Category: Rule of Three

March 16, 2020 / 4 Comments

Again and Again and Again and Again and

So, hey… things are a little crazy and intense in this world of ours right now. Hopefully you’re somewhere safe and hunkering down a bit. Also hopefully you’re not someone going “Ha ha ha look at me” as you wander around potentially endangering other people.

Be a hero. Don’t willfully endanger anyone else right now. Okay?

Anyway… bonus post. Figured everybody could use a little extra stuff to read while they’re stuck at home.

I’d like to share a random writing-type thought that’s bounced back and forth through my head a few times recently. I think it’s something a lot of you may automatically get, but this might help solidify it a bit in your own heads. And for some of you, this may be an all new concept.

I’ve mentioned the idea of repetition in writing here a few times, coming at it from a few different angles. It’s one of those elements that can be very powerful if used the right way… and completely brutal if I use it the wrong way. Or overuse it. It’s like one of those vitamins or minerals that we absolutely need to live, but just a little too much and now it’s a deadly poison.

Anyway, it recently struck me why repetition can turn on us like that and—oddly enough—it ties back to another idea I’ve mentioned here once or thrice. And that’s a concept Damon Knight talked about in one of his short story books. The idea of information vs. noise.

To sum up quickly, it goes like this. When we come across a fact we don’t know, it’s information. When we come across a fact we already know, it’s noise. We pay attention to information, but we tune out noise because… well, it’s noise. It’s just a distraction, keeping us away from the stuff we’re actually here for.

Now, Knight was talking about this mostly in the sense of exposition, and this makes perfect sense. We don’t want to read two pages about why Nazis were bad because, well, we all know that already (okay, most of us know that…). But we’re up for two pages about how true artificial intelligence came into existence, because this is something we don’t know and (hopefully) find interesting and relevant within the context of the story.

Getting hit with the same facts we already know is… well, boring. Sometimes flat-out aggravating. It feels like the author is padding and wasting time rather than giving us what we want.

But here’s the thing. This is true of pretty much all repetition. As I’m putting words down on the page, repeating anything the reader knows (or can figure out) is going to quickly become noise.

Think of names in dialogue. We roll our eyes when characters constantly use names while talking to each other. Or if the author constantly uses dialogue descriptors with names rather than pronouns (or just assuming we can follow who’s talking). After hearing Wakko said… a dozen times on one page, we start grinding our teeth. We can’t help it. It’s noise to our ears.

The same thing holds for descriptions. Yes, I know Phoebe is over six feet tall. You’ve mentioned it seven times in the past ten pages. Or that the blood is bright red. Or that Phoebe is six feet tall. Or that Yakko is a cyborg. Or that one of my over-six-foot characters is Phoebe. See what I mean? I’m clearly doing it as a humorous way to make a point, but it’s kinda getting on your nerves, isn’t it?

And I’ve talked before about doing this with reveals. The first time I reveal something to my readers is an amazing, jaw-dropping thing. Because it’s facts they don’t know. It’s information. But the second time I show it off it’s… well, it’s not as interesting. And the third time, if there’s no point to this, it’s kinda boring. By the fourth time okay seriously can we just get on with this? What? A fifth time? Seriously?

Repetition can turn anything I have to say into noise fast. So I want to be very careful if I’m going to repeat any information for a third or fourth time. And like I just joked, if I hit a fifth time…

Wow, I should probably rethink some things.

Next time we’re going to jump back to the A2Q and talk about theme. Yeah, I know. You just had this gut, high school reaction to that word. I’m going to try to help you get past that.

Until then, go write.

informationKnightnamesrepetitionRule of Three
November 13, 2015

Beware… The Mosquito!

