December 2, 2011 / 5 Comments

Simon Says, One Step Back

            Okay, first off… more shameless pandering.

            My publisher’s doing a big sale for the holidays he’s calling Black December.  The ebook versions of ten best sellers and new releases are marked down to a mere $2.99 for the whole month.  That includes my own Ex-Heroes, available over in the right hand column here.  He’s also got five ebooks for free.  No strings, no tricks, absolutely free.  Five books he’s just giving away.  Go check it out.
            Oh, and The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe isn’t part of the sale, but the ebook version’s still marked down to half the paperback price.  Just saying…
            Now, with that out of the way, I’d like to talk to you about Pitch Black.
            If you haven’t seen the film, I highly recommend it.  Sharp dialogue, good characters, a lot of action, and a damned clever story backing it all up.  It’s the movie that really launched Vin Diesel’s career as “the guy you do not mess with,” and if you watch it with the commentary you’ll learn he also had a fair amount to do with shaping the script.
            There’s a wonderful bit early on when our assembled heroes need to make a break across a stretch of open ground.  As it turns out, Diesel’s character, Riddick, has superhuman vision and can see in the dark.  He peers out, announces it “Looks clear,” and the group of survivors dashes for cover.  But then things come soaring down out of the dark sky and… well, not everyone makes it.  One of the other survivors immediately blames Riddick—“You said it was clear!”
            “I said it lookedclear!” Riddick snaps back.
            This bit usually gets a dark chuckle from the audience.  It also points out something I’ve mentioned here once or thrice before, and I thought it was worth blabbing on about in a bit more detail this week.  As our heroes learned the hard way, “It looks clear” is not the same thing as, “It isclear.”  Riddick knew they’re not synonymous, and that difference is very important.  “It looks clear” implies there’s a bit more to be said.
            This is a construction I see come up a lot, where writers put an additional step between the story and the reader.  Usually they do it by adding an extra layer of verbiage that relates to something internal.  Other times it’s an attempt to do something clever with the description.  It seems to show up a lot in high fantasy writing because people mistakenly use it in the elaborate, purple-prose descriptions that genre tends to attract.  I’ve also seen people follow this route when they’re trying to be mysterious and imply a lot of spookiness that might not actually be there.
            And, to be honest, it’s something I used to do a lot myself.
            Let me give you a few examples…
            He thought about trying to be a writer
            We’ve all seen this one somewhere, right?  Nothing wrong with it on the surface.  But let’s stop and break it down for a moment.
            The act of thinking implies this isn’t happening, it’s just a possibility.  So if my character’s thinking about trying to do something, it means this is a possibility of a possibility of something happening.  Unless he’s specifically thinking about the actual attempt instead of the end product, this is just excess words.
            He thought about being a writer.
            See?  Cleaner, clearer, and two words shorter.  Here’s another one.
            She decided to write her blog post.
            This is fine if she decided to—but that was as far as she got because something kept her from doing it.  But if she decided to do it and then she did it, the writer’s just eating up words again. We all make hundreds of decisions and choices every day, but most readers want to hear about the actions, not the decision to take an action.  I wouldn’t write Peter decided to make a turkey sandwich, made the sandwich, and then chose to sit at the table to eat it. Well, I wouldn’t write stuff like that any more, at least.  Why would I want to waste all those words on mundane stuff?  Peter made a turkey sandwich and sat at the table to eat it.  Likewise, the sheer act of writing tells us our lovely blogger made a decision.
            She wrote her blog post.
            See?  Nothing else needed.  Now check out this one…
            Phoebe appeared to be a shapely blonde who stood six feet tall.
            Appeared to be is one of those phrases I got in my head and used to use all the time.  Sometimes I’d swap in one of its kissing cousins, looked like, seemed to be , and a few wild combinations we shouldn’t discuss in polite company.  Problem was, I didn’t understand these phrases.  Y’see, Timmy, they don’t get used alone.  This sort of phrase is the first part of a construction where the second half is either an actual or implied contradiction.  That sentence up above is really saying something more like this—
            Phoebe appeared to be a shapely blonde who stood six feet tall, but she actually bleached her hair on a regular basis and made a point of always wearing spike heels.
            There’s nothing wrong with that sentence, of course, whether it’s written out or left implied.  None of us will fault Phoebe for thinking that blondes have more fun and wanting to be a few inches taller.  The problem is that a lot of the time I wasn’t trying to establish a contradiction, I just wanted artsy sentence structure.  What I really wanted to say was this–
            Phoebe was a shapely blonde who stood six feet tall.
            So I was subtly pushing the reader back for no reason with extra words, while also showing that I didn’t really know what I was doing.  If a writer isn’t trying to establish that contradiction, using appeared to beand its bastard stepchildren isn’t just wasted words– it’s wrong. 
            Now, there’s nothing wrong with an elaborate sentence now and then.  Most of us love a good turn of phrase—it’s the kind of thing that made us want to be writers.  Just remember that like any other element in your writing, there has to be a point to that long string of words, and they have to be used correctly. Because if they’re not, I’m just eating up words and wasting everyone’s time.
            Speaking of which, next time I was going to rant about something for about a minute.
            Until then, go write.
May 27, 2011 / 5 Comments

