Structural Engineering 101

September 12, 2013

Structural Engineering 101

The first chapter is titled “Zefram Cochrane.”

Geek reference.

Anyway…

Well, for a couple months now I’ve promised that I’d blather on about structure. I’ve actually got a bit of time now, so let’s do it. I’ll warn you all right up front, this is probably going to be spread over two or three posts because it’s a big topic. I also may be using terms a bit loosely and in ways your MFA professor may not approve of. But I’ll do my best to make it easy to understand, despite that.

When we’re talking about structure in stories, it really means the same thing it does when we’re talking about architecture or biochemistry or auto engineering. It’s the underlying framework that helps us figure out how things go together. Different structures work for different projects, so just because something worked when we were building One World Trade Center doesn’t mean we should use it when we’re building a house. Or a motorcycle.

Now, there are three types of structure in stories, and they all interact and work with each other. Just like a house or a skyscraper, if two elements are strong and one is weak, a story won’t be able to support itself. So it’s important to have a good grasp of all three and understand how they work.

First up, the one we’re going to deal with this week, is linear structure. Simply put, the linear structure of a story is the chronological timeline the characters experience. There’s a Russian literary term for this called fabula. I’ll prattle on more about this in just a bit.

Next isnarrative structure. This is the manner and order my story is told in. Put another way, it’s the way my audience experiences the story. A flashback is part of the narrative structure, as are prologues, epilogues, and “ten years later…” Again, if you studied (or over-studied) this sort of stuff in college, you professor may have used the term syuzhet. I’ll talk more about this one next week.

Last but not least, there’s dramatic structure. This is the way linear and narrative structures work together to form a coherent, enjoyable story. Dramatic structure is why tension builds, why mysteries intrigue us, and why twists and reveals surprise us. I’ll talk a little more about this on the 26th, if all goes well.

For now, though… linear structure.

As I mentioned a few moments ago, linear structure is the order your characters experience the story in. Another term you may have heard for this is continuity, or maybe cause and effect. Day comes before night, which leads to another day. People start young and then get old (Benjamin Button and Doctor Who excepted). Turning a key in the ignition starts my car. Or, sometimes, sets off a bomb.

Now… check out this list

            Yakko dies peacefully in his sleep.
            Yakko celebrates his fifth birthday.
            Yakko gets married.
            Yakko is born.
            Yakko witnesses the birth of his grandchild.

These are five random events from a life. Now, despite the fact that I started the list with Yakko’s death, we all inherently understand this is not the first event in his life. In fact, I’m betting most of you reading this can put that list in linear order in just a few seconds. That’s because linear order is the most natural structure for all of us—it’s the one we experience all the time, every day.

This is also why linear structure is so important. Most of us are experts on it. We’ll notice when effect comes before cause, even if we’re getting them out of order like I just gave them to you. A good way to think of linear structure, as I mentioned above, is a timeline. When you see detectives breaking down the clues of a crime, them may discover them out of order, but it doesn’t change the order they actually happened in. If I’m writing a story—even if I’m telling the story in a non-linear fashion—there still needs to be a linear structure.

A good way to test the linear structure of my story (a method I’ve mentioned before) is to pull everything apart and then arrange all the flashbacks, flash-forwards, recollections, frames, and so on in chronological order. They should still make logical sense like this, even if they’ve lost some of their dramatic weight this way (again, more on this later). If my story elements don’t work like this (if cause doesn’t come before effect, or if the same thing is happening multiple times), I’ve done something wrong.

Which brings us to time travel.

Time travel stories depend a lot on linear structure. If I don’t have a clear then and now, before and after, then time travel means nothing. I need to be able to see that linear structure so I can see how my traveler’s timeline moves back and forth along the world’s.

Check out this little diagram. Here’s a pair of timelines featuring two characters from Doctor Who—the Doctor himself and his friend, Jack Harkness. There’s kind of a big spoiler in here (or not, depending on which fan theories you subscribe to) which I’ll try to avoid, but if it makes things too confusing just say so.

Jack’s life is pretty straightforward, for our purposes here. A is when young Jack first meets the Ninth Doctor and decides to travel with him for a while. B is when he later encounters the Tenth Doctor, and C is when they briefly meet again to stop the Daleks. They meet again (D) much, much later in Jack’s life. And E is when Jack finally dies at the ripe old age of about five billion or so (no, seriously). All in all, this personal timeline isn’t much different than the one I showed for Yakko up above.

