Category: screenwriting

            Not so much a pop culture reference as a tech reference.  Came up with that title and then remembered working with my first computer when I was… nine?  I remember having to format floppy discs before you could use them.  Anyone else remember that?

            Very sorry I missed last week.  Deadline crunch. Which I’m still in, really, but I didn’t want to miss two solid weeks in a row.

            Anyway…

            I was rewatching some episodes of an old show recently, and it struck me that it had a major format problem.  And as I mulled on it, it struck me I’ve seen this problem a few times before. Sometimes firsthand, happening right in front of me.

            I want to point out something… well, I’d say it’s obvious, but I don’t think it always is. I think it’s been muddled by a lot of would-be gurus and experts spreading bad information.  And since that’s what led to the ranty blog in the first place, well…

            Anyway, let me throw some wisdom at you.

            Novels are not comic books.

            Comic books are not television scripts.

            Television scripts are not movie scripts.

            Movie scripts are not stage plays.

            Stage plays are not novels.

            As I said, should be obvious, right?

            Thing is, each of those storytelling formats is unique unto itself.  Seriously. I can rattle off at least half a dozen inherent differences between any of them.

            We always hear people complain about changes when something is adapted from a book into a movie, but the simple fact is things have to change.  I cannot tell a story in a screenplay the same way I’d tell it in a book.  And I can’t tell a story in a motion picture script the same way it’d be told in an episodic television script.

            Let me give you some examples.

            Based off my own experience—as a crew person, a contest reader, and a screenwriter–I’d guess that 99.9% of all film, television, and stage work is done from the audience point of view.  The only parts that aren’t are the very limited POV shots that sometimes crop up in horror movies or thrillers(usually outside windows, inside closets, or across parking lots) and the rare experimental film like Hardcore Henry that was funded entirely by the powerful carsickness/nausea lobby.
            Contrast that with a book, where the author, with full control, can shift to any point of view they want. I can make the reader see, hear, and experience everything through one character’s senses, knowledge, and memories… and then shift to a different character.  There’s no real way to do that on film.

            However… a book is, for a lack of a better term, a one-source format.  I have to write things out.  There’s no way for the reader to know George has blond-brown hair without me putting “George has blond-brown hair” down on the page.  I might be able to get a little subtle with it, maybe pull some literary sleight-of-hand, but at the end of the day all I can do is put words on the page.  That’s it.  I can’t slip in some details in the background, because everything in a book is presented in the foreground—right there in front of my reader on the page.

            If I’m writing for television, I also need to be aware of the very specific format that most television writing requires.  Episodic shows are usually done with a four or five act structure (not to be confused with three act structure, which is kinda-sorta something else) which requires my story to have a series of mini-cliffhangers where the commercial breaks will be.  If it’s a show with an arc, it also needs to address that a week’s passed since the last episode, and some story points may need to be repeated or re-addressed to cut down on audience confusion.

            Stage writing is also unique because it’s happening right in front of us. There’s an inherent storytelling conceit that we’ll accept these actors don’t see us.  Or that they’re not actually in a forest.  Or they can’t hear that guy behind the tree bellowing his lines out to the back of the theater. This is a different kind of storytelling mechanic, and that’ll be reflected in my writing.

            And none of these are like comic books. Comics are this fantastic medium where we can have an active, flowing story that’s being told completely through static images.  So my comic script has to reflect this. Each panel has to be a single moment, and it has to be the right moment to convey the most impact and information while still flowing smoothly into the next moment I choose to continue the narrative.

            You’re wondering why I’m talking about all this, yes?

            These days it’s not uncommon for a story—or a storyteller—to jump mediums. As I mentioned above, we’ve all seen a ton of books and comics adapted for the movies.  I know several novelists and screenwriters who’ve worked in comics.  I’ve worked with theater directors and playwrights on film projects.

