Category: plot

There’s an idea I heard once or thrice on movie sets. You may have heard it, too. The KISS principle—an acronym for “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” It’s basically a warning to people not to overcomplicate things just for the sake of overcomplicating them. It’s something I’d see a lot in the film industry, usually with less experienced and/ or very stubborn people. The most common example would be directors who tried to do time-consuming, overly complex shots… just so they could do complex shots.

I’d see it in a lot of screenwriting too, especially in the lower budget stuff I tended to work on. The script would be packed with subplots and B-stories and side threads that… didn’t really serve a purpose. If I was in an angrier state that day (and I’ll be honest, I was angry and frustrated a lot when I worked in the film industry) I tended to call it “padding” or “a waste of time.”

Probably the key thing is that more often than not, the final product was uneven. Episodes would have pacing or tone issues. Sometimes they’d just be confusing because the camera was bouncing around for no apparent reason.

And the thing is, a lot of these shots and subplots and random chunks of dialogue weren’t actually bad. It’s just that they weren’t really relevant to what we were doing. I’ve heard a phrase in gardening that a weed is just the right plant in the wrong place. Well in these examples… it was all weeds.

Okay, what’s my point here? Besides making myself grumbly by remembering certain persons and projects and issues…

Allow me to explain. With a sort of follow-up to the explainer, too.

What’s happening here is the storytellers are getting in their own way. F’r example, with the directors, they’re so hung up on telling the story in a clever way (the overly complex shots) that they’re not focused on actually telling the story. Or, in some cases, they’re actually twisting the story to allow for the clever shot.

With the screenwriters, they’d be packing so many subplots or random conversations into a forty-two minute television episode that none of them really got developed in any way. We’d start dealing with one and then have to rush off to deal with another one before people forgot about it. Or the ideas would collide head on, which led to analyzing the story instead of… y’know, enjoying it.

I’ve talked about this problem before—where a plot or story is just overpacked with ideas. And when this happens, the plot will overwhelm the story or the story will smother the plot or sometimes they’ll just collapse into this mess of well… random plot and story points.

This is a tough idea to grasp when you’re starting out, because it just feels wrong and counterintuitive to everything we’ve been led to believe. If the idea’s good, how can it be wrong for a story? I mean, an idea’s good or it’s not, right?

Truth is, I can have a really, really cool idea and sometimes it just doesn’t work in the tale I’m telling. Maybe it doesn’t fit tonally or maybe it slows things down too much or maybe… it just doesn’t fit. If something’s not driving the plot or the story, if it’s pulling us too far off course, or if it’s just filling space I could use for something else… it probably doesn’t belong there.

I’m a big believer in simplicity for, well, a simple reason. And it’s that we’re always going to complicate things. It’s what we do as storytellers. No matter how basic and straightforward a plot is, we’re always going to come up with interesting details and descriptions and clever subplots and little character quirks. And then all that new material inspires some new descriptions and different subplots and suddenly hey, did you know the barista over there was actually Abraham Lincoln in a past life? No, really, she was. It’s a reverse-Zeno’s paradox, where we’re always getting further and further from the end because we’re always discovering new things to flesh out our world and our characters.

Now, granted, yes, some of this is going to get cut. Maybe a lot of it. So on one level it’s easy to say “so what if I decide to do something super complex?” And believe me, I’m a serious fan of wonderfully complex storytelling.

But I’ll point out that when I start complex, I’m not leaving myself a lot of room to explore and grow. If things are dense from the beginning, it’s going to be harder and harder to discover new character facets and justify clever descriptions or go off on little side-stories for a page or three.

Why is that?

Well, that’s my follow-up thing…

If you’ve been doing this for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard someone say something along the lines of “the story is as long as it needs to be.” And to a large extent, this is true. I can make the story whatever it needs to be. Any length at all. Fifty pages long to five hundred pages long. If I need six books to tell this story correctly, then I need six books. That’s how art works.

But…

The rough reality is that there are a lot of limits on how long a story can be.

