Category: exceptions

August 7, 2014

Choose Wisely…

            Very appropriate title for this week.  If you don’t know it, shame on you.
            This may be a controversial post in some eyes, but hopefully folks will read and digest before diving for the comments to make an angry response.
            On the first week of the first television series I ever worked on, I witnessed a minor snit between the line producer and the director of photography.  The episode was falling behind schedule, and the producer had decided it was the camera department’s fault.  He berated the DP for a while, questioned the abilities of the camera crew, and—in a very passive-aggressive way—drove home the need to pick up the pace.
            When he was done, the director of photography held up three fingers.  “Fast.  Cheap.  Good,” he said with a smirk.  “Pick two.”
            The catch, of course, is that it was a very low-budget show (which we all knew).  And no one was going to say it didn’t have to be good.  So the one thing it wasn’t going to be was fast. 
            The line producer fired the DP at the end of the week.  But the rule held true, and I saw it proven true again and again over my time in the industry.  I would guess that four out of five times if there ended up being a train wreck on set, it was because someone was trying to find a way around this rule and get all three choices.
            I worked on Bring It On, the cheerleading movie.  It was incredibly low budget.  But the director had a very relaxed schedule because, at the time, Kirsten Dunst was still a few weeks away from her eighteenth birthday.  As a minor she could only work so many hours a day.  So the film was inexpensive and good, but it wasn’t fast.  I also worked on a bunch of B horror/action movies that were cheap and shot super-fast, but the directors acknowledged they were making straight-to-DVD genre movies so we didn’t waste time with artsy composition or elaborate lighting set-ups.  We all went in knowing these projects weren’t going to be winning any awards–they just needed to be competent films that would entertain people for ninety-odd minutes or so.  And they were
            Are there exceptions to this rule?  Yeah, of course.  But exceptions are very rare and specific by their nature, so I should never start off assuming I’m one of them.  Because we all knows what happens when I assume…  And I saw more than a few projects crash because someone above the line kept insisting they could get all three.
            The “pick two” rule doesn’t just hold for moviemaking, though.  It holds for writing and publishing, too.  We get to make the same choices for our work, and trying to find a way around that choice—a way to have all three—almost always makes a mess.
            Allow me to explain…
            I’m going to go under the assumption most of us here are aiming for good.  Yeah, some of you are shooting for great, but for today’s little experiment, that’s the same as good.  Which means one of my choices is gone right there. 
            So the real question is, are we going for fast or for cheap?
            Several folks decide to go fast, blasting through drafts and edits like a snowplow through slush.  But going fast—and keeping it good—requires lots of eyes and/or lots of experience.  And those aren’t cheap.  A decent editor is hard to come by, and the good ones aren’t going to work for free—especially not work fast.
            If I want to go fast, and I want it to be good, there’s going to be a cost for someone.  That’s just the way it it.  I know a lot of folks who write very fast, but they realize there’s going to be a big investment after that if they want the book to be good.
            On the other hand, I can decide to keep it cheap and good.  And this is when I really take my time.  I do multiple drafts, going through each one line by line.  No spellcheckers or auto-grammar websites.  If I plan on doing this for a living, then I need to be able to do this for a living.  I can’t pretend I know what words mean or how to string them together.  I need to examine each page and paragraph and sentence with my own eyes.
            Doing a manuscript this way could take seven or eight months—maybe even more.  But that’s how I keep costs down—by doing it all myself and being meticulous about it.  And, yeah, meticulous means slow.  It means seven or eight pages a day if I’m lucky.
            What combination does that leave us?
            Fast and cheap.  It’s one I’m sure we’ve all seen.  The people who aren’t willing to take the time or to make an investment.   Fast and cheap means I write one 85,000 word draft in a month, show it to my friend who scraped by with a C in high school English, run it through the spellchecker, and then put it up for all the world to see.
            That’s fast and cheap.  And odds are it’s not good. 
            Again, that isn’t an absolute.  There are a few books out there that managed all three.  If I choose to go fast and cheap, though, good is definitely the exception, not the rule.
            So be honest with yourself and choose your two.
            But choose wisely.
            Next time, on a related note, I’d like to blabber on about some words every writer should know.
            Until then, go write.
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October 12, 2013

But What About…

Yeah, this is a day late.  Lots going on this week, so I thought I could make an exception…

Which, by coincidence, is what I wanted to blabber on about this week.