            Thing is, a story can’t go directly from one format to another.  The devices and mechanisms I use here won’t always work here.  Usually won’t, in fact. And I need to be able to make those adjustments.  A really common mistake I’ve seen is when people just yank a story from one format to another with no changes.  Or when they start using the conventions of one format in another

            That show I mentioned up at the top?  In one episode it had three reveals. Thing is, each one was essentially revealing the same thing.  But the filmmakers had assumed since Yakko was the main character for that scene, and Dot was the central figure in that scene, and Wakko was the focus of the final scene… well, they could do the dramatic, big music reveal for each of them.  Alas, it just doesn’t work that way, because—as I mentioned above—we can focus on different characters but it’s all really audience POV.  So the second time around it was more eye-rolling than dramatic and the third time was… well, laughable.

            Last year I had a chance to be in an X-Files anthology.  Truth is, though, the main spine of my short story actually came from a spec script I’d written for an old TV show called The Chronicle.  And I had to make adjustments for that.  Most notably, all those mini-cliffhangers in the story had to be smoothed out.  Some things had to be described much more than they were in the script, because now all those details actually had to be on the page.

            Y’see, Timmy, if I want to shift a story from one format to another, I better understand the conventions and limitations of each one.  And if I want to write in a different format. I need to learn that format as well as I know my current one.  I can’t just go in assuming it won’t matter, or that I’ll be the exception who gets to slide.

            So know what you’re writing.  And how you’re writing.

            Next time, I’d like to talk about some artsy character stuff.

            Until then, go write.

            Kind of a goofy title.  Hopefully it’ll make sense in a few minutes.
            Hey, did you know today is the 50th anniversary of Star Trek?  Yep, the original series premiered fifty years ago today (tonight, really).  “The Man Trap,” the one with the salt vampire.

            May we always boldly go where no one has gone before…

            Anyway…

            If you follow me on Twitter, you know I often spend my weekends watching a half-dozen or so B- or openly awful movies while working on toy soldiers or tanks or something. And I often tweet out little bits of advice when I see a storytelling screw up that should’ve been easily avoided. They’re more frustrating in film, because it means someone had the screenplay sitting right there in front of them before this messed-up scene was put on film. And yet… they still put it on film.

            And sometimes the screw-ups are so bad, so overwhelming, that all I can do is drink…

            A recent awful film I saw hit on a really big problem I’ve seen a few people wrestle with. To be honest, I wrestled with it on my oft-mentioned book, The Suffering Map.  And when I realized what I’d been doing, not only did I feel like an idiot, but I realized that book might be salvageable someday after all.

            With a certain amount of rewrites.

            What am I talking about?

             A few weeks back I was watching a movie that was probably going for the idea of a goofy, somewhat inept hero with much more capable friends. Think of Jack Burton in Big Trouble In Little China or even, to a lesser extent, Shaun in Shaun of the Dead.  Alas, that’s a very tricky balance to pull off, and this writer/director didn’t have the skill or experience to do it.

            Meanwhile, the cute bartender (who liked him because… well, it was in the script, I guess) is well-trained with firearms, has a plan, stays calm under pressure… and keeps getting regulated to reaction shots and wide shots of the supporting character.  Except for one or two scenes, she’s almost a background character.

            And then, at the end, the hero sweeps her off her feet.  After the world’s been saved by someone else.  No, a third person altogether, not either one of them.

            That movie killed half a bottle of rum.  One of the big bottles.

            Anyway…

            Example two.

            In my early drafts of The Suffering Map, my main character, Rob, pretty much dominated the book.  There were some good supporting characters in Sondra, Miguel, Levi Gulliver and his ravens, and my villain, Bareback (a shameless Cenobite rip-off in those first three or four drafts), but Rob was easily 70-75% of the book.

            When I finally made a serious revision, one of the big changes was giving more time to Sondra. Really, the story involved her almost as much as Rob, and she had her own arc that I’d all but skimmed over because… well, he was my main character, right?