Now… look at the Doctor’s timeline. This the linear structure of the show because we (the audience) are following the Doctor around. He travels in time a lot, so he actually meets Jack in kind of an odd order. But it’s still a logical order for the Doctor—he’s still living on his own timeline A-B-C-D-E, just like Jack. A and B are the Ninth Doctor, C through E are the Tenth.

In fact, this linear order creates a big twist for the Doctor (and the viewers, since we’re following him). He doesn’t realize the person he first meets at D is the same person he later meets at A (as I mentioned, a lot of time passes for Jack). But this isn’t a twist for Jack because he’s following his own linear story. That’s why he can address the (somewhat confused) Doctor as “my old friend.”

Make sense?

Y’see, Timmy, no matter what order I tell things in, the characters are experiencing the story in linear order. If halfway through my book one of my character flashes back to what happened a week ago, this isn’t new information for him or her—it happened a week ago. So all of their actions and reactions up until the flashback should take that into account.

It sounds pretty straightforward and it really is. Linear structure is going to be the easiest of the three forms I blab about over the next few weeks because overall it’s logical and objective. But, alas, people still mess it up all the time. And the mistakes are usually because of narrative structure.

But we’ll talk about that next week.

Until then, go write.

September 7, 2013

Easter Eggs

Months early for Easter, I know. But, as some of you may have guessed, I’m not really talking about those Paas coloring kits. Or the Cadbury Bunny.

For those few of you who are still waiting to see if Betamax is going to win the format wars, an Easter egg is a hidden bonus on a DVD or Blu-ray. As of late, the term’s been broadened to include any little onscreen reference or in-joke.

A lot of superhero movies tend to have “Easter eggs,” in this broad sense. Captain America’s shield (or a version of it) showing up in Tony Stark’s workshop. Superman and General Zod crashing into a Wayne Industries satellite while they fight. Agent Coulson stopping at a Roxxon gas station on the way out to New Mexico. Professor Horton’s synthetic man at the WWII Stark Expo (a two-for-one Easter egg, really). Heck, I remember giggling with geeky joy when Val Kilmer’s Bruce Wayne made an offhand comment about some people being “halfway to Metropolis by now.”

I think most writers do this on one level or another. We put in little in-jokes and references. Sometimes they’re ten percenters, others they’re so small and private maybe only a dozen people in the world are going to get them. I know I’ve done a bunch of them in different books and short stories.

Now…a few weeks back I read an interview with Joss Whedon about the new Agents of SHIELD show. The interviewer wanted to know if we’d be seeing lots of guest spots from some of the movie characters like Nick Fury or Cap or maybe Dr. Banner. Whedon kind of shrugged it off and said while he wasn’t against it, the show wouldn’t last long if it was all about waiting for the next guest star or movie reference. It needed to stand on its own feet, without support from the films.

See, that’s the catch with these sort of in jokes and clever references. My story needs to work despite these ten percenters, not because of them. If all I’ve got is a few clever nods to other things, I don’t have a real story—no matter how clever those nods are.

This is also relates to a common prequel problem. In prequel stories, there are often Easter eggs to all the stuff the audience knows is in the future. Smallville would often dress teenage Clark Kent in blue t-shirts with a red jacket, or have numerous guest stars who would be important later in his life (like ace reporter Perry White). Hannibal Rising had the titular character learning to cook and trying on samurai half-masks that hinted at the signature muzzle he’d wear later. The Star Wars prequels showed us glimpses of the Death Star and hints of the Empire. As I write this, there’s a pair of shows on the air, each about a famous fictional serial killer at an earlier part of their life. And each show relies heavily on the fact that we, the audience, knows who this character is going to become. There are constant winks and nods and references to things in their respective futures.

In most of these cases, though, when you strip away all the references to “the future,” it becomes clear there’s very little going on in the now.

There’s a similar problem you’ll see a lot in bad comedies. It’s when the plot grinds to a halt to show us a painfully long setup for a joke that does nothing except get a quick laugh. It’s not humor advancing the story, it’s just humor for the sake of humor. And that gets old real quick, no matter how funny the gag might be on its own.

