Category: ideas

October 22, 2021

Scary But Funny

I wanted to talk a little bit about horror today, as I tend to do around this time of year. More I thought about it, though, I was having trouble thinking of an aspect or angle of horror I haven’t done before. Sometimes more than once. I’ve talked about sub-genres of horror. Talked about monsters. Talked about the victims.

So then I thought I’d talk about the mechanics of horror. But even that’s tough because of the wide and varied sub-genres. I’ve mentioned this before. The horror of Frankenstein is not the horror of, say. Experimental Film by Gemma Files which is not the same as Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and none of those are The Devil’s Rejects. Depending on what kind of horror I’m aiming for, I could be trying to do some very different things. Which means different rules and guidelines and expectations.

And this made me think, of course, about comedy.

Structure-wise, comedy’s a lot like horror. It’s got many levels and subgenres. It can be subtle and nuanced or in-your-face blatant and over the top. It’s really common for people to like one form of it but not another. I  also think they’re both something that’s kind of ever-present in our lives, on some level or another. There’s a lurking dread or a potential for laughs in almost any situation.

I made what I thought was a semi-clever observation about comedy a while back, and I think the same parallel holds for horror as well—scary is to horror the same way notes are to music. One is made up of the other, but just having a bunch of those components doesn’t automatically make the bigger thing. Just taking a big pile of “scary things” and dumping them on the page doesn’t mean I wrote a horror story, in the same way that, well, having a big pile of meat and bones doesn’t automatically give me a person.

See? That was kind of creepy, right? So is this post a horror story now? No, of course not. No, not even if I add a jump scare. Or is it? Maybe as we keep going you’ll realize how I’ve lulled you into this false sense of security and then maybe you realize… you’ve been in this horror story all along.

Also, it kind of matters what’s in that pile. I can’t just have a big pile of bones, especially the same kind of bones. A big pile of skulls definitely isn’t the same thing as a person. I also can’t mix in random horse bones or gorilla muscles or insect DNA. I can’t just shove anything in there and expect to end up with a working person (or horse, or insect). And even when I get all those components right, they can only go together a certain way. These bones go here, those muscles connect there, that part… okay, look, that’s kind of optional. You can put it in or leave it out at your discretion, just remember what you did with it.

This might seem kind of boring, just putting together a person. Makes it sound like every person we make is going to be like every other person. And on some level… yeah, they are. There are a lot of basic similaritiesbetween people, but there are a lot of differences, too. Yeah, even on this basic constructional level. And even more so once we get to know them.

Also, quick pause before we move on. Please don’t get confused by my use of a body as a metaphor for a story. If I’m writing horror, yeah, obviously mixing horse parts with human parts can be an element in a great story. Mixing in some insect DNA has been the basis of several great horror stories. But that’s talking about things in the story, not the structure of the story itself. To fall back on said metaphor, that’s me focusing on an individual bone and saying there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it while ignoring the fact said bone is in a pile of meat that used to be a person.

Or that I’m trying to tell you is still a person…

So, anyway, how do I do this? How do I figure out which parts I’m going to sew together into this new person a.k.a. story? Which ones do I want in there, which ones need to be in there, and which ones… okay, look, the antlers are cool, yes, but people don’t have antlers. No antlers!

Okay. maybe very small antlers.

A lot of this is going to depend on two things. Knowing what I want to end up with and general empathy. The first one’s easy. Once I know what kind of horror story I want to tell, it’s easier to choose the parts I need to tell that story. Yeah, there’s some general stuff I’ll need, but after I’ve got the rough framework there I can start fleshing in (so to speak) all the little details and elements that are going to make this story unique. And this can be a multi-step process. I don’t need to get it all right on the first try, I can go back through and shape the story to better be what I want it to be.

The second part, general empathy, is a little tougher. As I’ve said here once or thrice, I can’t tell you how to have empathy. But it’s sooooo important in horror, because I need to know what my audience is expecting and I need to understand how they’re going to receive these elements in my story. Is that person being sprayed with blood and gore and slime supposed to be horrific? Awful-but-funny? Mildly erotic? Am I sure my readers are going to take it the way I intended it? Because having a beat land wrong can really kill the flow of my story.