            By the next big revision (the last one) the novel was pretty much split clean between them.  But it still wasn’t quite right, and—as I’ve mentioned before—it was rejected a few times.  It was around this time that I finally trunked it.  Well, cyber-trunked it.

            Y’see, Timmy, both of these stories suffered from the same problem—not being aware of who should be the main character.  They’re not focusing on the heroic, active person—the person who’s actually making choices and doing things. And learning from those choices and changing because of them. What I came to realize was that Rob shouldn’t be the main character of The Suffering Map—Sondra should be.  She was more active, she was more interesting, and she had a serious arc.  Really, the book was her story.  Which I knew, but I was so stuck in the headspace of it being Rob’s story that I didn’t recognize the actual hero.

            The bad movie did the same thing.  It only took a few moments of mental re-plotting to see how much stronger and more entertaining the film would be if it had been focused on the bartender.  She was smart, clever, willing to take charge… all the stuff we want and need in a main character.

            Granted, it’s always possible to bend or break those rules, but—as I mentioned above—it’s not an easy thing to do, and probably not something to attempt without a lot of serious experience.

            I also think it’s worth addressing the elephant in the room.  In both of these examples, the better lead, the one shunted to the side, was a woman.  This isn’t always going to be the case, but I also didn’t want to gloss over it. 

            For me, it came down to The Suffering Map being my first all-out serious attempt at a novel.  I was worried I didn’t have the skill to pull off a female lead, and at the time I was right. But as I kept rewriting it over the years, and Sondra became a better character, I developed those skills. Alas, as I mentioned above, it still took me a while to get past the idea of “Rob is the main character.”

            In the bad movie… well, I don’t know what they were thinking.  I wasn’t there.  It’s possible, as I mentioned above, they went for a goofy hero with better sidekicks and really messed up the balance.  Or maybe they just planned on her as a love interest, put in a lot of character traits thinking it’d be cool to have a love interest who wasn’t just window dressing, and couldn’t register the fact that they’d made this supporting character into a far better protagonist than their lead. We’ll never know.  All I can say is that it was far from the movie’s only problem, and no one should ever watch it without a serious amount of alcohol on standby.

            But back to our topic…

            If I’m doing a story with a good-sized cast of characters, it may be worth taking a moment to look at the story from a few different points of view.  Maybe that clever thing I’m trying to do with my main character isn’t working.  Maybe she’s the main character.  Or that guy.  Or that person in the coat over there.  My goal as a writer should be to tell the most interesting story possible, and sometimes… that might not be the story I started with.

            Next time, I’d like to blather on a bit about where you’ve decided to write.

            Until then… go write.

            Sorry this is running a bit late.  Ending up lost in a great book earlier this week and put me behind on a lot of things.
            Okay, I’ve said a few times that I don’t want to use this blog to go over the basics.  If you’ve found your way here, I’d like to pretend that you’ve got a loose grasp of your chosen writing format.  But I’ve seen a few screenplays recently that… well, it’s apparent the basics of screenwriting aren’t as well-known or understood as they should be.

            Now, to be clear, I’m talking about if I want to do this professionally.  I want a studio to hire me and give me a pile of money so they can turn my script into… y’know, garbage. But, hey, they’re giving me a pile of money. 

            If I’m trying to do indie/YouTube things with my close circle of friends… format doesn’t really matter as much.  No one else out of that circle’s going to see it, right?  But if I’m thinking of Hollywood, of screenplay contests, of those big brass rings people have been thinking of for decades…

            Well, I need to have some idea how a screenplay works.

            So, here’s a  dozen basic rules I should have down before I show my screenplay to someone. 

            And especially before I submit it to someone.