If you hang out with enough writers (or musicians, or filmmakers, or other artists), either online or in the real world, you’ve probably heard a story about someone who broke the rules and got away with it.  And Wakko didn’t just break the rules, mind you… he shattered them.  Every one of them.  They had to write new rules for him to break.  All those people who tell you do this, don’t do that—he ignored them all.  And that’s how he got where he is today, with his fame and fortune and living the life we all dream about

People like these tend to get sort of a mythology around them in their respective circles.  Which is kind of sad, because these folks—unintentionally or not—tend to make things a lot harder for the folks coming after them.  Once I buy into the idea of being the exception, my chances of success drop drastically.

Let me give you an example…

Most of you have probably heard of Cormac McCarthy.  He’s a brilliant writer who’s done some wonderful books like The Road and Blood Meridian, among others.  He’s also famous for using almost no punctuation, sometimes to the point that his books become difficult to read.  Seriously, you’d think the guy got beat up  by a pair of quotation marks every day after school when he was a kid.

Now, McCarthy decided a while ago that he wanted to write a screenplay.  But, being Cormac McCarthy, he didn’t bother to learn how to write one.  He just started throwing dialogue and settings down on the page in whatever format looked right to him.  And several accounts say the script was…well, a complete mess.  Naturally, though, when word got out that he’d written a script, Hollywood went nuts.  The script was grabbed, Ridley Scott directed, and it’s coming out in just a few weeks ( The Counselor).

Now, a lot of would-be screenwriters who believe in ignoring the rules saw this as validation.  How can anyone say formatting matters after a format-free script sells and becomes a major motion picture?  It’s undeniable proof that sort of thing just isn’t important.

Except, well… not exactly.

Cormac McCarthy’s been a legend for twenty years, and was still famous for twenty before that. He could’ve turned in a script written on a used paper plate and the bidding would’ve started at fifty thousand. His status as a novelist made him the exception to the rules of screenwriting. Just because he can do it doesn’t mean I can. Or you can.  Or she can.

Here’s the thing…

Exceptions to the rule tend to be rare.  Exceptionally rare, you could say. That’s why they’re the exception and not the rule.  McCarthy’s script was snatched up by Hollywood despite its poor formatting, but dozens of them are tossed aside every single day for that very reason.  Because that’s the rule.  Formatting does matter.

And it’s not just screenwriting.  For every person who sold the first draft of the first novel they wrote to the first publisher they showed it to, there are millions of people who did not.  Yes, E.L. James, Diablo Cody, J.L. Bourne, and a triple-handful of other writers started out by giving their work away for free and then spun that into successful, paying careers as writers.  And that sounds fantastic until you stop to consider there are over two billion people on the internet these days.  Even if only one percent of them are trying to make money by writing on a blog or website, that puts the odds of success somewhere in the neighborhood of  20,000 to 1 (about 0.0005 % if my math is right).  And that’s with a very generous estimate of how many successful writers have followed this path.

I can’t use an exception to the rule as a basis for how things should be done.  By it’s very nature, the exception is the freak chance, the aberrant behavior—it’s just not the way things work.  Think of the stories you’ve heard about people who survive falling out of airplanes or getting shot in the head.  They’re amazing and true and took almost no effort, yes, but they shouldn’t make anyone rethink using parachutes or gun safety.

If I want to succeed, the best thing I can do—whether I’m jumping out of a plane, getting shot at, or writing a story—is to follow the established rules.  The absolute worst thing I can do is scoff at those rules—rules like spelling, grammar, or wearing body armor—and  decide they don’t apply to me.  No matter how amazing my writing is, I need to follow the basic guidelines for my craft.

The reason I should follow them, before you ask, is because the person reading my work is expecting me to follow them.  The publishers, editors, and producers who see it before my chosen audience definitely will, and those readers or viewers will assume I’m going to, too.  They all have certain expectations they’ve built up, and these expectations all tend to fall in line with the rules.