            Okay, first, please forgive me for some shameless pandering…
            Somehow, my book The Fold was nominated for best sci-fi book of 2015 over at Goodreads.  I don’t know how. I don’t even go to Goodreads. 
            Regardless, it was nominated and made it to the semi-final round, which ends on Saturday.  So if you happen to be reading this and didn’t read anything better this year (like, say, Armada or The Water Knife—both also in the running), I’d appreciate it if you could hop over to Goodreads and cast a vote for The Fold.
            Sorry about all that.  Kind of annoying, wasn’t it?
            Anyway, this week I want to talk about annoying things. To be exact I want to talk about mosquitoes.  I’ve seen a lot of them lately.
            A mosquito is the frustrating, you-want-to-slap-them character who shows up in books or movies.  That man or woman who simply cannot take a hint or get a clue, no matter how hard the other characters hit them with one.  Usually the mosquito won’t shut up.  Ever.  No matter what.  Plus, it’s a safe bet if someone tells them not to do something, that will be the very next thing they do.
            They’re just… well, they’re annoying as hell.
            Worse yet, the mosquitoes never acknowledge the problems they’re causing.  They leave shattered plans, damaged treasures, and unachieved goals in their wake—almost never their own—and often don’t grasp why it’s such a big deal.  Was that important?  Don’t get so worked up.
            And… wow, when the mosquito is the main character?
            By the way, this is just my name for this type of character.  Don’t expect to find the term “mosquito” in use anywhere else until I put out my how-to book on writing—Storytelling-the Ed Wood Method! Also, I may come up with a better term before the end of this post.
            Now, this is just my thinking, but I feel there are two big reasons mosquitoes get annoying so fast in stories.  One is that… well, they aren’t good characters.  I don’t mean this in the sense of poorly written or imagined, just that they aren’t the kind of characters people like to read about or follow.  I’ve mentioned a few times here that good characters have to be likeable, relatable, and believable.  As we just said, mosquitoes aren’t likeable—they’re annoying.  That’s why they’re mosquitoes.  They’re also not relatable, because nobody thinks they’re this kind of person, which means no one will identify with them. Think about it—the most talkative, clueless person you know doesn’t think they’re talkative or clueless.  So right off the bat, a mosquito is failing two of the three basic criteria for a good character.
            The other reason mosquitoes are annoying in a story is because they violate the rule of three.  It’s a term I’ve brought up here once or thrice in the past.  It usually applies to screenwriting, but you can find it in books, too.  At its core, the rule of three tells us that if something keeps getting mentioned, it’s important to the plot or story.  If it wasn’t important, it wouldn’t be mentioned three times. 
            Simple, yes?  I’ve mentioned something similar with names.  If I make a point of telling you the waiter’s name, he must be important to the story somehow.  A bare bones version of this would be the popular adage of Chekov’s Rifle, which says if we see a phaser rifle on the bridge in Act One, it should be set to overload and kill someone in act three.  If something is in my story, there’s a reason for it being there.
            I see a lot of mosquitoes buzz around and around… but they don’t actually do anything.  Their buzzing doesn’t distract the bad guy at a key moment.  Their failure to follow instructions doesn’t save the day. Their refusal to admit fault doesn’t give a vital clue. What little they do contribute could easily be done by someone else.  Anyone else.
            They’re just annoying. 
            Y’see, Timmy, when a character has such a defining trait that doesn’t pay off somehow, we end up wondering why said character’s even here.  Why did I put someone in my story that nobody likes or relates to?  That serves no purpose?