            1) Basic Format—Scripts are always in single space Courier 12.  Always.  If you heard a story about a professional screenwriter who only works in Times Roman and turns in his or her work that way, I can tell you two things—that person’s already got the leeway you only get with a well-established career, and as soon as they handed the script in the whole thing was reformatted into Courier 12.  It’s the industry standard for a number of reasons, including timing and scheduling.  Every other department needs that script in Courier 12.

            Ahhh, says clever wanna-be #8… if they can convert it anyway, then what difference does it make if I want to write in Times or Arial or Wingdings? 

            It doesn’t make any difference how I write it.  But when I submit it to a contest, an agent, or a production company, it has to be in Courier 12.  Because scripts are always in Courier 12.  Always.  And I’m trying to convince people that I’m a professional. 

            One other thing—I don’t use scene numbers in a spec script.  That’s something that comes up much later during the actual pre-production for a film.  They’re a tool for the assistant directors and department heads, not the screenwriter.  Putting them in now will just get me tagged as an amateur.

            2) Basic Style—Always use third person, present tense.  Always.  The script is what’s happening on screen right now.  Characters can have dialogue where they talk about things in past tense, but all my action blocks and descriptions must be in third person, present tense.

            A screenplay that switches person or dips back and forth between past and present tense is always a good tip-off for readers that this is someone’s short story or novel they sloppily adapted into screenplay format.  There’s also usually a reason no one bought their short story or novel, and it’s related to the fact that they didn’t bother to learn how to format a screenplay…

            3) Capitals— This isn’t that tough.  I use capitals the first time we see a character so the reader knows this is someone new.  I’ll go into this a bit more in a minute.

            I also use capitals for emphasis when something important happens.  When YAKKO IS SHOT or Dot’s exploring the graveyard and finds A SEVERED HAND ON THE GROUND.  Keep in mind, though, that in this sense capitals are just like exclamation points.  The more often I use them, the less power they have, and eventually they’ll tip the scale and just start frustrating or annoying the reader.

            Also, noneof this applies to dialogue.  Again, for clarity, I should never apply the above rules to dialogue.  If dialogue is in capitals it means someone is shouting–nothing else.  To be clear, there is no other way to interpret capitals in dialogue.  Capitals in dialogue=shouting.  So even if my sister has never been mentioned in the script before, I don’t say “Have you met my sister CAROLYN?”  I also don’t say “Hey, over there on the ground, is that A SEVERED HAND!?!!?” 

            Okay, I might shout if I see a severed hand.  But am I supposed to shout?

            4) Names– As I mentioned above, whenever I introduce a character, I put them in all caps in the action blocks.  The very first time I see YAKKO WARNER I need to know he’s someone new. After that he’s just Yakko.  For example…

            Dialogue headers are always all caps, using the most common version of the character’s name, and I never change dialogue headers for a character.  Wakko’s dialogue is always headed with  WAKKO, Dot’s is always headed with DOT.  The only time they would change is if the character has completely changed identities on screen.  For example, in Captain America: The Winter Soldier we find out the title assassin is actually Cap’s supposedly-dead friend Bucky.  He’s WINTER SOLDIER in headers until he’s revealed as BUCKY in either the action block (because you’re introducing a new character) or dialogue (where it still isn’t capitalized unless it’s shouted).  Then his next dialogue header should be WINTER/BUCKY.  Use that double-header once, and then he’s BUCKY from there on in.

            5) Don’t Name every Character—In the abbreviated, concise format of a screenplay, names are an important tool.  They tell the reader that this character is someone we need to pay attention to.  They’re important enough to the story that they rate a name and not just a title like MAN #2 or WAITRESS or OFFICER.

            Alas, some idiot somewhere started pushing the idea of naming everyone in a screenplay.  The logic is that this gives more detail, nuance, or some such nonsense.  Do not do this.  If my screenplay is littered with extra names, the reader’s going to be tripping over themselves trying to keep all those names straight because the logical assumption is that they need to be kept straight.  I made the effort to name them, after all.  So rather than focusing on the story, the reader’s trying to figure out how the woman in the mall and the taxi driver figure into the story.  That’s breaking the flow and it’s going to piss them off when they realize they wasted time and effort juggling twenty-seven names for no reason.