Now, does that mean amazing, rule-bending things won’t happen or can’t be done?  Not at all.  My writing may be so spectacular that no one notices the abundant typos.  The basic idea could be so clever that nobody will pick up on the fact that all of my characters have about as much depth as a puddle on the kitchen floor.  Heck, the structure of my story could be so rock-hard the reader will forgive and forget those incredibly boring opening chapters.

But you know what?  Let’s say on page one of my manuscript I introduce school newspaper reporter Tomm Truth and Joanie Justice, and show them straggling with staph editor Barry O’Bama who doesn’t want them running a article about the poor campus seckurity.  After a paragraph or two of that my editor’s going to groan out loud.  I know when I was a script reader seeing stuff like that made me roll my eyes and add more rum to my glass.

Y’see, Timmy, the minute I see a bunch of clichés, misused words, poor grammar, and misspellings, I’ve rendered a judgment on that writer.  Possibly two or three, depending on how many things I see that look wrong.  And they may not be wrong for this story—each one may be carefully chosen to set up certain things for later on.  But on page one or two or three, they look wrong, and that’s how they’ll be interpreted and that’s going to color my view of the manuscript from here on.

If I assume I’m the exception, that I don’t need to follow certain rules, I’m setting an obstacle between me and the people who are going to pay me to keep writing.  Maybe even multiple obstacles.  They’re not insurmountable and they don’t guarantee failure.  But it does mean I’ve just limited my potential audience.  Some readers will toss a manuscript in that big pile on the left after seeing two or three things that look like mistakes.  Others will read ten or fifteen pages before setting it aside.  And if I can’t prove I am the exception before that happens, I’m going to get a lot of rejections.  My story may be loaded with promise, but if my initial foundation looks weak and poorly designed, why would anyone risk the time to see if the rest of it’s structurally sound?

So try to be the exception.  Just don’t automatically assume you are.  You need to earn it.

Next time… I want to talk about Guido.

Until then, go write.