And that would be… well, horrible.

So there’s some quick thoughts on horror. Should be easy for you to swallow, now that they’ve been deboned and cut into little bite sized chunks. Yeah, some of them are still moving, don’t worry about that…

Narrator: And as they choked down the morsels, they realized… it had been a horror story all along.

Next time, we could probably talk real quick about NaNoWriMo.

Until then… I’m not letting you out of the room until you swallow every last piece of this.

I mean, hahahahaaa, go write. That was it. Go write.

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March 25, 2021

Oooooooh, Shiny!

Story time!

I first heard this story many years ago under a different title—the slutty new idea—and while the story/idea is very true, in retrospect I’ve realized the original title is unnecessary and also doesn’t make a lot of sense, if you think about it. It’s implying there’s something wrong with the idea even though the writer’s the one being a bit *cough*cough* promiscuous here. And I don’t want to be one of those people blaming someone else for my behavior. Hopefully you don’t want to be that way either. Plus, I’ve seen it bandied around  a lot more lately as the shinynew idea, which makes a lot more sense. It’s something new and eye-catching and…

Well, let’s talk about the shiny new idea. The story goes something like this…

I, the writer, am out with my story. Maybe it’s a novel or a screenplay or a comic book script. Whatever it is, I’ve been with this story for a while now and I’ve fallen into a good pattern with it.

Perhaps too good. Maybe a bit of a rut. I just don’t have the enthusiasm for the story I once did. There was a point that it was fun and playful and exciting and all I could think of, but as of late… well, the honeymoon’s over and now it takes some effort to get anywhere with my story. Things aren’t bad, mind you, they’ve just become a bit… rote. Maybe even mechanical.

So, anyway, the story and I are out and about and that’s when I happen to notice a shiny new idea across the room. It’s big and bright and it’s got that look to it that just says “hey, you know it’d be fun to tumble around with me for a while.” It’s got a sharp edge to it, and it’s showing just enough I start thinking about all the parts I’m not seeing, and all the fun this idea and I could probably have together. Just looking at it, it’s clear that is the kind of idea a writer’s supposed to have, not the dull thing I’ve somehow ended up with

In fact, let’s just take a moment and be honest with ourselves. That’s how we all want things to be with our ideas, right? It’s what movies and TV shows and so many twitter threads have assured us the life of a writer is like. It’s supposed to be this wild and spontaneous and intoxicating relationship we just can’t get enough of. We want it to keep us up late and wake us up early so we can get right back at it.

Wait, what do you think we’re talking about? No! This is a writing blog! Get your mind out of the gutter!

Anyway, a lot of us know the simple truth of the shiny new idea. Sure, it’s fun and exciting at first, but then one of two things happens. Sometimes we find out there’s not really anything else to it. Oh, that first weekend is fantastic, maybe the week after it is pretty cool, but it doesn’t take long to realize the shiny idea is… well, it’s a bit shallow.  We had some fun, but after a couple days we realize things just aren’t going any further.

On the other hand, things might work out with me and the idea. The passion fades a little bit, but I’m still giving it my all and getting quite a bit in return.  Eventually the two of us settle down into a comfortable story together. And just as I realize things are becoming a bit of work with my story, the two of us are sitting down one evening and I happen to notice a shiny new idea hanging out over at the bar…

Again, we’ve all been there, yes? Hell, I’m there right now. I’m working on this big six-book outline/ pitch document and yesterday I was filling Keyser holes in the lawn and had this whole new book idea pop into my head. So I went inside and scribbled out three pages of notes and oh, look, haven’t gotten much done on that pitch document today, have I?

There’s also a sad parallel to the shiny new idea which I’ve come to refer to as the booty call idea.  This is the idea I used to spend a lot of time with, but now I don’t for one reason or another. Maybe we needed some time apart. Maybe it just wasn’t working out, and I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. It’s possible the idea and I just admitted it wasn’t going to work and decided to call it quits.

But, sometimes there I am late at night, and that idea looks kinda sweet again. There’s definitely some things I could do with it. Nothing serious, mind you, just a writer and an idea playing around, having some fun, no pressure. Yeah, there’s probably other things I should be working on, but one night won’t make any difference, right? Heck, not even the whole night. Just a couple hours to ease back into it and take care of that little itch I’ve had. And maybe this time it’ll be different.