            Never name someone just to give them a name.  No one—not even the actor—is going to be upset with just MAN #2.  A friend of mine has made a good career out of being MAN #2.  Trust me, MAN #2 is going to make a nice chunk of money, even for just one day on set.

            6) Actually Describe Things—A few years back I got to interview screenwriter-director David Goyer (The Dark Knight, Man of Steel, the Blade trilogy) and he told me a funny story about getting smacked down by Guillermo del Toro.  It seems Goyer had described a character in a script as “a living nightmare.”  del Toro looked at this and said “What does that even mean?  That is boolshit!”

            There is a time and a place for pretty, evocative imagery and language.  That time and place is not while writing a screenplay.  As I mentioned above, the script is about what’s on screen right now, which means it has to be something we can actually see.  A reader needs to be able to visualize what’s on the page, and it’s very important that multiple readers visualize the same thing.  I can tell you Jack is a dead ringer for my old work friend Scott, but that doesn’t mean a damned thing if you don’t know what Scott looked like.  “It’s a hundred times cooler than Armageddon” sounds really cool, but it’s really hard to do concept sketches and storyboards off that.

            During our interview, Goyer actually admitted this issue bit him in the ass when he directed one of his own scripts.  He’d given a vague, roundabout description of a sequence, but once he was on set he actually had to figure out how to film it.  Now he needed a real description.  So production came to a halt while Goyer and his assistant director tried to block out the mess that writer-Goyer had left them to deal with.

            That leads nicely into…

            7) Don’t write what we can’t see – A solid corollary to the last point.  I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen stuff like this in amateur screenplays (and a few professional ones).

            Tight on a man sitting in a restaurant, not eating.  This is WAKKO, an advertising executive who just scored a multi-million dollar contract with Pepsi.  He’s freaking out, though, because he also just found out his fiancé has been cheating on him with someone from her office.  Another WOMAN!  And now he’s questioning their whole relationship, himself, how did he miss this, how could he be so blind? And how is he going to explain this to his friends and family?  No, Mom, Jane’s not coming to Thanksgiving–her bird’s getting stuffed by one of the girls from legal? Wakko keeps going back and forth between blaming her for cheating and blaming himself for not realizing why things felt strained between them.

            What’s wrong with that paragraph?  Well except for the first sentence… how is the audience expected to know any of this?  All we’re going to see is a guy in a restaurant.  Again, the script is what’s on screen right now.  Not what’s in someone’s head.  That’s the stuff that comes out through dialogue, action, and maybe some clever set dressing or wardrobe choices.  But definitely not in a block of exposition in the action blocks.

            8) Don’t Over-Describe Characters—This sounds a little contrary to some of the stuff I’ve just said, but trust me–it isn’t.  A bad habit some writers develop—especially prose writers—is to go mad with character description.  Hair color, eye color, ethnic background, education, music preferences, drink preferences, underwear preferences, etc…  They take their entire character sketch and drop it into the screenplay.

            I don’t go nuts describing characters in scripts for a few reasons.  One is that I always want to be tight and lean in a screenplay.  Two is, as I just said above, I don’t want to describe anything the audience can’t see.  Three is the one none of us like to think about—there’s a good chance this character will change.  I can spend half a page describing Rosario Dawson and then they decide to cast Jennifer Lawrence.  It happens. 

            Just give enough description so the character stands out from any other character.  Really, if I’ve got more that two sentences of character description I’ve got too much.  Yeah, I may have tons more, but remember—the script is about right now.  Everything else about my character will come out in the course of the story through their dialogue and actions.  If it doesn’t, my problem is not that I only got two sentences of character description.