Artsy Character Stuff

A while back, on one of the message boards I frequent, someone accused me of being horribly biased against anything that’s “character driven” or lacks a plot. I didn’t feel the need to address it there, but it did get me thinking. Am I horribly biased?

On reflection, yes. Yes I am.
Keep in mind what bias means. It means someone has an automatic tendency to lean toward or away from something when it comes to judgment. If I have the choice of watching a sitcom or Doctor Who, my personal bias is to watch Doctor Who. If one dish is made with spinach and one with peas, I’ll probably choose the peas. It doesn’t mean Doctor Who beats any sitcom or peas are always better than spinach, but that’s the way I roll.
By the same token, if I have the choice between an overwritten character study where elegantly-defined protagonists do absolutely nothing and a tight story with good characters and an arc… well, I’ll go with option B every time.
So, yes, I’m biased. In fact, if you check the numbers, you’ll find most people are. We like compelling characters, but we also want to see things happen. Check out a list of bestselling books or films or plays. How many of them involve people sitting on their butts for long periods of time? That kind of stuff just doesn’t sell.
Now, keep in mind I’m not the only one saying this. People have been saying it for decades. Probably centuries. There’s a reason so much of Shakespeare’s populist crap survived and most people can’t even name three of his contemporaries. People want to be entertained. Silent film director Marshall Neilan humorously pointed out (about a hundred years ago) that there are two kinds of directors—the ones who make artistic movies and the ones whose movies make money.
Are being popular and making money the only yardsticks of success? Not by a long shot. But they’re the most common ones and the ones most folks go off. If I tell you I wrote a phenomenally successful book, the assumption is not that I made my mom proud, impressed my tenth grade English teacher, or really touched three dedicated readers. “Phenomenally successful” means the book sold a few million copies and I’m writing this next to my pool while Stana Katic rubs my shoulders.
That being said, there are a lot of real-world, character-driven stories that are just fantastic. They’re vastly outnumbered by the bad ones, no doubt about it, but saying all such movies are bad would be just as lazy as the folks who dismiss all genre work as pedestrian and simplistic. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is far more a slice-of-life story than it is a courtroom drama. The film (500) Days of Summer is closer to a character study than a romantic comedy.
And there are, believe it or not, genre books that go this way as well. James P. Hogan wrote a wonderful novel called Inherit the Stars which has almost no action in it at all. About three-fourths of the book is people sitting in offices and laboratories bouncing theories off each other about a body they’ve found on the Moon. Aliens are mentioned in it, but we only see a few skeletons because they’ve been dead for tens of thousands of years. It’s been one of my favorite books since high school.
So, if you want to write quiet little things that lean far more on character then action, here are three tips for making them something people still want to read.