            That being said… what are some good reasons to have a mosquito in my story?
            Contrast—Sometimes I start off writing a character as a mosquito so they can go through a transformation.  That’s a basic character arc, to start one way, change somehow, and end up as someone a bit different. In Hot Fuzz, Constable Danny Butterman is a mosquito.  He’s the screw-up, chattering cop that type-A police officer Nicholas Angel is partnered with.  Through the course of the film, though, Danny learns to take his responsibilities as a police officer more seriously, and by the end of the story he’s grown up a bit and become a different kind of cop.  In this case, the character starts annoying so they have room to grow.
            We’re All Thinking It—Every now and then, somebody needs to lay the cards on the table. Maybe say some things other characters don’t want to hear. And my mosquito can do this, since they’re usually talking non-stop anyway.  Vince Vaughn has played this character a few times, like in Made when he points out to his friend Bobby (Jon Faverau) that everybody knows Bobby’s would-be girlfriend is sleeping with their boss.  In Love & Other Drugs, Jamie’s little brother Josh pretty much gives a monologue about how eye-opening it was to have sex with someone he didn’t care about, and how up until now he’d really envied his big brother but now he kind of pities him.
            In the same way, if I’ve already got a mosquito, they can beat the audience to asking questions and pointing things out.  This can calm some nitpicky readers and help carry the suspension of disbelief.  On The Flash, Cisco’s tendency to babble makes it more acceptable that he’s constantly coming up with super-villain codenames for the metahumans he and his friends fight.   As with many things, though, this is something I want to be cautious with.  This should be a tool, not part of my core structure.
            Breaking Points—Sometimes the mosquito uses their annoyance to their own benefit.  “The Ransom of Red Chief,” Ruthless People, and The Ref all use the idea of kidnappers stuck dealing with a mosquito.  In The Usual Suspects, Verbal Gint’s nonstop babbling make it hard for the police to catch small holes in his story.
            It’s worth pointing out, though, that in all of these examples, the mosquito is the antagonist of the story.  Not necessarily the villain, but definitely the antagonist.  They start off with them as the victim, but our sympathies slowly shift to the other characters—they’re the ones we’re identifying with and relating to.
            Fast friends—Okay, I was tempted not to mention this one, but… what the hell.  I’m trusting you to use this responsibly.
            Sometimes we need to introduce a character just to kill them off.  The problem is that it’s really hard to have any sympathy for a character we’ve only known for seven or eight pages.  In this case, a mosquito can work because… well, if they’re talking non-stop they have to talk about something, right?  Family, goals, television shows, dirty jokes—there’s any number of things this character can spew out.  The reader can have a reason to like them and before the character gets annoying BANG they’re dead, just like that.
            The thing is… I can only do this rarely.  Once a book is almost too much.  More like once every two or three books.  The moment I start to overuse this, it becomes a cheap gag—the sort of thing done in bad horror movies and SyFy films from the Asylum.
            Keep in mind, there are other ways to make a mosquito acceptable, too.  The important thing is that I have a reason for giving my character such an abrasive trait.  If I don’t… it’s going to be really challenging for me to keep my readers interested.
            And writing is challenging enough as it is without making it harder for no reason.
            Next time, let’s take this storytelling thing on the road.
            Until then, go write.
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September 19, 2014