            9) Don’t act – Okay, you know those little descriptions under the dialogue header, usually in parentheses?  These are called parentheticals.  Sometimes, as a joke, they’re called wrylies.  It’s a quick set of instructions to the actor about how the line’s supposed to be delivered.

            Actors loatheparentheticals.  Actors hate parentheticals the same way screenwriters hate  producers who want us to change the ending so everyone was dead the whole time and to make Natalie Dormer’s part a lot bigger because she’s become kind of a hot item since we finished principal photography.  It’s someone who has no idea how to do my job telling me how to do my job.  Let’s look at a quick scene from one of my own scripts…

            Are those parentheticals really telling you anything useful?  Most actors would be able to figure this stuff out just from context.  So would any reader. 

            Which, for the record, is why none of these parentheticals are actually in my script—I just added them for this example. 

            Y’see, Timmy, there are only two times to use a parenthetical.  One is if it’s life or death important to the story that this line is delivered a certain way.  If the whole film is going to fall apart if Yakko doesn’t whisper in this scene, then add a (whispered) to that line of dialogue.  Two is if I think there’s a very real chance this line could be misunderstood, even with all the context and lines before it, and the resulting misreading will destroy the entire film.

            If I’ve got a parenthetical in my screenplay, I need to think long and hard about if it meets one of these two criteria.  And then probably remove it anyway.  They’re the adverbs of screenwriting.

            10) Don’t direct—Okay, what I just said about actors hating it when you tell them how to act?  Directors loathewriters who fill up a script with directing notes.  When I fill pages with stuff like “Pan over to reveal…” or “rack to see Yakko’s expression,” directors shake their heads, cross that out, and plan how they’re going to shoot the scene.

            Like the parenthetical above, only put in direction if it’s life or death important to the film.  If the story hinges on this being a crane shot, then put in—if the story really hinges on it.  Me thinking this scene would be really cool with a crane does not make it a pivotal shot. 

            Plus, a lot of time adding direction honestly detracts from the story.  Here’s a great example—how many of you have seen Sherlock?  Remember the last moment he has alone with Irene Adler at 221B Baker Street, when they’re sitting at the fireplace and she’s trying to convince him to run away with her?  It’s pretty important that we don’t focus on what Sherlock’s doing with his hands, right?  Except if I point this out in my script, readers are going to spend the next ten pages trying to figure out what Sherlock’s doing with his hands, and that’s going to override a lot of what’s going on now.  If I hadn’t mentioned it, they wouldn’t’ve thought about it, but now it’s essentially a low-level spoiler in my own script that his hands are doing something that will matter later.  Don’t worry about that sort of thing.  By the time the readers get to the flashback and figure it out, they’ll understand that when the movie is filmed we can’t focus on his hands at that point.

            By the way, just to clarify—it doesn’t matter if I plan on directing the script myself.  The script I submit to a contest, an agent, or a producer, has to be a script for anyone.  If I’m actually going to be the director, I’ll have plenty of time later to add that stuff.  Plus I’ll have my own notebook and schedule.  For now, all those things are just taking up space on the page.

            11) VO vs. OC—Okay there’s a huge difference between voice-over and off-camera.  This is one of those little things that can get me tagged instantly as an amateur if I get them wrong.

            Voice-over(V.O.) is when someone’s talking that no one else can hear.  Announcers and narrators are usually voice-over.  Train of thought is voice-over.  “Little did he know…” tends to be voice-over.  Another good tip—I will never, ever see lips moving for a voice-over.

            Now off-camera(OC) is when someone’s talking that other characters can hear but the audience can’t see.  For example, if Phoebe’s on her phone talking to Wakko, and we hear his voice, he’s off-camera, notvoice over.  That old bit when everyone hears a voice, turns, and sees that Dot has come into the room—that’s off-camera.

            I want to use OC carefully, because too much makes it look like I’m trying to direct again (see above).  I’m not going to put it during an intercut phone call.  I don’t use it when we know Dot’s on the other side of the room but we’re not seeing her at this moment.