I’ve mentioned seeing this in a fair number of genre stories. A writer comes up with a really cool and new (or what they think is really cool and new) idea about zombie origins or time travel mechanics or vampire biology or cyborg implants or something. But they don’t actually have a story. They just have this one cool idea trying to carry everything.

All of these examples tie back to something I’ve brought up before. One cool idea isn’t a story. It’s just a story point. And one story point—or even a dozen of them—does not make a book. Or a movie. Or even a short story.

Easter eggs are cool and fun, no question about it. But you can’t live off them. And a story can’t survive on nothing but sly winks.

Next week, I think it’s time for that long overdue lecture on structure that I’ve been promising for months.

Until then, go write.

DC genre ideas in-jokes marvel relevance

September 1, 2013 / 1 Comment

Transparency

Is this pathetic or what? Someone else offers to write a ranty blog post for me and I still can’t get it up on time. It’s sad, really…

Well, here’s Thom Brannan, author of Lords of Night and (with DL Snell) co-author of Pavlov’s Dogs and their new book The Omega Dog, talking a bit about clarity. I’ll be back later this week (hopefully on time) to talk about Easter eggs.

——————————————

Hello is alright, again. On occasion, Pete has stuff to do; like, a lot of it, and he knows there are a lot of you who come to this blog for tips and tools.

So this week, it’s me again. Thom Brannan. I’ll try to avoid disappointing you. Those of you who know who I am, congratulations! For those who don’t, here is a picture.

Today, I’m here to talk to you about transparency. It’s a thing, a real thing, where you can read something an author wrote, and there’s a lot of the author in there, one way or another. Sometimes it’s political, sometimes it’s in the interests… most times, you’ll find it in the details.

For your readers who are just like you, no doubt this will be a source of delight and entertainment. But not everybody is like you. For those readers, this will induce the effect known as “God, I’m skimming this part.” It happens.

Let me hit you with an example. I recently finished reading something by Robert A. Heinlein. He’s one of my literary heroes, okay? I love his work and his verve and his ideas and just everything.

Almost.

I’m now catching up on works of his I’d missed previously, and it’s great joy. Except when he devotes entire paragraphs to doing math. Really, honestly, when I started reading his stuff, it made me want to run out and get a slide rule, just so I could keep up. True story. But that was a different me, back in high school. Math was one of my things. Now, when I get to a part where any of his hyper-competent characters go on about anything that remotely resembles figuring, I just skim over it.

But that wasn’t enough to spark this blog entry. I’m also reading a WWII story about… well, about spooky stuff. (I don’t want to put too fine a point on what or who I’m reading.) So, there’s a passage where some dirty, nasty Krauts are in a plane with a creepy box which may or may not have something moving in it, and the author is clearly enamored with the plane. With the plane. There is a serious chunk of text dedicated to the plane and why it was chosen for this type of mission and the capabilities of the plane and how it got its nickname, et cetera.

This will cost you
extra with FedEx

But what about the spooky box?

The spooky box, if I’m reading the foreshadowing correctly, contains something (someone?!) which is going to be major later on, and next to no text is dedicated to it. It’s just kind of there, and the Nazis eye it, and the plane they’re in is endlessly fascinating.

Now, in other places in this very blog, Pete has said things like have a reason to describe it, or to avoid being focused on the wrong thing. Sometimes, it’s hard to figure out when YOU’VE LOST YOUR GODDAMN… excuse me. Sometimes it’s hard to know when the thing you’re writing is what people need to read about the story. Or if people will even read it. Skimmers gonna skim.

For an easy litmus test, corner someone your work with. Or someone you live with. Or someone in the grocery store. Whatever. Start telling them all this cool stuff you’ve unearthed about maybe Einstein being a plagiarist, or the use of Tesla technology to cripple other nations, or how the innards of a watch work, or how the Warthog got its nickname of the Warthog, or whatever stupidly addicting thing you’re bound and determined to include in your current or next work.

This is what it’s like…

If at any point their eyes start to glaze over, cross that crap off your list.

And since I didn’t say this from the get-go, this is what I’ve found works for me. I have a relatively diverse background, and I find a lot of things fascinating. But only a fraction of that stuff finds its way into my prose because I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes, that loss of focus when they’re not really listening to me anymore. It happens quite a bit, as I tend to ramble.