Let’s put a few feet between us and books for a minute and think about movies again. I think we all agree full-length movies are generally in the ninety minutes to two hours range. It’s just how it is. When a movie’s only seventy-plus minutes… we feel a bit cheated. It can be really good, but we almost always feel like “That’s it? Only seventy-one minutes?” Likewise, when a film stretches out over two and a half hours, it usually feels pretty excessive. There are a few really great three-hour movies out there, but there’s also a lot of really bloated, desperately-in-need-of-editing ones. So no matter how good it is, if my script isn’t in the 90-130 page range… well, I might get some folks to look at it, but not many professionals are going to consider it seriously. It’ll just be one of those “great but unfilmable” screenplays.

And there are lots of reasons for this. How long a movie is will affect how long it takes to make the movie, which will affect how much it costs to make the movie. Plus, longer movies can’t be screened as many times at a theater, which means money’s going to be slower coming back in. And let’s be honest—how many of us have time to watch a really long movie? No matter how good I hear it is, if I see something’s three hours and twenty minutes long… I’m going to be hesitant to sit down. Hell, I friggin’ loved Avengers: Endgame, but I still haven’t even rewatched it at home. I just don’t have the time.

And if I’m talking about publishing… well, there’s a lot of publishing limits. Paper costs money. And shelf space in book stores is precious. Most publishers don’t want to see a massive, beef-slab of a book unless they know they’re going to sell a lot of copies of it. Even if we’re talking about short stories, most markets only have so much room in their magazine or anthology. If someone’s asking me for three-to-six thousand words, I can’t offer them nine thousand and expect to get an acceptance letter.

Now, I’m sure all that makes a few folks eager to talk about the wonderful freedom of self-publishing. But as I’ve mentioned before, self-publishing means I’m the one making the publisher-level financial decisions. A lot of print on demand sources work off page length to calculate costs, and they’ve got very firm price ranges. Just a few pages this way or that can mean a difference of three or four dollars per copy. And somebody’s got to eat that cost. And it’s not going to be the printer. So it’s either me or my readers.

Some of you may recall this is why I had to cut almost 30,000 words out of my original manuscript for 14. It was with a small press, and the publisher just couldn’t afford to have it stretch into the next page-range. That’s all there was to it. Lose 30K words or it doesn’t get published.

Heck, even if I give up on print and just go with epublishing, check the numbers. Shorter books do better as ebooks, especially from self publishers. The vast number of folks who’ve had any degree of success with ebooks are doing it with books under 100,000 words. I think many of them are under 70,000. The “why” of this is a whole ‘nother discussion we could debate for a while, but for now we just need the simple numbers. Ebooks tend to do better as shorter books.

Y’see, Timmy, storytellers have limited space. Those pages are precious. My words are precious. I don’t want to waste them on irrelevant things. I want them to be moving things along for the plot and for my characters. I want the ideas to work for my story, not to be flexing and contorting my story to accommodate some random ideas.

There’s another phrase you’ve probably heard—kill your darlings. This is kinda like that. I may have the sharpest comeback, the neatest way to explain something, or the most fantastic description of a werewolf, but if it doesn’t work in my story…

Well, then it doesn’t work.

And if it doesn’t work, it probably shouldn’t be there.

Next time, unless someone has a question or request, I’m probably going to talk about leftovers.

Until then… go write.

So, a few weeks back Rhyen asked three (supposedly) unrelated questions…

1. Have you ever used index cards for plotting?

2. Have you tried Scrivener?

3. (Stealing from the Colbert Questionnaire) What is the best sandwich?

I shall now answer these in reverse order. Just because.

First (or 3.) the best sandwich is clearly a turkey club with bacon. Once you move away from childhood classics like PB&J or baloney and cheese, the club the bedrock on which all “adult” sandwiches are built. Multiple meats, multiple veg, multiple condiments, works with almost any type of bread. There’s a reason it’s in the Criterion Collection of sandwiches. Sure, people will offer you more elaborate sandwich creations all the time—different meats, stranger veg, unusual condiments, is that even technically a bread? But that’s just it– they’re all trying to make more elaborate, overcomplicated versions of the classic.