            12) Don’t use archaic terminology – Forsooth, whenst thou uses scrivening of yesteryore, thy words appearst equally of yesteryore. And few and far between liest those who show interest in the dry, dusty bones of a mouldering anecdote.

            Or, as we say today, no one’s interested in an old script.

            It used to be common to end every scene with CUT TO or FADE, or to end every page with (CONTINUED).  It also used to be common for the US military to have a lot of horses and bayonets.  In both instances, that hasn’t been the way it works for years.  When I started working in the film industry back in 1993, CUT TO was already dead.  (CONTINUED) was on life support, and only cropped up in very limited use. Usually for ongoing dialogue.

            If I’ve been using an old script from The Maltese Falcon, The Godfatheror Rocky to learn this terminology and formatting—I need to toss it.  The film industry grows and changes like any other industry.  If my reference script wasn’t written in the past ten years, it’s probably going to give me more bad habits than good ones.

            This is also one of the big reasons I wanted to go over all of this again. At this point, it’s been about nine and a half years since I worked in the film industry full-time. My experience is getting old, and I’m smart enough to admit that.

            Some people are not.

            Or  just don’t care as long as you’re going to pay them…

  

            13) Don’t use real celebrities as characters—A bonus point I’ve mentioned before.  I’ve read screenplays where one character ended up at a resort with Johnny Depp, another one where someone dated Carmen Electra, and a really, really creepy one about George Clooney getting involved with a producer… who happened to have the same name as the screenwriter.  Unless your movie is already in production and Helen Mirren happens to be your best friend in the world who would do anything for you, do not use her as a character in your screenplay.

            Yeah, I’m sure some of you are already calling foul.  After all, haven’t I littered the Ex-Heroes series with mentions of celebrity zombies?  Well, yes I did.  But that’s the difference between a book and a screenplay—you can still read the book if Nathan Fillion, Jessica Alba, or Alex Trebek don’t show up.  Now if someone ever decides to make a movie out of the book… well, then there’ll probably be issues. 

            Although I feel relatively safe saying Fillion would show up.

            So, thirteen tips to a more coherent, professional-looking screenplay.  I’m betting the majority of you knew most of them.  But a few of you… well, now you know.

            And knowing is half the battle.

            Next week… I wanted to talk about some very bad people and how to make them good.

            Until then, go write.

            Pop culture reference.  Long overdue, and to bring even more shame on my household, it’s kind of a repeat.  Sorry.

            Before I dive into things, I must shamefully point out that the latest book in my Ex-Heroesseries got released this week.  The marketing folks are lovely people, but they’ll be upset if I don’t mention it.  Ex-Isle is book #5 and it’s now on sale everywhere.  Check it out.

            And now, back to this week’s rant…

            This is something I’ve been meaning to talk about again for a while now.  As I mentioned, I’m kind of in a rush this week (even more on that below), so I thought this would be a good time to add in what’s more-or-less a repeat post.  At least, it is if you’ve been here since 2008…

            That being said, let’s talk about “Darmok.”

            “Darmok” was one of the first episodes of Star Trek:The Next Generation‘s fifth season.   The Enterprisevisits an alien race, the Children of Tama, which has repeatedly brought first contact attempts to a grinding halt because the universal translator can’t make sense of their language.  The Tama language can be rendered in Federation English, yes, but the words and sentence structure make no sense.  Sensing the problem that needs to be overcome, Dathon–the Tama commander—kidnaps Captain Picard to a hostile world where the two must fight together to survive.  Through their trials together, Picard comes to realize that the Tama language is not based on ideas and concepts, but on stories and metaphors.  They wouldn’t say “I’m happy,” they’d say something like “Scrooge, on Christmas morning.”  They don’t say they’re relieved to see you, they’d say “Indy, finding Marion in the tent.”  It’s been impossible to translate the Tama language literally because the Federation doesn’t share their history and folklore.

