Category: Spider-Man

I’d like to start by telling you about my one of my favorite film edits of all time. Top five, easy. It’s a single, straight cut between one scene and the next and it’s beyond brilliant. There’s a simply unbelievable amount of character and plot development in it. No joke, it’s a level of storytelling that most filmmakers and authors (self included) don’t have a prayer of ever achieving. I say this with complete and utter sincerity.

And Sam Raimi did it in a Spider-Man movie.

You probably know the moment. Struggling student/ photographer/ superhero (shhhhh) Peter Parker has just been introduced to physicist/ genius/ role model Otto Octavius. Otto takes a moment to criticize Peter for his laziness, but they warm up to each other as Peter makes some insightful observations about Otto’s new fusion reactor. Then Peter asks a question and Otto answers it as they finish off dinner at Otto and Rosie’s apartment later that night.

D’you know that moment? Seriously, go watch it if you don’t. Alfred Molina’s freakin’ amazing as Doctor Octopus.

Anyway, point is, we instantly know what happened during that cut. All of it. We understand how the discussion went. How they ended up back here. How their views of each other have changed over the past few hours. Yeah, it’s clearly been hours and we all know exactly what happened during them.

And just to be clear for those of you who might like to look down on superhero movies, none of this is because of pre-existing knowledge. Raimi and screenwriter Alvin Sargent were going in an all-new direction with Otto’s backstory and how it overlapped with Peter’s. They’d never been seen in this way before.

How many pages of storytelling did they fit into that cut?

Maybe a better way to look at it is, how many script pages did the movie not need because of that cut?

Truth is, most of us are pretty smart. We can figure out what goes between A and C. And between X and Z. As writers, we don’t always need to fill in every detail. Especially all the boring details. There’s lots of stuff we can skip over without hurting our story in the slightest. In a lot of cases, it’ll even make our story better.

I think this works on both a micro and a macro level. On the micro level, I’m talking about clauses and sentences and maybe paragraphs. I’ve talked in the past once or thrice about trimming away excess details. Steps in the process. Parts of the routine. Things the majority of readers will figure out happened. To put it another way, the thing that happens between A and B.

On the macro level, I’m talking about scenes or story beats or maybe even whole chapters. It’s the same idea as the micro, except we (the writers) have taken it even further, adding more details and nuance to what was already… well, unnecessary details. I’ve cut multiple pages and even whole chapters out of manuscripts once I realized the whole thing was a beautifully rendered and detailed scene that ultimately just wasn’t necessary.

And I’m sure someone just read that and said “whoa whoa WHOA! What about the art?! If that chapter’s beautifully written, isn’t that reason enough for it to be in the book?”

Well… no, to be honest. Don’t get me wrong. I love a beautiful turn of phrase or exquisite prose as much as the next guy. Probably more. I’ve read some things where other writers choose the absolutely perfect word or come up with a beautiful description and all I can say is “goddamn.” And sometimes “I’m jealous as all hell.”

The catch, of course, is those words are all describing something that needs to be in the story. It’s an aspect of writing I’ve mentioned once or thrice before. Just because something’s good doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good for my book. Something can be fantastic and still just not belong in there. For any number of reasons.

F’r example, one or two of you may have read a book called Paradox Bound. And you may have heard that, in the first draft my editor saw, I had a full chapter describing Eli’s bus trip across America after he flees the Faceless Men. It was about seven or eight single-spaced pages. And it was about Eli seeing the bigger world for the first time. The assorted people on the bus. The places they briefly stopped. The food he ate for a three day bus-ride, Sleeping sitting up. Wearing the same clothes for three days. And some clever observations about life and humanity and mass transit scattered in there too.

But ultimately, when viewed as part of the whole story, absolutely none of this mattered. It was about Eli getting on a bus in Boston and getting off a bus in Pasadena. All that quiet stuff in between… well, you would’ve just assumed most of that happened. Seriously. What else would he do on a bus for three days? How much of it would’ve been painfully obvious once he stepped off the bus?

