Category: ideas

Also-also, from this point on in the series, I’m probably going to be saying bookand novel a lot here. Like I mentioned above, the basic storytelling ideas we’re going to be talking about can apply to a lot of different formats—books, short stories, comics, movies, and more. But for this discussion, story is going to mean something very specific, and I don’t want things to get confusing. So book or novel is going to refer to our overall manuscript, while story is going to refer to… well, we’ll get into that in part four.

One group of aspiring writers—the larger group, I think—finds those crusty idea-lumps and gets frustrated that they’re only finding… well, lumps. We end up tossing them aside to look for the good ideas. We want to find the shining, sparkling thing that everyone immediately is going to recognize as a brilliant idea.

On a related note, we also want to keep in mind that at this very fine, granular level, a lot of ideas are going to look similar. An idea is probably the basic building block of any book, and a lot of basics are similar. One brick looks a lot like every other brick. This cup of flour looks a lot like that one. I shouldn’t freak out if somebody has already thought of “they’re all clones” or “high school outcast dates the cheerleader” or “they were dead the whole time.” Some of you may remember the tale of how John Scalzi and I once both came up with the same basic idea at the same time, but the way we used it and connected it to other ideas was pretty different.

Next time here on the ranty blog, I wanted to talk about where the action is.

Until then… go write.

Y’know, I just realized something. This might be the last post of the year if I don’t do some off-day stuff.  I may have to reschedule some things…

That said… less than a week till Christmas. Writing’s probably (understandably) one of the last things on your mind. Or maybe it’s right there, teasing you with cool new ideas. Perhaps even holiday-themed ideas.

Writing stories that revolve around Christmas—or any holiday—is tempting.  It’s very relatable. A lot of the groundwork is already done for us as far as setting goes. Heck, depending on my characters, a lot of backstory may already be done. A Christmas story can be kinda freeing and give us an instant theme to go with. Or go against. Everything becomes more shocking and dynamic when set against a bunch of innocent carolers trying to sing “Joy to the World.” Except maybe another group of carolers.

Plus, let’s just be honest. Christmas stories are lucrative.  Forget superheroes, there’s a fair argument to be made that Christmas stories are one of the best-selling genres out there, especially if you write screenplays. Seriously. Think of all those cable and streaming channels that are just brimming with original movies about dogs and holiday romances. I was in a holiday-themed anthology a couple years back, and I know there’ve been several more since then.

Forgive me for sounding all capitalist, but… there’s a lot of money to be made off Christmas.

Now, that said…

If I’m thinking about a clever idea for a holiday story I do need to be a little careful.  The ugly truth is, it’s all been done before.  All of it.  No matter how clever or original I think my take is, there’s a good chance someone’s done it before.  Because, as I mentioned above, this is a huge market and lots of folks have written lots of stories.

Look at it this way.  Think of all the different versions of A Christmas Carol you’ve ever seen or heard of.  There’ve been books, plays, movies, and animated specials. We’ve all seen it done dozens and dozens of times, set in the past, present, and future. There’ve been versions of it that leaned toward drama, toward comedy, horror, sci-fi, you name it. I’d guess at least thirty or forty television shows have done takes of it, too. Heck, just in the past couple years they’ve done it on Ducktales, Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, and Family Guy.

How about Santa? There’s Santa Claus origin stories. Evil Santa stories. Cool Santa. Robot Santa. Son of Santa. Daughter of Santa. Brother of Santa. New Santa. Heck, at this point I’ve seen multiple stories where Santa’s an action star defending his workshop from invaders. Like, it’s pretty much a solid subgenre at this point.

I mean, at this point even Krampus is pretty commonplace. He shows up in a bunch of books. Just typing the name into IMDb gives me over a dozen movies where he’s specifically mentioned in the title, and I could probably come up with just as many where he isn’t. There’ve probably been another dozen or so supernatural-themed shows where he’s appeared in as well (he had an appearance on Grimm that I really liked).

All done many times. In many ways. I’m not saying these stories can’t be done again, but this is one of those areas where I really need to be aware how often this relatively small pool of material’s been mined for ideas.

Except… weird as it sounds, there is kind of a niche where people love getting the same thing again and again. If you scroll through some of those big holiday movie listings at Netflix, Vudu, Tubi, or whatever platform you like to use, you’ll see the same themes showing up again and again in hundreds of movies. Literally, hundreds. Holiday romance. Small towns. Loveable pets. Holiday romance in small towns. Loveable pets saving the holidays in small towns. Seriously, you’re chuckling but you probably know a dozen stories like this, right? I think there’s a whole holiday romance subgenre.

My point being, if I want to appeal to that market, it’s very important that I don’t do anything too new or radical. This audience is looking for a sort of comfort food. They want to know that he ends up with her, she ends up with him, and that the dog lives and saves Christmas. Breaking these traditions might arguably make a more interesting story, yeah, but that’s not what these are about. He ends up with her. She ends up with him. The dog saves Christmas. Done.