For instance, in my most recent work, The Omega Dog(with D.L. Snell) there’s a section where the protagonists travel in the Gulf of Mexico in a narco-sub. I’m a former submariner, and the intricacies of the works of subs, even the fiberglass jobs used to transport drugs, kind of trips my trigger. So I sat and wrote maybe two pages of all this, and then I stopped.

There was also a drug lord, my protagonists, a person who may or may not have been human, a strapped-down zombie and a goddamn WEREWOLF, all in this tiny space… and here I was writing about navigation and whatnot. A little bit of submarine development history had made it in there, too. What the hell?

I deleted all that before I sent it to Snell, because he would just delete it. He’d be nicer about it than I was to myself, but the end result would be the same.

There are exceptions, of course. What’s his name, the legal writer guy? The one who wrote The Pelican Brief. He leaves a lot of that stuff in there because hey, that’s what his readers are reading him for. The same with gun porn. I mean, men’s adventure. My good friend Doug Wojtowicz knows a lot about guns, and that kind of detail is not only expected in The Executioner, but welcome. God help him if he leaves something out. Or gets it wrong, yikes.

But I guess I’m starting to get long-winded. Shaddap. I guess my point is this: if you’re including something like that, be sure it moves the story along, or is at least an interesting tangent with some story elements to it. If at any point, your manuscript starts to read like a Wikipedia entry, you’re doing it wrong.

So there. My two cents. Again, your mileage may vary.

Go write something.

Brannan details flow Snell weapons Wojtowicz Wolf Man

August 25, 2013

Hollywood Remakes

This isn’t so much a rant about Hollywood remakes as it is about the recurring idea that sequels, remakes, and adaptations are some awful, overwhelming blight that’s taken over Hollywood in the past few years. Humphrey Bogart’s version of The Maltese Falcon was a remake of an adaptation. So was John Carpenter’s The Thing. Casino Royale was a remake, too. Dracula is the most filmed fictional character in history. Seriously. How many remakes or adaptations are we talking about there?

Don’t get me wrong–there are some God-awful remakes out there. Nightmarishly bad ones. But there’s a lot of God-awful original films, too. And, hard as it may be to believe, they’re the majority.

Hollywood studios released just shy of 200 films in 2011. I believe the exact number is 194, but I might be off by two or three (that’s based off Box Office Mojo‘s records, if you care). This number does not include micro-releases that only played for a limited number of screenings or foreign films brought over by independent distributors. If we were all inclusive, the number of films at the box office last year is closer to five hundred.

2011 had more sequels released than any other year to date. There were 28–about one out of every seven films (14.2%) if we stick to that smaller number of studio releases.

If we’re extremely generous with the term “remake” (counting, for example, Captain America: The First Avenger as a remake of the low-budget 1990 film and Rise of the Planet of the Apes as a remake of the old Conquest of the Planet of the Apes) , 2011 had 13 remakes. Not even one in ten of the smaller studio number (6.66%, actually). And before anyone asks, there are overlaps between the remakes and sequels.

Which means, conservatively, that 80% of the films released in 2011 were original or based off new, never-before-filmed material. Probably a little more than that. Definitely more if we use all the numbers and not just the studio releases. This isn’t opinion, remember–these are cold, hard facts. You can go to Boxoffice Mojo or The Numbers or even just IMDb, count up releases, and you’ll get the same results.

I think what drives people nuts is that over the past ten years or so the average person has access to tons of news and information about the internal workings of Hollywood. But the film industry is a very weird business. There is nothing else like it and nothing to compare it to (from many, many folks, the closest comparison is life in the military). Having access to all that internal information doesn’t mean someone can understand Hollywood any more than having access to all the internal organs in someone’s torso can make you a heart surgeon.

So, anyway, people hear about movies going into development, don’t understand what that means, and assume these films are going to happen now. In film terms, going into development means… nothing. Absolutely nothing. Dozens of remakes, reboots, sequels, and original scripts are considered for development every day because that’s how development people keep their jobs. They get nine or ten projects “in the works” and about 95% of them fizzle out and die. Some of them are remakes, a bigger bunch of them are original. But the vast majority of them don’t come out. This is business as usual. Disney has had all of their sixties and seventies live movies in development as remakes or reboots for over a decade now. We’ve seen one make it out– Race To Witch Mountain. One in over ten years.

It’s not really a problem.

Just saying…

hollywood pet peeve

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