            In a way, all of us do this every day. We reference movies, TV shows, pop culture events, and then we stack and combine them. Heck, that’s pretty much what memes are.

            We also do it on a smaller scale, though.  All of us have jokes that are only understood by our family or certain circles of friends or coworkers.  Some folks crack jokes from Playboy, others from Welcome to Night Vale.  These folks obsess over Scandal and these folks watch iZombie whenever they happen to catch it.  Some people like sports, others like science.  And all of us talk about what we know and what we like.

            I worked on a set once where people commonly asked “Where’s Waldo?”  A lot of my college friends understood when you talked about Virpi Zuckk, the third Pete, and nice shoes.  Some of my best friends and I make frequent references to Pod Six,  killing Jeff, and “the girl’s evil cheater magic.”    

            Heck, even this title is an in-joke.  It’s a reference to one of the first Adult Swim cartoons, Sealab 2021. But also, when two of my friends bought a house and decided to use their sunroom as a dedicated gaming room, we all sort of universally decided to call it Pod Six.  Because it’s where we all hang out and talk in weird references that only we’re going to understand.

            See where I’m going with this?

            A common problem I see again and again in stories is oblique references and figures of speech that the reader can’t understand.  It might make sense within the writer’s personal circle or clique, but outside readers end up scratching their heads.  Several of the writers responsible for this sort of mistake will try to justify their words in a number of ways…

            First is that my friends are real people.  Therefore, people really talk this way, and there’s nothing wrong with it.  Alas, as I’ve mentioned here many times before, “real” rarely translates to “good.”  Pointing to a few of my like-minded friends and saying “well, they got it,” isn’t going to win me points with an editor.

            Second is that I’ll argue common knowledge.  I’ll try to say this material is generally known– universally known, even– and it’s the reader who is in the feeble minority by not being aware of it.  This is probably the hardest to contradict, because if somebody honestly believes that everyone should know who the U.S. Secretary of State was in 1969, there’s not much you or I can do to convince them otherwise.  It’s much more likely, in the writer’s mind, that the readers are just uneducated simpletons who never learned the ten forms of Arabic verbs, don’t collect Magic cards, and couldn’t tell you the obvious differences between Iron Man and War Machine if their lives depended on it.

            Third, usually reserved for screenplays, is the auteur excuse.  I plan on directing this script, so it doesn’t matter if no one else can understand the writing (or if there are tons of inappropriate camera angles, staging instructions, and notes for actors).  The flaw here is that my screenplay will invariably end up getting shown to someone else.   A contest reader.  A producer.  An investor.  Someone out of that inner circle of friends who needs to look at my script and understand the writing.

            Y’see, Timmy, I can’t be writing just for my five closest friends.  Not if I want to succeed as a writer.  I’m not saying my writing has to appeal to everyone and be understood by everyone, but it can’t be so loaded with in-jokes and obscure references that nobody knows what I’m talking about.

            This is one of those inherent writer skills.  Something I just need to figure out how to do on my own, mostly by reading everything I can get your hands on.  I need to know words and phrases.  I have to know them and I have to be honestly aware of who else knows them.  Using extremely uncommon terms or words may show off my bachelor’s degree and vocabulary, but the moment a reader has to stop and think about what a word or phrase means, they’ve been taken out of my story. 

            And knocking people out of my story is one of the certain ways to make sure the reader puts my manuscript down and goes off to fold laundry.

            On an unrelated note… if you’re in San Diego and happen to be reading this just as it went up, I’m going to be at Mysterious Galaxy tonight (Thursday) talking and signing copies of Ex-Isle.  And on Saturday I’ll be at Dark Delicacies in Burbank doing more of the same.  Hope to see some of you there (and if not, you can call them and order books, too).

            Next time, I’d like to talk about how ignorant some of your characters are.

            Until then… go write.