I am, of course, open to hearing counterarguments on this, as long as you understand up front that you’re wrong.

Now, if you’re still with me after that…

Second, I haven’t tried Scrivener. I tend to just work in whatever my current word processing program is and have never been a fan of software that “helps” me do things. This goes back to my (attempted) screenwriting days. My current book and the one I finished earlier this year were both written in Open Office. Everything for about twenty years before that was plain old Word. Before that I was using a program called AmiPro.

Why? Well, I get uneasy whenever a piece of software (or a writing course, or a book) starts offering options or suggestions. F’r example, I’ve never once considered breaking all my chapters into individual files/documents. But it’s an option in Scrivener. Is that good or bad? Who knows? Up to you. Reference photos for locations? You can add those, too. Oh, you don’t have any reference photos…?

See, I think for a lot of folks, once an option like this is put out there—especially put out there by a vetted authority like this piece of writing software—it makes us think “huh, should I be doing that?” And because we tend to see books or machines as the voice of authority, I think some folks keep doing the thing the software suggested they do. Even when it doesn’t work for them. The computer wouldn’t lie to me, right?

To be clear, I’m not saying Scrivener is bad. My partner uses it and she loves it. I’m just saying folks should approach any piece of writing software—and all the bells and whistles they offer—as possibilities, not necessities. If you think it might help you, cool. Try it out. But if you ultimately feel like it doesn’t help, then just stop. It doesn’t matter if it works for a dozen writers you follow, it just matters that it works for you.

There’s probably a whole post about this sort of thing. Maybe in the new year…

Anyway, third (or 1.), no, I haven’t used index cards for plotting. I think I tried once (back in high school, maybe?) just as a character-notes thing, but even that didn’t sit right with me for some reason. When it comes to plotting, I tend to work right on the page, moving sentences back and forth in my outline (or just drawing arrows if I’m using a legal pad)

But that’s just me. And a few other folks I know. But I do know writers who use index cards and swear by them. Some go so far as to color-code the cards for different plots and subplots and story threads. I also know some folks who just pull them out to work through problems. And there are folks who use index card software, whiteboards, and look there’s a bunch of ways to do plot stuff out. I can tell you what’s worked for me, but it might not work for you.

I will say this, though—if I’m using index cards to plot out a book (or screenplay or whatever), I want to make sure the cards are plot beats, not details. “Miles fights all the alternate versions of Spider-Man” is a beat. “The fight spills out of headquarters and into the city” is a beat. “One of the alternate Spider-folks is a Tyrannosaurus” is a detail. Just remember, beats move the story along, but details stack up on beats.

This also might into that early-new year post. Or maybe I’ll just do a whole post about plotting? We’ll see…

Anyway, that’s three questions answered. See? Posting comments does do something!

Also, last week I signed a bunch of books at Dark Delicacies in Burbank. I believe they’ve still got a few copies of The Broken Room, Paradox Bound, The Fold, and Ex-Isle. If you’re looking for Christmas gifts, it’s probably too late to ship anything without ridiculous charges, but if you’re in the LA area… they’re right there in Burbank. Just saying…

Next time… let’s talk about all those Hallmark-y Christmas movies. You know the ones I’m talking about.

Until then, go write.

I’m assuming most of you are familiar with Ludwig Wittgenstein from his philosophical work involving mathematics, logic, and language. He’s considered the most noteworthy philosopher of the twentieth century. What he’s less known for is a fairly dry series of what we’d now probably call YA sci-fi stories he wrote at Cambridge, showing his idea of a utopia, what sort of problems could arise in such a utopia, and how the peoples of such a world would respond to said problems.

The reason you probably haven’t heard of that less known bit is because I just made it up. Or did I? You’ve got no idea, do you? But you’re going to keep reading to find out…

Another possibly made-up story I’ve heard about Wittgenstein is that one day he was walking in the city with someone, discussing history and knowledge in general, when his companion made the observation that people in ancient times must’ve been… well, really stupid. How could they possibly have thought the sun went around the Earth? I mean, it’s so obvious how the two interact once you stop to think about it. Were people just… a lot smarter back now?