Inflation

            Sorry about last week.  Still juggling a few things and the ranty blog drew the short straw.  It happens.  Many thanks for your patience.
            It’s not that I didn’t have an idea.  There was a solid idea.  And there was enough to fill a regular post (about three and a half pages).
            Sometimes I don’t have as much, though, and that’s okay, too.  There’s been more than a few times that I’ve jotted off a quick page or so and called it good.  It’s not like the ranty blog has any guidelines about length.
            A lot of markets do, though.  Anthologies, magazines, and journals often have specific minimums and maximums in mind.  Most publishers (big and small) are going to have pretty firm ideas about what counts as a novella or a novel.  And what doesn’t.
            The catch, of course, is that sometimes my story just doesn’t fit with a certain market.  This isn’t a judgment, just a simple fact.  Sometimes SUVs are too big for garages.  Sometimes my car is too small for the bookshelf I’m trying to move.  If I try to claim the people who make bookshelves are biased against my car… well, I’ll look pretty silly.
            But you’re not here to listen to me blab about bookshelves.  I’m supposed to talk about what goes on the bookshelves.
            Sometimes I might really want to place a story somewhere and it just isn’t the right size.  Even if it’s my choice to self publish, it’s safe to say most folks are going to feel cheated if my “book” is only 40,000 words.  What I used to do in this case, and what I’ve seen a few people do recently, is to artificially inflate things.
            Inflation is, no big surprise, when I try to make something bigger by adding more of the same.  It’s when I come up with ways to make every ten word sentence reach fifteen or twenty words.  Or when a two page conversation stretches out to a whole chapter.  Or when I segue away from the main plot for a while and just kind of put it on hold until I get back.  
           These things aren’t happening because of poor editing.  Well, okay, a bit because of poor editing.  Really, they’re happening because I’m stretching to reach a goal that my story really wasn’t intended to reach.  At least, not in it’s current form.  So the story starts to lose its flow and spin its wheels a bit as the reader waits for… well, things to happen.
            Let me give you an example…
            Monday is the tenth anniversary of the premiere of LOST.  Yep, on September 22, 2004, Oceanic Flight 815 broke up in the air and crashed on an uncharted island in the South Pacific.  The thing is, they were only supposed to be there for three years.  Four tops.  But LOST was a huge show for ratings and the network didn’t want it to end.  So, the story started to inflate.  And inflate a little more.  And a little more.  And it started to flail because it was clear to even the most devoted fans of the show that a number of these third and fourth season stories were just… well, filler.  And once the end was in sight it all started to tighten up again.
            I used to do this a lot.  It was a standard part of my storytelling, to have pointlessly long conversations or needlessly elaborate descriptions.  But I eventually figured out this was all just fat on the meat of my story (sorry, vegetarian readers).  Now I cut all of that, and I can’t help but notice my success rate with placing stories and books has gone quite a bit higher since I did this.
            It also made me more aware of what my stories were.  Some of my ideas were executed in a way that pretty solidly made them short stories.  One or two of them were novellas.  Many of them were novels.  And there were one or two I thought were novels that, well, they were novellas at best.  The number of characters and plot points, the way I’d structured the whole tale… it really didn’t work for a larger format.  But I forced them into that format by inflating them rather than expanding them.
            Here’s a couple of things I learned to look for that could be signs of inflation…
            Repeating information—This can take many forms, and in a way I’d guess more than half the cases of inflation I’ve seen burn down to this.  Sometimes it’s revisiting the same information with no variation.  Sometimes it’s characters repeating a certain phrase again and again for no real reason.  I just finished one book where a woman keeps reminding everyone again and again and again that  “I have a schedule to keep.”  Honestly, I could’ve cut two solid pages out of the book just by removing half the instances of that phrase.
            There’s a writing idea I’ve mentioned before—something we don’t know is information, something we already know is noise.  This method of padding means a manuscript full of noise.
            Overly detailed descriptions—There’s two common versions of this.  One is a massive over-description of characters or objects or locations.  Two pages of irrelevant details about someone’s suitcase or the inside of a diner—no matter what some folks try to say, that’s just an attempt to stretch things out and it’s putting the plot and story on hold while I do.
            The other version is when I have a very complex set of actions like baking a cake or fixing a car or performing an operation and I describe every single step.  Every teaspoon, every bolt, every cut.  Granted, there are times I want to describe all this because I’m trying to build tension.  If I need to seal four bolts to keep the charging insurgents on the other side of this hatch, I’m going to describe every turn of the wrench and every time the threads catch.  But if there isn’t a need for such immediate tension, odds are this is just filler.
            Elaborate Action—This kind of ties to the above.  Some folks write the most over-detailed action scenes ever.  Each and every punch is described in painstaking anatomical detail.  Every time my pistol fires involves a list of facts about the action, the ammunition, and the sensation of recoil in exact foot-pounds.  As above, there are moments for this sort of thing.  A trained NSA agent probably isn’t going to have the same thoughts about firing a weapon that a suburban house-husband does.  But if it’s every moment, it’s just padding and it’s monotone.
            Overuse of names–Repeating names flattens out dialogue.  I’ve mentioned in the past that it’s just not natural to use someone’s name in every other response of a conversation.  So this is artificially adding to the word count and ruining the dialogue at the same time.
            There’s a corollary to this, too.  One book I read recently had a  character named Catherine, which is how she was described in all the text.  Except her friends called her Cathy in dialogue.  And the guy in her office always called her “system lord” for her computer skills and network access.   And her boss called her “Red” (for her hair).  And the semi love interest called her “surfer girl” (how they met).  And every one of these characters used their own name for her in every second or third line of dialogue.  So now, not only was it excess words and flat dialogue, it was also confusing as hell.
           Granted, these aren’t the only signs of things going wrong, but there ones I’ve learned to watch for in my own writing.
            This isn’t to say that a short story can’t be expanded into a novella or a full novel.  But if I’m going to do this, I need to actually add material.  Characters, plot points, story points… something.  I can’t just swell my story with empty words that don’t contribute anything.
            Because that’s the kind of thing that bursts apart with just the slightest prick.
            Next time I’d like to talk about Clint Eastwood.
            Until then, go write.
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November 17, 2011 / 5 Comments