But more often than not, come morning I just feel a bit guilty about the time I spent with the booty call idea when I should’ve been, well, doing other things.

Y’see, Timmy, it all comes down to focus. As I’ve said here once or thrice before, writing isn’t always going to be fun and fast and exciting. Sometimes it’s going to be work. There are going to be times when the days blend together.

But if I stick with it and don’t chase after every little idea that flashes me a bit of plot, I find that most of the days are going to be good ones. And more than a few will be fantastic.

Don’t chase after the shiny idea. Resist the urge to check in with the booty call idea. Don’t ignore them or forget about them, but don’t let them interfere with what you’re working on right now.

Next time…

Okay, before we get to next time, this weekend is WonderCon! They’re now celebrating their second virtual year, and they’ve got a bunch of stuff lined up. For example, Saturday at 10 AM(Pacific Time) we’re doing a virtual Writers Coffeehouse, where I’m answering questions about writing and publishing (and I convinced Sarah Kuhn, Stephen Blackmoore, Fonda Lee, and Greg VanEekhout to join me).

And then starting at noon on Saturday it’s… Saturday Geekery, WonderCon edition. We’re going to watch some wonderful movies together, like Thirteen Ghosts, Solomon Kane, and John Carter. It’s going to be tons of fun, with hashtags and other writers and stuff like that. Feel free to follow along (most of them are free to watch on Tubi or Disney+).

And next time here… I think we need to revisit a core issue. You know witch one.

Until then… go write.

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November 10, 2020

The A2Q Master List

Hey, since I’ve been asked about this a few times now…

When I did the A2Q how-to-write-a-novel thing at the start of the year, it was every other week, and then every week, and trying to find those posts now, in reverse order, can make it a bit troublesome. So here’s a master list of more or less the whole thing. Now I can just point folks here, or you can just save the one bookmark. Y’know, if you felt this was bookmark-worthy.

Part One—The Idea

Part Two—The Plot

Part Three—The Characters

Part Four—The Story

Part Five—The Setting

Part Six—The Theme

Part Seven—The Outline

Part Eight—The First Draft

Part Nine—The Editing

Part Ten—The Criticism

Part Eleven—The Revisions

Part Twelve—The End
 
For the record, there were some other posts I slapped the A2Q tag on—the supplemental material, if you will—but I didn’t include them here. They’re useful, but most of them were afterthoughts and they’d feel a little jammed in, I think, if I tried to work them in here where they should be. When I someday bind all this into an ebook, I’ll make sure they’re all incorporated from the start.

Next up, rocks. And right after that, I’d like to do one holiday tradition a little early.

Now go write.

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July 24, 2020

B-Movie Mistakes

If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you’ve probably caught on to my questionable Saturday viewing habits. Questionable in the sense of “why would someone keep doing this to themselves? And to their liver?”
I’ll sit down with some little toy soldiers to build, put on a movie with aliens or giant monsters or werewolves, and tweet out the occasional observation, critique, or scream of pain. It’s kinda fun, in a masochistic sort of way, and I’m a big believer that you can learn a lot from figuring out where bad things went wrong and how they could be fixed. And I’ve seen a lot of screenplays go wrong over the years. Some I worked on. Some I read for contests. And… some I watched while building little toy soldiers.
Over all this time, I’ve seen definite patterns emerge. The same mistakes happening again and again and again. It was part of what made me start this whole ranty blog way back when in the distant before-time.
And screenwriting is a form of storytelling, which means some of these mistakes—maybe even all of them—are universal. I might not have any interest in writing movie scripts, sure. Not everyone does. But these issues can show up in books, short stories, comics… all sorts of storytelling formats.
So maybe they’re worth checking out.

Anyway, here are my top ten B-movie mistakes, updated a bit since the last time I write them out. Some of it may seem generally familiar. Some of it… well, I’ve found new ways to look at some problems over the past three years.