And as the story goes, Wittgenstein nodded agreeably through most of the little tirade, and then, when he had a chance to respond, he wondered, just out of curiosity… what would it look like if the sun was orbiting the Earth?

While you’re dwelling on that, let me talk about the pandemic a bit.

Like a lot of folks, I ended up using the lockdown to work on my cooking skills. Watched a lot of YouTube videos. Ended up trying a lot of Korean recipes and even some vegan/vegetarian ones. I can make pretty good fried rice now. And some fantastic spicy broccoli noodles. Also, those plant-based meats like Beyond and Impossible cook up great in dishes that call for ground beef.

One of the biggest parts of this learning curve was learning the difference between preparing to cook and the actual act of cooking. Like a lot of you, I’m guessing, I tended to do a lot of stuff on the fly. And it usually led to me getting more and more frantic as I was looking for this ingredient or that implement and crap how long has that been in the water now? Crap crap crap turn the pan down and where the hell is the colander?!?

Anyway, point is, my cooking skills improved a lot once I started doing a little more prep work. Not to the level where I had ten silver bowls each one with an ingredient in it, but also… not far from that. I get all my veggies cut, get the sauces mixed, get individual spices or oils out. It takes a little longer, but my cooking’s consistently so much better.

The other cool thing about the prep work is that it’s kind of free-form. It doesn’t really matter what order I do most of it in as long as most of it’s done before I start cooking. Maybe I’ll pull out everything I need to make the spicy sauce. If my partner’s around, maybe I’ll cut mushrooms and peppers while we talk or watch something silly. Sometimes I make the sauce while I’m waiting for the water to boil for noodles. It doesn’t really matter as long as I get enough of it done that it’s not slowing me down once the timers get set.

Anyway, maybe some of you have figured out what I’m getting at here. And some of you are just getting hungry. Its okay, go grab something, I’ll wait.

One question that tends to come up a lot in writing discussions is how do you start? Do you need characters first? Should I begin with the plot? How much do I need outlined? Do I have to know my theme right out of the gate?

Here’s the ugly truth big writing degree doesn’t want you to know (“gurus hate him…”). It doesn’t matter. Seriously, doesn’t matter in the slightest.

Whatever little snippet of dialogue or character quirk or cool worldbuilding idea that sparks a story in your head—that was the correct thing to begin with. If the first thing you want to do is figure out a coherent theme or write out a beat-for-beat plot… fantastic. Character sketches? Big swaths of dialogue? That one big twist scene at the end that’s going to freak everyone out? Do it! It’s all good.

All of this stuff is the prep bowls. They’re the scattered ingredients we’re going to pull together to make our story. But it doesn’t matter what order we set them up in—it just matters that they’re there on hand when we turn on the heat and start working. I don’t want to be sixty pages in and find myself thinking “okay, and maybe our hero has a love interest who’s… a woman… who works at… her job… and has a… name.”

And the reason it doesn’t matter how I start is that nobody’s going to see this part of it. It’s like the first draft I don’t show to anyone, except this is pre-first draft. Nobody sees any of this. At best, it’s a two-minute story I get to tell in an interview about “where did you get the idea for this?”

Y’see, Timmy, what 99.9% of all people are going to see is the finished book. And even if you set up your prep bowls in the complete opposite order I did, nobody’s ever going to know. Because both of us are going to have completed, polished books with all those elements seamlessly integrated. Two very different processes end in the same result.

So stop worrying about starting with the right thing and just start with your thing. The thing that caught your attention. The thing that sparked your imagination.

Next time, well, I guess we should talk about that thing marking the spot. Or what used to be the spot.

Until then… go write.

Sorry I missed last week. Was up against a deadline (which I ended up sort of hockey-stopping past anyway). Plus, I feel like… I mean, is it just me, or in a way does it feel like we’re all relearning the internet right now? One of the biggest social media site in the world’s collapsing and people are trying to figure out what to do now. Run to a new social media site? Focus on the personal site? Abandon the internet and start training carrier pigeons on the roof of your apartment building?