1) Have compelling characters
Somewhere along the line a lot of people got it in their heads that the only way a character can be interesting is if they’re seriously messed up. This became the yardstick for “mature” fiction. By this standard, a good character’s an alcoholic, chain-smoking, spouse-beating, molested-as-a-child part-time convenience store worker with Asperger’s Syndrome. One film I saw had a pedophile as one of the main characters. No hyperbole, this was a confessed, done-prison-time pedophile, who wasn’t really sure if he was reformed or not. He was still thinking it over and debating if he’d done something wrong or not.
While such people probably has a great deal going on under the surface and give actors tons of meaty moments to emote, you do have to wonder how the audience is supposed to relate to these characters. Or how we’re supposed to like them. And why on God’s Earth would we root for such people? “Go, man, go!! You can get your groove back and molest three more children before the end of the film! I have faith in you!!”
If you’re going to make your story all about characters, make it about characters people will actually like. They don’t need to be perfect, by any means, but they also don’t have to be so flawed we wonder why they’re not in prison or an institution. Someone facing an uphill battle is great, but someone facing a sheer cliff is just pointless.

2)Have something happen
This is probably the biggest complaint I have with 99% of such stories and scripts I read. Nothing happens. The week this story covers is indistinguishable from the same week a few million other people have had. Heck, it’s indistinguishable from the same week these characters have had fifty-two times a year. There’s nothing special or noteworthy about it in any way.
Now, nobody has to steal the Declaration of Independence for a story to be interesting. They don’t need to rob a bank or fight off alien invaders or save the Ark of the Covenant from the Nazis. But they need to do something. If the characters don’t have a reason to aim a little higher while we’re watching them, then we’re seeing static characters.
Ready for a horrific example? Think of Flashdance. Almost half the movie is Alex’s friends following their dreams and failing miserably. The ice skater who loses her balance and destroys her routine. The comedian whose mind goes blank and leaves him sweaty and panicked in front of an audience of hecklers. But the key thing is they’re at least making an attempt while the main character is too scared to even try. It’s a basic, simple situation we can all relate to, from one side or the other. They’re all doing something, even though none of them are succeeding.

3) Have an arc
Once you’ve got a compelling character and you’ve got something happening, you’ve got to have an arc. By its very nature, an arc implies we end somewhere else. Arcs that end in the same place are called circles, and there’s a reason you haven’t heard of well-structured character circles. You’ve heard of people running in circles, though, haven’t you? And it’s never a good thing…
The whole point of a story is to get from A to B. If there’s only going to be A, that’s just a plot point. Plot points can be fascinating, but they also tend to sit on the page if they’re all alone with nothing backing them up. Just as something needs to happen in the observed life of your character, something needs to change.
The previously mentioned (500) Days of Summer is about a guy falling for a girl, dating her, and then getting dumped by her. And he grows up a bit because of it. Inherit the Stars is about a group of scientists learning some revolutionary facts about the Earth and the solar system. He Was A Quiet Man is about the office loser who decides to shoot up his office but becomes a hero when someone else beats him to it and he shoots them instead.
And there you have it. Three simple tips to having a character-driven story that still makes audiences cheer. Because cheering audiences pay better.
Next time…
Honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to rant about next time. Does anyone have a topic they’d like to see addressed? Some sticky issue or recurring problem they’ve been having? I’ll try my best to address them, if so.
If not, I’ll probably just find something else to be negative about.
Until then, go write.
August 5, 2010 / 2 Comments

Shotgun Art

All right you primates, listen up. This is my BOOMSTICK!

The twelve-gauge, double-barreled Remington– S-Mart’s top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That’s right, this baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan and retails for about $109.95. It’s got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger.

To get to my point, though…

The great advantage of the shotgun is that it’s very hard to miss with one. Load a few shells of buckshot and you can pretty much guarantee you’ll hit whatever reanimated dead thing you’re more-or-less aiming at. Heck, even if you’re not sure what you’re aiming at, you’ll still probably hit it. You won’t hit it with full force, granted, but with that amount of spread you will hit something. And if you’re lucky and hit enough of it, you’ll do more than slightly annoy your chosen target.