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August 15, 2013

Admissions Board

             This is going to be one of those posts that sounds a bit harsh at first, but hopefully you’ll stick through ‘till the end before posting those angry responses.  If you’re feeling a bit thin-skinned, maybe you should come back next week.
            Writing is tough.  It’s hard work.  I know this, because I do it for a living.  When someone tells me how easy and wonderful and fun writing is, I’m often tempted to point out that they’re probably doing something wrong.
            Instead, I bite my tongue and scribble notes for a ranty blog post or two.
            There was a point when I thought writing was easy and fun.  To be blunt, that was back when I wasn’t taking it seriously.  My plots were either contrived or derivative (some might say that hasn’t changed).  My characterization was weak and my motives were… well, whatever they needed to be at the moment to make that weak plot move along.  I rarely edited. 
            Perhaps most important of all… I thought I was a literary genius.  My stories didn’t just deserve Stokers and Hugos, mind you.  Once I got around to finishing them and sending them out, they were going to get Pulitzers and Nobels.
            Needless to say, my writing made huge leaps when I was able to admit a few things to myself.  I think that’s true of most people in most fields—if we can’t be honest about where we are, it’s hard to improve.
            That being said…
My writing sucks—This sounds harsh, yeah, but it needs to be.  Too many beginning writers just can’t get past the idea that something they wrote isn’t good.  I know I couldn’t.  It’s just against human nature to spend hours on something and then tell yourself you just wasted a bunch of time.  Why would I write something I couldn’t sell?  Obviously I wouldn’t, so my latest project must deserve a six-figure advance.
            The problem here is the learning curve.  None of us like to be the inexperienced rookie, but the fact is it’s where everyone starts.  Surgeons, chefs, pilots, astronomers, mechanics… and writers.  Oh, there are a few gifted amateurs out there, yeah—very, very few—but the vast majority of us have to work at something to get good at it. 
            You noticed I said “us,” right?  Lots of people think of Ex-Heroes as my first novel, but it wasn’t.  There was Lizard Men from the Center of the Earth (two versions), a God-awful sci-fi novel called A Piece of Eternity, some Star Wars and Doctor Who fan fic, a puberty-fuelled fantasy novel (which I haven’t admitted to in twenty years or so), The Werewolf Detective of Newbury Street, The Trinity, The Suffering Map, about half of a novel called Mouth… and thenEx-Heroes.  And I can tell you without question that most of those really sucked.  It doesn’t mean I didn’t try to sell some of them (we’ll get to that in a minute), but I couldn’t improve as a writer until I accepted that I needed to improve.
My first draft is going to suck—There was a point where I would fret over my writing.  I’d spend time laboring over individual words, each sentence, every paragraph.  I’d get halfway down the page and then go back to try to fix things.  It meant my productivity was slowed to a crawl because I kept worrying about what had happened in my story instead of what was going to happen.
            The freeing moment was when I realized my first draft was always going to suck, and that’s okay.  Everyone’s first draft sucks.  Everyone has to go back and rework stuff.  It’s the nature of the beast.  With those expectations gone, it became much easier for me to finish a first draft, which is essential if I ever wanted to get to a second draft, and a third draft, and maybe even a sale.
My writing needs editing.  Lots of editing—So, as I just mentioned, I’ve been doing this for a while.  Arguably thirty-five years.  Surely by now I’ve hit the point where my stuff rolls onto the page (or screen) pretty much ready to go, yes?  I mean, at this point I must qualify as a good writer and I don’t need to obsess so much over those beginner-things, right?
            Alas, no.  We all take the easy path now and then.  We all have things slip past us.  We all misjudge how some things are going to be read.  And I’m fortunate to have a circle of friends and a really good editor at my publisher who all call me out when I make these mistakes or just take the easy route when I’m capable of doing something better.
            Also, as I mentioned above, part of this is the ability to accept these notes and criticisms.  I’m not saying they’re all going to be right (and I’ve been given a few really idiotic notes over the years), but if my default position is that any criticism is wrong then my work is never going to improve past the first draft. 
            Which, as I also mentioned above, sucks.
My writing needs cuts—Sticking to the theme, if I believe my writing is perfect, it stands to reason all of it is perfect.  It’s not 90% perfect with those two odd blocks that should be cut.  When I first started to edit, one of my big problems was that everythingneeded to be there.  It was all part of the story.  Each subplot, every action detail and character moment, all of the in-jokes and clever references.
            The Suffering Map was where I first started to realize things need to be cut.  I’d overwritten—which is fine in a first draft as long as you admit it in later drafts.  I had too many characters, too much detail, subplots that had grown too big, character arcs that became too complex.  It took a while, but I made huge cuts to the book.  It had to be done.  Heck, with one of my more recent ones, 14, I needed to cut over 20,000 words.  That’s a hundred pages in standard manuscript format.  All cut.
My writing is going to be rejected –You know what I’ve got that most of you reading this will never have?  Rejection letters.  Actual paper letters that were mailed to me by editors.  I’ve got lots of them.  Heck, I’ve probably got a dozen from Marvel Comics alone.  And since then I’ve got them from magazines, big publishers, journals, magazines, ezines.
            But when that first one came from Jim Shooter at Marvel… I was crushed.  Devastated.  How could he not like my story?  It was a full page!  It was typed!  I even included a rendering of a cover suggestion in brilliant colored pencil.  It took me weeks—whole weeks, plural—to work up my courage to try again, and then he shot that one down, too.
            Granted, I was about eleven, and those stories were really awful.  But even good stuff gets rejected.  Heck, even with the list of credits I’ve got now, the last two short stories I sent out were rejected.  Editors and publishers are people too, and not everything is going to appeal to everyone.  I came to accept being rejected once I realized it wasn’t some personal attack (okay, once it was…), just a person who didn’t connect with my story for some reason.
            And, sometimes, because my stories sucked.
            If I can admit some of these things to myself, it can only make me a better, stronger writer.  It’s not a flaw or a weakness.  In fact, if I look at the above statements and immediately think “Well, yeah, but I don’t…,” it’s probably a good sign I’m in denial about some things.
            And that won’t get me anywhere.
            Next time, I’d like to say a few clever words about saying the word said.
            Until then, go write.
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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.
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