That’s how it feels to me, anyway.

But it’s given me time to think about a few things…

I want to bounce an idea off you. Another way to think about plot and story. I’ve talked about these things once or thrice before. To go back to my oft-referenced Shane Black-ism, plot is what happens outside my characters, story is what happens inside my characters.

Today, I’d like to frame this in a different way, though. This idea crossed my mind, and the more I think about it, the more right it sounds and feels. To me, anyway.

Allow me to explain. And we’ll do it the best way possible. With a little story.

Let’s say I decide to lose thirty pounds. As of tomorrow, I exercise more, eat better, maybe cut back on the booze a bit. I do this for five or six months and wow—thirty pounds, gone.

So what’s happened here, from a storytelling point of view?

Well, simply put, I set out to do something and… I did it. It’s technically a plot, but not much of a plot. Not much story either. With no real conflicts or hangups, there isn’t a lot of room for self-discovery. So no real character arc.

Plot is conflict. It’s forcing my characters out of their comfort zones, into these fish-out-of-water sort of situations. And these are the situations where story happens.

So what’s story?

Well, if story’s what goes on inside my character, that would mean a character arc is a change in my character. An alteration of their views. Cowards become brave. The miserly become generous. The self-centered become sympathetic to others. Or vice versa—nobody said character arcs have to be positive. Lots of heroes have become villains, lots of good folks have been pushed to do horrible things.

Put another way, story is why I decided to lose 30 pounds. Did I do it for health reasons? For image reasons?

It’s very easy to have plot without story. Hollywood’s shown us that again and again. Hell, life shows us that all the time. I bet all of us here personally know one or two people who simply will not change their views—they won’t grow or advance in any way—no matter what they see, what they experience, what they do.

I’ve also talked once or thrice about “character-based” books and films, the ones that scoff at the idea of plot in favor of beautiful tales where… well, nothing happens. People sit around and have long talks and then… don’t change. Or they go through some very artificial, forced “growth.”

Thing is, nobody decides to change their views on their own. None of us ever wake up one morning and think “hey, maybe I should completely reverse my views on student loan forgiveness.” Nobody randomly decides to become a serial killer in the shower. We’re influenced by things outside of us. Around us. The people and events we’re exposed to, the things we endure, are what make us see the world in a different light. The external events motivate the internal changes.

Going back to my initial example. So I lost 30 pounds. Why? And why now? Obviously I’d been okay with my physical condition until now, so what made me suddenly decide to drastically cut my weight? Maybe someone died and made me realize I’ve got a lot of unhealthy habits that need to change? Perhaps I finally get to meet that online crush and worried what are they going to think of the real me? Maybe someone died and I realized I needed to become a rooftop-dwelling vigilante who haunts the night. What was it that got me thinking about losing weight?

I think plot tends to be active, but story tends to be a bit more reactive. We actively participate in the plot, but story kinda just… happens to us. We don’t have as much control over it. The reason so many of those artsy tales have poor stories is specifically because they don’t have a plot. There’s nothing new or different happening to encourage that internal change.

Y’see, Timmy, plot is the effect my characters have on the events, but story is the effect the events have on my characters. They push each other along. Like when I walk—pushing off the right foot lets the left foot move forward, pushing off the left foot lets the right foot move forward, and so on. if I try to move with just one foot it can get a little… erratic. And there’s a decent chance I’ll just faceplant.

Anyway, that’s what I’d like you to think about as you poke at your own manuscript. If I’m going to skimp on plot, what’s going to cause those inner changes? Do I have a real story, or is it just a forced, false change of view? And if all I’ve got is plot… why is anyone doing anything? What kind of arc do they have?

Next time…

Look, I’ll be honest. I feel like I’ve been rambling a bit and there hasn’t been a ton of feedback since pulling the ranty blog over here. Is everyone just happy with the rambling? Is no one reading this? Is it more of that online ennui I was talking about up top? Let me know something. Anything. A topic you might like or even one you’re sick of hearing about all the time. And if nobody says anything… maybe I’ll just talk about my trip to Egypt.

Until then, go write.