With that being said, I’d like to tell you a story…

It’s the story of Yakko Warner, a young man who wanted nothing more than to grow up and be on the Olympic pie-throwing team. It was his dream for as long as he could remember. But then, in the womb, tragedy struck…

Yakko was diagnosed with Sudden Infant Death syndrome and Alzheimer’s. Despite this, he fought on, born an orphan just two years after his parents were killed by a drunk driver. Working his way through private school and an ivy-league college by collecting deposit bottles every night and weekend, he graduated and became an alcoholic writer, artist, and musician on the same day he discovered he had AIDS, brain cancer, and Lou Gehrig’s disease. The next day, a random gang shooting killed his pregnant wife and four-year old son and left him crippled and in a wheelchair.

Yakko decided to become a teacher, in the hopes his story would inspire inner city autistic children to stay out of gangs. Alas, his students were all killed by drug dealers, crooked cops, homophobic bigots, racists, tragic suicides, random household accidents, and Somalian pirates.

Then he decided to write a book about the experience. Then he decided to option the book to be a screenplay. Then he decided to skip teaching and writing the book and just sell the story to Hollywood for the money. The screenplay won a Nicholl Fellowship, a Pulitzer, a Nobel Peace Prize, and a Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award.

Finally, on the day Yakko went to pick up his Academy Award for General Excellence, he was killed by a drunk driver. Ironically, the same drunk driver who had killed his parents five years earlier. As he bled out in the gutter, waiting for an ambulance that was delayed because Republican politicians he’d backed had slashed health care bills, a dove landed nearby. Then–as he stared at the bird and realized he’d wasted his life in books when he should’ve been out there living– Yakko died the most painful, agonizing death ever imagined.

~Fin~

Okay, you’re probably chuckling a bit, but what might be hard to believe is how common this kind of storytelling is. I saw it in writers’ groups in college (part of the reason I don’t belong to such groups anymore) and countless times when I used to read for screenplay contests. You wouldn’t believe the number of dramatic stories that are just brimming with excess plot devices and story threads.

This all springs from a common misconception–that writing a bunch of plot points and character elements is the same thing as writing a story. The logic is that if I load up my story with every possible dramatic cliché for every single character, one of them’s bound to hit the target, right? And then, eventually, the story will be dramatic. Plus, adversity builds character, therefore it stands to reason all this extra adversity in my story will make for fantastic characters.

I mean, Yakko comes across a dramatic, dynamic character, right…?

In all fairness, it’s not just the dramatic types looking to create literature and art who do this, although I must admit, they seem to be the most common offenders. I just read a book a while ago that puts the old action pulps to shame. Every punch drew blood, every car chase (or skimobile chase, or quad-runner chase…) ended with an explosion, and every leap rattled bones. Not only that, but every character had a snappy one-liner to toss out before, during, and after offing one of the villains. And there were lots and lots of villains…

There’s also the horror story that has blood and gore and chunks of flesh everywhere. Well, it would be everywhere except the story is told in complete darkness. Plus there’s a little chalk-skinned child who moves in high-speed “shaky vision” and the borderline psychopath and the one person who isn’t a psychopath but snaps anyway and gets dozens of people killed because he or she opens a door or invites something in or plays with the puzzle box.

Don’t even get me started on the sci-fi stories that have epic alien wars and ancient technology and sacred orbs and unstoppable monsters and long-prophesied, godlike, cosmic beings and cyborg ninjas and out-of-control nanites. God, I hate nanites. You’d think they’re more common than bacteria, the number of stories they show up in…

Y’see, Timmy, whatever your chosen genre is, just loading up with plot elements and blasting away with your No.2 shotgun does not create a story. That’s called mad libs, and it’s the opposite of writing in just about every way possible.

Which brings us to the flipside of using a shotgun. At close range your shot will definitely hit. It will hit with everything. And when that happens, you will completely annihilate your target. Nothing left but rags.

Take that as you will.

Next week I have a ton of deadlines so I might not be able to post anything, but if I do it will be pure magic, as always.

Until then, go write.