Here are three general rules of thumb I’ve developed for myself when it comes to such things. I generally cut something if…

1) The average person would know, or logically assume, B had to happen between A and C. If my character leaves work and the next time we see her she’s arriving home with a Jack in the Box takeout bag, do you immediately assume I made a big continuity error? “She didn’t have that bag when she left work!!!” Or do you just assume she stopped at Jack in the Box on the way home? We make these kind of cuts all the time. We don’t show people traveling between two points. They go to the gym and suddenly they’re in workout clothes. We see two folks sneak upstairs at the house party and then suddenly they’re in bed– flopped on their backs, breathless, and (hopefully) looking kind of happy. None of us have any confusion about what we “missed” in any of these examples.

2) If B is completely irrelevant to A and C. We can safely assume it happened during the timeline of the story (see above rule), but it has no effect whatsoever on the tale I’m telling. Perfect example of this– how many books have you read that take place over three or four or more days? Probably a lot of them, yes? If anything, a story taking place entirely in one day is a bit of a rarity.

How many times have you read about someone using the bathroom? It’s something we all inherently know happens, but we also know it’s just not that important to most stories. So we don’t question when it’s not there. Same with eating. Did these people really go for a week without eating? Or did the author just not bother showing it and save a page or two?

3) If it just works better without it. Because sometimes it does. The paragraph reads better, the action flows better, the horror has a little more punch. Sometimes I don’t want to get bogged down in the details, and neither does my reader. And as I’ve been saying above, if people are probably going to figure it out anyway, why bog things down? To paraphrase a famous lawyer, we could skip all that and just, well… get to the good stuff.

And to repeat, all three of these are just rules of thumb. It’s not hard to find examples of some beautiful writing that contributes absolutely nothing to the plot or story. But I feel safe saying it’s also not all that common.

Y’see, Timmy, if I trust my audience to figure this stuff out on their own, they’ll appreciate that trust. They’ll know I trusted them to fill in the blanks. And when they figure something out on their own, even a little thing, they’ll love what they’re reading even more.

So look back over your manuscript, go over some of those beats… and maybe give your readers the benefit of the doubt.

Next time, unless anyone’s got a better idea, I’d like to talk about this personal teleporter I invented.

Until then, go write.

Okay, now back into it for real.

I haven’t done one of these in a while, so forgive me if I’m a little rambly to start.

There’s a dialogue issue that I’ve seen pop up in books and movies and comics, and it was something I’ve never been able to pin down. It was one of those things where I could tell the story was kind of losing its way, but I couldn’t figure out why. Definitely wouldn’t be able to explain it. What was the common thread? Why did the dialogue go from good (or at least adequate, in some cases) to eye-rolling?

And then, as so often happens in nature, a pterodactyl brought a bundle of enlightenment to my doorstep.

Two months ago I was watching this Saturday geekery movie about a group of women who were getting out of the city for what was supposed to be a bachelorette weekend and had instead turned into a “that cheating bastard didn’t deserve you” weekend. A lot of initial, awkward conversations about was it him, was it me, why didn’t I see it sooner, usually cut off by none of that, let’s drink, look, that park ranger’s checking you out. And then, y’know, pterodactyls attacked. As they do. So now this weekend in the mountains is a battle for survival.

Except…

Every time the women ended up somewhere—in a car, in a cabin, hiding behind a boulder, whatever—the conversation would drift back to was it him, was it me, why didn’t I see it sooner. Long conversations about that relationship, and relationships in general and that cheating bastard. And not, y’know, the pterodactyls stomping across the roof or gathered outside the cave or tearing apart the park ranger on the front lawn. Seriously, this happened again and again and again. Not the park ranger, the conversation thing.

It was then that enlightenment struck.

But first, one quick-but-related segue, since it’s been a while…

An idea I’ve brought up here several times is plot vs story. Plot is external. It’s what’s going on outside my characters. Story is internal. It’s all the things inside my characters that they’re dealing with.

It’s also worth noting that plot is active while story tends to be reactive. Plot is things happening, story is how my characters deal with those things and are shaped by them. My characters respond to events based on who they are, but the outcomes affect how they respond to future events. A fancier term for this is a character arc.

So the story advances the plot while the plot advances the story. When it’s done right it’s a beautiful, symbiotic relationship between the two elements, each one lifting the other to new heights. As all the links in these past few paragraphs imply, it’s something I’ve talked about a few times.

