.
Why did Edward Bloom leave Ashland?
– Anonymous
Because it’s too small for a man of his ambition. That’s what Edward says to Karl the Giant before they head off on their adventure.
Beginner’s luck? Is that supposed to happen?
– Mark
It’s a fallacy. We expect someone trying something for the first time to fail, so when they succeed, we call it “beginner’s luck” to discount it. But depending on the nature of the task, it’s actually just skill or garden-variety luck.
A person who succeeds early and later fails may likewise try to diminish the first success by declaring it “beginner’s luck.” But it’s almost worth looking at the situation in which they were first successful, and what’s changed. Likely the “beginning” was an arbitrary point decided after the fact, and the subsequent efforts are being scored by different and perhaps unrealistic criteria.
Articles
July 7th, 2008 at 1:38 am
Beginners luck has been shown to exist for gamblers. People who are lucky at the beginning tend to keep at it. And then always feel that they are less lucky than they were at the begining. Those who fail early tend to quit.
If you are lucky early it tends to make you a gambler. If you are unsucessful you quit. Therefore it’s a self selecting falacy.
Some of this is talked about in the book Black Swan.
July 7th, 2008 at 9:26 am
A single, early success is a different animal than sustained success over time. You could have enough talent or whatever to get going, but may not have the skill to keep it going, or enough insight into what led to that early success to duplicate the things that you did right.
July 7th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
There is a quote on the Wordplayer site that goes something like an artist succeeds on the first try more often because it is then when they are closest to the audience. I agree with that, when you are a writer, when you have not been affected by sales or deadlines or meetings or agents, you are more likely to really connect to an audience.
July 7th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Another take on beginner’s luck can be speculated as the novice player’s disconnection from the pressure of the game. As they are normally regarded as inexperienced; we predict that they will not excel like the intermediate or professional players. For the novice there is no pressure to excel due to this speculation hence the lack of pressure the player feels to win the prize. Allowing the novice to concentrate more than a pressured veteran player.
July 8th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Yet another take on beginner’s luck is that it sometimes comes as a result of the beginner having no established bad-habits or preconceptions… “thinking outside the box”… or more to the point “thinking before you’re in the box at all”. Though I will concede that I think it’s a pretty rare phenomenon in this sense.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:38 am
There is a cool example of how beginner’s luck functions in a real sense in a discussion of the game Street Fighter at http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_Yomi.htm.
July 11th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Hey, this is way off topic, forgive me, but I can’t seem to find where to ask a question on my inteface. Question: How did you, yourself, write the voice-overs in “Big FIsh”? Simultaneously while writing; or at the end when proofreading? Thanks…
C.J.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:26 am
John, what does it mean for the WGA if SAG gets a better deal than everyone else? I assume your thoughts on their possible strike are forthcoming.
Thanks