July 16, 2010 / 6 Comments

It’s A Small World After All…

We’re fostering a couple kittens right now that we rescued from the alley alongside our building. They were Mathilda and Charlie Baltimore for a while, then they hit puberty, certain things developed, and we realized Greystoke and Tarzan might be better names. Then it was Gandalf and Sauroman. We’ve finally settled on Loud Howard and Charlie Gibson.

Bonus points if you know where all those names come from.

The downside is, we ended up with fleas in our apartment. Every time I thought we wiped them out a new wave surged up. I got bit at least once a day. They’re just tiny, annoying things. No one likes a flea.

No, not even the people who run flea circuses. Those things are all fake, anyway.

Do any of you even know what a flea circus is or am I just dating myself again?

Hey, look! The Flea!

Anyway, the thing is, my beloved is reading for a contest right now, and the flea problem made her come up with an analogy. She’d just finished her latest pile, which included (among others) a big cosmic-level story about universe-threatening monsters or something like that and also a more “indy” story about a character who sat and really did nothing while interesting things happened all around her. As my lady love put it, they were stories that focused on the flea on the back of the dog who was chasing the car that the bank robbers were escaping in from their heist.

Let me put it simpler terms. Who’s writing a story set in the modern-day, 2010 United States?

Okay, now how many of you are writing about the health care crisis? The bill passed but there are still arguments and debates and questions and the earliest bits of it won’t begin until next year. It’s a huge issue that affect everyone in this country on one level or another.

Which means it’s affecting your characters. So, who put it in their story? Anyone?

Anyone?

Bueller?

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess not many of you. I’ll step a bit further out and presume you didn’t include it because it wasn’t really relevant to the story you were trying to tell. Which is also why you probably didn’t include a lot about either the war on terror or climate change.

Does the flea have an effect on the bank robbers? Do the bank robbers have an effect on the flea? No, don’t talk to me about the butterfly effect or interconnectedness or any of that nonsense. They’re yes or no question, and if you’re going to be a halfway decent writer you have to be honest about answering them

The point I’m trying to make is that you have to know which story you’re telling. Am I telling the story of the flea, or the story of the bank robbers? Because there does come a point, by sheer sense of scale, that they’re not the same story anymore. In the same way health care or global warming are just too big to have them “casually” in my writing, odds are this phenomenal bank heist is way beyond the life of the flea.

In my experience, this issue comes up a lot in little “art” stories. Writers try to bring in big, complex issues to make their story more “real” and give it “scope” (d’you notice how many of these things I have to keep putting in quotes?). Alas, since the story is really about some introspective naval-gazing these issues are more a distraction that anything else. All they’re doing is wasting words that could be used for better things. This is the story of the flea where someone tries to keep talking about the bank robbery.

This is also why a lot of epic stories tend to fail, just coming at it from the other side. When a writer is focused on creating the most cosmic-level story they can, they generally don’t give the reader anyone to relate to, just people to be in awe of. A story needs a character to be our entry point, and world-changing, epic stories that overwhelm said character are just too big. It’s the story of the bank heist and the audience has all become fleas. One film critic (whose name, I hate to admit, escapes me at the moment) made the clever observation a while back that stories like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings succeeded despite their epic stories, not because of them.

I was going to put some examples of this sort of thing, but the more I thought about it (and kept going over this little rant) the more I realized how hard that would be. This is really just one of those things you get or you don’t. If you’re reading this and think I’ve kind of wasted this week’s rant on the obvious, you probably get it. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, or you’re already composing an angry retort, odds are you don’t. It’s just one of those things that makes sense after processing a given amount of storytelling. I wish I could be clearer about it, but the best I can do is point you in the right direction and give you a rough idea of what you’re feeling around for. One day it’ll all just click. It did for me.

If a story’s going to be small and intimate, then keep it small and intimate. If it’s going to be big, remember to give all us regular folks a gateway into that big story or we’ll just get lost in it. Odds are a manuscript can’t handle being stretched between the two extremes, so writers need to be clear what their story is about.

Next time, I’m going to make things as easy as possible to get through.

Until then, go write.

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