10) Bad directing
Let’s just get this one out of the way, because it’s the easiest one. It’s also the most universal one. This’ll be a horrible blow to anyone who likes auteur theory, but while there are some phenomenal directors out there, the simple truth is there’s also a lot who have absolutely no clue what they’re doing. None. Yeah, even some directors you’ve heard of.  They have no concept of narrative, continuity, pacing… anything.

This is a killer because ultimately, the director’s the one interpreting the story on the page into a visual story on the screen. Even if they didn’t write the script, the best story can be ruined by a bad storyteller.  How often have we seen a book or movie that had a really cool idea or an interesting character and it was just… wasted?

Because of this—random true fact—whenever you see a horrible story on screen, it’s always the fault of the director and producers. Never the screenwriter. The only reason scripts get shot is because the director and producers insist on shooting them. If it was a great script and they butchered it—that’s their fault. If it was a bad script and they decided to shoot it anyway—that’s also their fault.

9) Showing the wrong thing
This kinda falls under bad directing, but I’ve seen it enough times that it really deserves it own number. Sometimes a story keeps pushing X in our face when we really want to see Y. Or Z. Sometimes the story calls for Y to be the center of focus, but we still keep putting X on camera. And sometimes there’s no need to see X at all—we understand it through dialogue and acting and other bits of context—but we show X anyway.
A lot of this is a general failure of empathy—the filmmakers aren’t thinking about how the movie’s going to be seen. I’ve also talked a couple times about subtlety, using the scalpel vs. the sledgehammer, and that’s a big part of this, too. Sometimes there’s a reason we’re seeing a lot of nudity or a swirling vortex of gore, but all too often… it’s just because the storyteller doesn’t know what else to show us.
8) Bad action
Pretty sure we can all think of an example of this. The almost slow-motion fight scenes that feel like they filmed the rehearsal. The medium-speed chase that drags on waaaaaay too long. The pointless shoot-out that clearly wasn’t thought through since everyone’s standing out in the open.
Action gets seen as filler a lot of the time, and it doesn’t help that a lot of gurus teach it that way. “Hit page 23—you need an action beat! Hit page 42—another action beat!” There’s absolutely nothing wrong with action, but bad action is particularly bad in the visual storytelling format of movies. Unnecessary action isn’t much better.
Think of scale, too. It’s always better to have a small, well-done action scene than a sprawling, poorly-executed one. We can relate to two people fighting so much better that two gangs of sixty people each slamming together. Especially when it’s supposed to be two gangs of sixty members each but there are maybe eight people on screen. Moving in slow motion.
7) Too Much Stuff
Remember when we were young and there was that one kid (we all knew this kid) who got so excited to be Dungeon Master? And he made that awesome dungeon with five liches and a dozen displacer beasts and twenty gold dragons and thirty platinum dragons and fifty minotaurs all wearing +3 plate armor and using +5 flaming axes and a hundred zombies and Demogorgon and half the Egyptian gods and…
I think we’ve all played that game, right? Let’s be honest… maybe some of us were that kid?
Some B-movies get like that.  The filmmakers have too many ideas—way more than their budget or schedule allows—and they try to stick everything into the story.  Every cool idea from every other cool story, sure to be just as cool here, right? Truth is, they almost never are.  All these extra ideas just end up being under-developed distractions at best. 
6) Killing the wrong people
There’s always going to be collateral damage in certain types of stories. Thing is, by nature of being collateral damage, the story doesn’t focus on these people and their deaths don’t really register.  And they shouldn’t. That’s what collateral means after all—they’re secondary. Not as important. But in the tight, compressed nature of a movie, we need these deaths to be important. They need to serve a purpose in the story, hopefully on more than one level.
I’ve talked about the awful habit of introducing characters for no purpose except to kill them.  We meet Phoebe, get three or four minutes of backstory and bamshe’s dead without moving the plot forward an inch. Because Phoebe wasn’t really part of the plot, she was just there to wear a bikini top and let the FX crew show off their new blood fountain.
The only thing worse than this is when it’s time for the ultimate sacrifice… and my hero doesn’t make it. A minor character steps forward to throw the final switch or recite the last words. And the “hero” sits back and watches as someone else saves the day.
5) Wasting Time
This one’s the flipside of point #7. I just mentioned that in the limited space of a movie script, everything needs to serve a purpose. If that touching backstory linking two characters doesn’t affect the plot or story somehow, it’s just five minutes of filler I could’ve spent on something else… like the plot or the story. If these shouted arguments don’t somehow reveal something key to the progress of the movie… they may just be a lot of wasted time.