Our THREE Secret Weapons Are…

            Pop culture reference.  Overdue.

            Okay, so what I wanted to blather on about today has its roots in screenwriting, but it’s a lesson that can get applied to short stories and novels as well. Simply put, it has to do with boring your readers.
            Some of you may have heard of the “rule of three.”  It’s  a good screenwriting rule of thumb that you should never do something more than three times in a movie because it starts wearing on the audience.  By the third time you’re showing me something, I’ve either got it or I don’t.  And if I don’t, it’s not my fault…
            For example, in the movie Iron Man we see three big examples of Tony Stark’s playboy lifestyle before something happens to make him change (blowing off the award ceremony, sleeping with the hot reporter, and partying on his private jet).  He then goes on to design three versions of the Iron Man armor, which also involves taking three test flights (one of them very, very short).  While all this is going on, we get three examples of what a great guy Obadiah Stane is, three of what an evil jerk he is, and the ever-loveable Agent Coulson asks three times about debriefing Tony and we get three jokes about the overly-long name of his government division before the payoff most comic geeks saw coming. 
            Seriously, pick up almost any movie you like and you’ll be stunned how quick the threes add up.  The Hulk goes on three rampages in his last movie.  In Highlander we see three other immortals die before the final battle.  In Aliens there are three major attacks and three examples of Burke being a slimebag.  In the movie Severance, the bear trap slams shut three times (and if you haven’t seen it, I’m not explaining that any further).  In Casablanca, Victor and Ilsa ask for the letters of transit three times.  Heck, in The Princess Bride, how many challenges does the Man in Black have to overcome to claim Buttercup (I’ll give you a hint—Inigo, Fezzik, Vincini)?  And there are three great swordfights in that film—all involving Inigo.
            Now I’m sure some folks reading this are thinking three’s just an arbitrary number, right?  It could be the rule of two or the rule of four.  That’s very true, and you can find some examples of both.  In Charlotte’s Web, for example, the children’s classic by E.B. White (he of the awful style guide), there are four words that get spun into webs and none of us were screaming “get on with it” when our parents read that book to us.
           In a script I just read, though, there were over a dozen examples of how low the single-dad main character had sunk.  It starts with him late for work (as a waiter—historically a job of high pay and great respect) where he had a party dine-and-dash so he has to cover their bill.  Then his car breaks down and he has to walk home in the rain.  Then he gets a collections notice. Then he has to go grocery shopping and doesn’t have enough money.  Then the babysitter demands more money because he’s late again.  Then his power gets shut off.  Then anotherparty dines-and-dashes on him and he gets fired.  Then he gets an eviction notice.  Keep in mind, this is only the first twenty pages of the script or so, and there’s still more examples coming.
            At what point did you get the idea this guy’s at rock-bottom?  Halfway through that list?  A third?  Check which note you got it on and count backwards.  Was it on the third example?
            I bet it was…
            Here’s the thing.  Each time we get exposed to information or events, it changes our understanding of them.  And a writer needs to be aware of how the reader is going to be seeing these facts or events.
            The firsttime we get exposed to a piece of information—and only the first time—it’s something new.  We, as the audience, didn’t know this or haven’t seen it before.  Agent Coulson’s introduced as yet another guy who needs to schedule a meeting about Tony escaping from Gulimar.  We brush him off the same way Pepper does (well, those folks do who don’t recognize the initials of his agency).
            The secondtime we see this happen, on the page or on screen, it establishes a pattern.  Now we know the first time wasn’t an isolated event or a fluke, and it gives us a little more information about things and characters.  Coulson shows up again and hasn’t forgotten about this meeting and he isn’t going away.  There’s also the unspoken question of how did some low-end, government flunky get into this extremely high-end exclusive party.
            The thirdtime confirms that pattern.  These behaviors or incidents are a definite element of the character or story.  Coulson shows up to remind Pepper of his loosely-scheduled appointment and she grabs him to use as a shield against Obadiah.
            When I start going past this point, things start becoming less informative and more… well, boring.  Once the information’s been established, continuing to repeat it is just noise the reader’s going to tune out.  And eventually—quickly, really—they’re going to get annoyed that I’m just repeating stuff they already know rather than moving forward, because storytelling is all about forward motion.
            Now, as I said above, there are always exceptions to the rule of three.  One of the easiest ways is when a writer is very subtle about something and the reader doesn’t realize they’ve gotten that first exposure.  They may be on their third or fourth before they notice it, so the pattern forms around the fifth or sixth time—and is all the cooler when they look back and realize the pattern was there all along.  When we finally notice the Observer on Fringe, we discover he’s been there all along, in every episode.  Another good example is Jason Hornsby’s Eleven Twenty-Three, where a town is suffering from brief outbreaks of extreme violence. It happens twice before the characters realize the outbreaks always occur exactly at the titular time, and then they suffer through three more of them before the end of the book.
            On the flipside, there are times we only need to see something once or twice to establish them.  This works best for real-world things that most people can relate to.  Neo only gets chewed out once by his boss, at the beginning of The Matrix, and we all immediately realize what kind of employee he is.  In Dean Koontz’s underappreciated Fear Nothing, we only need to see one of Christopher’s parents die to understand his sadness and loneliness.
             You can also change the dynamic.  Establishing something with the rule of three doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it.  One of the standards of good storytelling is conflict that forces things to change.  Once we’ve seen three examples telling us who  this character is, it’s a good time to start working that arc to change them into something else.  Yes, that third time asking about the appointment makes Coulson look like the ultimate paper-pusher, but right after that point we discover just how calm and collected he really is.  This is a guy who doesn’t just have a sidearm, he carries around shaped explosives just in case he needs to open a locked door.
            Look back over some of your writing and see how many times you give examples of something.  Character traits, recurring events, whatever.  Could some of them go away to tighten your novel or give you more space in that script for something else?  Or can you restructure things to hit one of the exceptions I mentioned above (three exceptions, for those of you keeping score).
            Next time, I wanted to take a step back and explain why you should avoid taking a step back in your writing.
            Until then, go write.
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