So think about stories this holiday season.  Do I want them as a general background? Do I want to put a clever spin on something old? Do I want to lean into one of those niches? Whichever one I’m thinking about… I should put in a little extra thought. Just to be safe.

Next time, performance reviews.

Until then… I wish you all a peaceful Solstice, happy Hanukkah, merry Christmas, joyous Kwanzaa, gleeful Boxing Day, and a glorious Ascension of Tzeentch.

Now go write.

San Diego Comic-Con was absolutely fantastic this year, in so many ways. It was wonderful meeting some of you in person, and maybe some of you are reading this now because you met me there in person. And if that’s the case… well, I’ll try not to disappoint you

All that said, I wanted to blather on for a few minutes about how you shoot movies.

As some of you know, I’m a big movie person. I worked in the film industry for many years  I wrote about the industry for many years. I had some lower-level success as a screenwriter. And I still watch lots and lots of movies. Some of them are even good ones.

This shot is an over.

If you watch a lot of movies, too, you may have noticed most scenes break down into a pretty standard group of shots. Masters, overs, and coverage is what they’re called. Masters are those big wide shots where we see everything and get a sense of where everybody’s standing. Overs are that shot where we’re looking at one character, but another is still prominent in the foreground, like we’re seeing over their shoulder (get it?). Coverage is the close shot, just somebody’s head and shoulders—or maybe even tighter—as they speak or react to things.

And there’s a reason these shots are so popular and common. Masters help establish the scene and the dynamics between characters. Overs help us see the connection between them.  And coverage lets us get close and feel the reactions and emotion.

How I cut these scenes together can tell me something, too. Maybe this scene is so intimate that it’s mostly coverage.  Or maybe it’s still early on and we don’t need that  tension close proximity brings yet, so there isn’t any coverage. Which shots I use and how I put them together says something about the scene. Again, it’s a film language we’ve all absorbed over the years.

Of course, there are lots of filmmakers that move past this basic framework. Perhaps their master shot involves a dolly move. Maybe we’re going to push in from the over and turn it into what’s essentially a straight coverage shot, or expand out from an over to reveal the big wide master. There’s even a special kind of shot called a oner (one– er) where we’ll see the entire scene (or scenes!) in a single, often elaborate shot. All of these are valid storytelling devices, and I’ve personally been there on set when skilled directors deviate from this basic formula to do some fantastic stuff (ask me about John Paragon’s water bottle warehouse sometime).

But…

The key thing to remember is that, again, master-over-coverage is the standard. It’s the accepted method of storytelling for filmmakers and the movie audience. This is the foundation we all work from, and our understanding of the story is built on that foundation.

So if I’m going to deviate from that baseline—and it feels super-silly to say this, but I’m betting it’ll still confuse come people—if I want to do shots that aren’t part of that baseline, they need to be better shots. They need to convey more information. They need to cut together easier and smoother than the regular ones. They need to tell the story in a way that improves on that baseline. Because why would I do shots that are worse than the baseline, right? I can’t say “well, this shot won’t really fit anywhere, but it’ll look fantastic.”

And yet… lots of directors do this. They either never learn how things cut together and shoot way more than they’ll ever need, or they’re so desperate to do something “new” that they waste time with shots that are just… well, unusable. They’re impossible to cut into the story or just plain irrelevant. If you’ve ever watched a movie and suddenly found yourself thinking “that’s a weird shot,” odds are pretty good you’re watching something where the filmmakers don’t know how to shoot or edit their film.

Anyway, why am I talking about filmmaking? Isn’t this supposed to be a writing blog?  Like, book writing?

Sure it is. But on a lot of levels, storytelling in any format faces the same challenges. What do we tell and how do we tell it?

In a way, books have their standard shots, too. Ways we’ve all come to expect the story will unfold. My readers expect Friday to follow Thursday. That characters will sound like real people. They’re going to assume my antagonists will lose and my hero will, on some level, get a win.

This isn’t to say things won’t go another way, of course. There are always exceptions, and I think it’s fair to say most great writing is built on exceptions. Some people bend the rules or break the rules or set the rules on fire with a flamethrower-armed drone and then launch those rules into a volcano.

Y’see, Timmy, the thing I need to remember is that these deviations have to be better than the norm. I don’t want to be doing things that lessen my story and make it harder for readers to get into. Sometimes, we all get so focused on the small parts, we ignore that bigger picture. I may think having a two page description of the clouds over a building is beautiful and artistic, but does it serve the book as well as a quick description that lets us get back to the story?  Having every chapter in the book told from a different point of view is unquestionably a bold choice, but does it improve anything? And, yeah, having my main character die moments before achieving the goal they’ve been striving for may be very dark and gritty and tragic… but is it a good ending?

All successful storytellers eventually learn how to sift through the material they’re working with and figure out what bits will work in a given story.  Something might be clever or cool or the hot new storytelling trend that all the cool kids are doing, but the real question I have to answer is whether or not it’s right for what I’m working on.  Because if it isn’t, if I’m just deviating from the basics for the sake of art, well…

There’s a chance my audience may not make that leap with me.

Next time, I’d like to talk about what my story’s about.

Until then… go write.