One of the most common time-wasters in B-movies is the unconnected opening. It’s when the first five or ten minutes focus on a group of characters we’ll never see again, usually never even reference again, and who have no effect on the rest of the plot. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these openings that couldn’t be cut, and I’d guess 83% of the time the whole movie would be stronger—on many levels—without it.

4) Not knowing what genre my story is
I’ve mentioned a few times that I worked on a B-level sex-revenge-thriller-sequel where the director thought he was making a noir mystery. I’ve seen horror films done as sci-fi and fantasy movies that were done as horror films, and vice versa.  Heck, I’ve written stories where I’d planned it as one thing, and realized halfway through it was something very different.
I’ve talked about genre a lot over the past few weeks, so I won’t go into it much more here. To sum up quick if you don’t want to hit the link, all genres have certain expectations when it comes to tone, pacing, and even structure.  If I’ve got a story in one genre that I’m telling with the expectations of another, there’s going to be a clash. And that clash probably won’t help my storytelling.
3) Plot Zombies
All credit to A. Lee Martinez, creator of this wonderful term. Sometimes, characters do things that are unnatural for them just to further the plot. The brave person becomes cowardly. The timid person does something wild and unpredictable. People argue and storm off for no reason. Well, so one of them can get murdered by the monster after going for a calming nighttime swim in the lake, but past that… no reason.

Plot zombies just stumble around a movie, doing whatever the story calls for. They don’t have any personality or agency, and really, one plot zombie’s pretty much the same as any other plot zombie. If I have an inspiring speech or an act of wild abandon or a last minute moment of brilliance, and there’s no reason I can’t swap all the characters around in it… it means I’ve got plot zombies.

2) Horrible dialogue
Bad dialogue always makes for bad characters.  If we can’t believe in the characters, we can’t believe in the story.  If I can’t believe in the story… well, that’s kind of it, isn’t it?
So many movies have painfully bad dialogue. Pointless arguments. Annoying characters. Awful technobabble.  And sometimes—too much of the time—it’s just bad.  It’s lines that sound like they went back and forth through Google translate and then the actor’s seeing them for the first time on a teleprompter while they’re filming.

Personally, bad dialogue drives me nuts, because it means the storytellers have no idea what human beings sound like. It’s a massive failure of empathy, and that empathy almost always shows up elsewhere. I’ve never, ever seen a story with bad dialogue that excelled everywhere else. It just doesn’t happen.

1) Who am I rooting for?
This is still the number one killer in America. This is what brings so many B-movies—so many STORIES—to a gear-grinding halt. 
So many movies have absolutely no likable characters. Everyone’s self-centered, obnoxious, stupid, or arrogant… or a combination of these traits. They’re all awful, sometimes disgusting people. All of them. The bad guys and the good guys.  People start dying and I’m always glad, no matter who they are.
If I’m expected to sit here and watch this for ninety minute, I need a reason to follow someone besides “they’re the main character.”  I need to like watching their story play out. I need to be able to identify with some aspect of their personality. The movie needs to have someone I actually care about. ‘Cause if it doesn’t. I won’t care if they win or lose. And if I don’t care about that… well… I’m not going  to be sitting here for ninety minutes
And that’s my personal, current top ten B-movie mistakes.

Hey, speaking of movies… this Saturday I’m doing my usual Saturday geekery, but for SDCC @ Home I’m doing it as a watch-along party. Come hang out on Twitter starting at noon (PST) with Krull, followed by the Keanu Reeves Constantineat 2:30, and finishing up the day with Resident Evil at 5:00. It’s going to be fun and maybe a little informative. Plus there’ll be a couple other folks chiming in with the #KrullKon2020 hashtag, and even a few giveaways.

And next time here, I thought I’d talk a bit about editing this new book.

Until then… go write.

And maybe enjoy a movie or three.

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