Also—one last bit—you may have heard something like this before but your college literary professor insisted “story” actually refers to the driving narrative of the protagonist as seen through the lens of something. Cool. Whatever. If you want to call these two concepts yin and yang or fabula and sjuzhet or Mirabel and Bruno, that’s all great. Whatever works for you. Don’t get hung up on what we’re calling it and ignore the idea behind it.

Okay, got all that? Cool. Let’s get back to the pterodactyls.

So in the situations I described above, there are clear, active plot events going on, but the characters are using this time to talk about our heroine’s story. Yeah, the park ranger’s being torn apart outside but what if this means I’ll never get married? I mean, so many of my relationships go bad like this. They always have, ever since high school.

And if that made you smile a little bit, the funny part is I’m not exaggerating. That’s exactly how it happened in the movie. That was the actual topic of discussion during that specific event.

Now, granted, it’s an extreme example. And I understand why this particular group of filmmakers did it. To be honest, I’ve seen them do it a lot on a few different projects. They’ve created a plot they can’t actually put on film, for whatever reason, so they’re trying to fill space with all these random deep, emotional, and completely unbelievable conversations.

But I think that’s not why this gear-shift feels so inherently fake. I mean, people talk about weird things at weird times. We laugh at odd moments. We finally remember the thing and blurt it out at a perhaps inappropriate time. There’s nothing wrong with doing it now and then. Although I’m sure the park ranger would appreciate maybe being a little more the center of attention during this difficult time for him.

So here’s my new rule of thumb for you. Not a law, not an ironclad thing that applies to every single situation. But I think it’s a good rule of thumb to keep in mind when characters start giving monologues.

Talking about plot feels honest. Talking about story feels contrived.

It makes sense when characters talk about plot. We accept it. Of course they’ll be talking about the things going on around them, the events that will have an affect on them or other people. This is believable dialogue.

On the flipside, when characters talk about story–when they’re talking more about what’s going on inside them than what’s going on around them–it often feels wrong.. Bringing up all that internal stuff, forcing it out into the world, it tends to feel… well, forced. Unnatural. Especially when none of it relates to current events.

NOW… before anyone rushes angrily to the comments to correct me, toss out an example, and point out how awesome it is when characters talk about their feelings, I’d like to point out two things. One is what I just said a minute ago. This is a rule of thumb. It’s a guideline. All writing advice is iffy at best, and I’m openly telling you this one’s a little more iffy than most.

Second is that, in most our favorite books and movies, when characters are talking about their inner feelings and conflicts, they’re using that wonderful tool we call subtext. Chris isn’t talking about their feelings, ha ha ha, no. They’re talking about the carwash, and how great it’s going to be when the mortgage is paid off and we can all, y’know, work on other things. And if Sam wants to stick around to help run the carwash, I mean, yeah, sure, that’d be, yeah, great. Cool.

Want a solid example? In Spider-Man: Homecoming, when Tony Stark tells Peter Parker to hand over his suit, is Peter actually worried about losing the suit? I mean, he still has his old, homemade one. And the web fluid and the shooters, those are his own design. As we see later, he can still fight crime, just like he did before Stark came knocking. So losing the suit can’t really be that big a deal, right?

Except we all understand this scene isn’t actually about the suit. It’s about Peter being terrified his future is suddenly slipping away from him. He’s a poor, nerdy kid from Queens who had a shot at the big leagues, at having Tony’s approval, of being part of Stark Industries and part of the Avengers, at finally being—in his mind—someone who matters. And suddenly it’s all being taken away.

But Peter doesn’t talk about being scared. He talks about the suit. And how he’ll be nothing without it.

So if I’ve got a character about to deliver a heartfelt monologue about their inner feelings and desires and conflicts… maybe I should pause and look at it again. Yeah, there’s a chance it’s perfect as is. This is one of those cases when someone can flat-out say exactly what they’re feeling with no subtext and it sounds fantastic

But maybe—especially if I’m doing this two or three or four times—it’d be better if a lot of it was implied rather than explicitly said. Maybe I could bring it out it with some plot-relevant subtext. Or maybe I could show it with their actions and decisions. Story advancing the plot and all that.

Because it just makes people uncomfortable when we talk about that stuff.

Next time, unless anyone has some other suggestions, I thought I’d blather on a bit about that other type of structure.

Until then… go write.

(wow, haven’t said that in a while)