Category: subtext

            Hey, everyone.  Hope you’re all doing well after the brutal temporal shift out of Daylight Saving time.  It can be pretty rough.

            Speaking of being rough… I wanted to babble on for a couple moments about some rough types we’ve all probably run into at one point or another. And maybe even written about.

            Lots of people—including fictional people—have dealt with bullies.  They are, unfortunately, a constant across all ages, cultures, genders, sexualities, and industries.  There’s a wonderful line in Paranorman–“If you were bigger and more stupid, you’d probably be a bully too.”

            Bullies are kind of common in fiction for two reasons.  The first, the easy one, is because it’s a type of person we can all relate to.  We’ve all had to deal with  that jerk at school, at work, online, or somewhere in our lives.  And every now and then, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes not, maybe we’ve even been that person.  It’s an archetype we all know.

            The second reason is that bullies make a great low level antagonist for my protagonist to deal with.  They can drive a subplot or even just be a warm-up for the main plot.  While investigating drug smugglers or human traffickers, it’s not unusual for Jack Reacher to run into an obnoxiously stubborn town sheriff who likes to throw his weight around.  Countless villains have their lieutenants or top henchmen.  Steve Rogers had an actual bully that followed him from civilian life to boot camp… where said bully got punched out by Agent Carter.

            And that’s kind of what I wanted to talk about.  We all kind of giggle and maybe even cheer a bit when Peggy decks Hodge.  It’s a nice moment, because Hodge is an ass and flat out misogynist. 

            But what if it had gone a little differently…?

            What if Peggy decked him, and then kicked him a few more times in the ribs while he was on the ground?  Then maybe stomped on his hand to break some fingers.  Hell, maybe she stomps on his head.  Kicks him in the teeth.  Breaks his nose or maybe the orbit around his eye.

            This just became a very different scene, didn’t it?  Hodge isn’t getting his just deserts, he’s suddenly become the victim in this scenario. He punched Steve in an alley, made some crass and sexist remarks… and so Carter mauls him, possibly leaving him crippled?  Heck, does she even know he punched Steve at this point? She just put this guy in the hospital for being obnoxious to her.

            What if she’d shot him? One round to the head, right between the eyes. He smirks and then he’s dead, his brains sprayed out behind him. Or maybe she goes big—grabs a riflefrom a nearby soldier and shreds Hodge’s chest with a dozen bullets. That’s an ugly way to go, isn’t it?  Broken ribs, punctured organs, equal chance of bleeding out or drowning as your lungs fill up with your own blood…

            We can all agree this is kind of an extreme response. Hodge is an asshat, absolutely, but he doesn’t deserve this level of punishment.  Hell, if anything, we feel a twinge or two of sympathy for him.

            I’ve talked about this effect a few times before.  Something extreme happening to a character can help shape how we feel about them.  If it’s extreme enough, it might even override how we felt about them before.

            For example (flipping things again), what if Hodge was an utterly reprehensible person?  Physically and emotionally abusive to men, women, children, and animals.  Now what’s supposed to be horrible can suddenly becomes great because it’s happening to such a completely sadistic person.

            Seriously, think about it?  How often have you watched a scene of nightmarish violence in a movie and cheered—out loud or internally—because of who it’s happening to?  This isn’t horror, it’s justice.  This person deserves what’s happening to them, and we’re glad we get to read about it (or watch it).
            I’ve talked about this before, too, in regards to killing people, because this is a really common mistake I see in low-end B-movies.  As audience members (or readers), we don’t care when unlikable people die.  In fact, if someone’s aggressivelyunlikable (sexist, misogynist, racist, alcoholic, hypocritical, deliberately ignorant)…  we may even be kinda happy when they get killed off.  No amount of patting the dog will change our view on this.  And suddenly this death means something very different.  It’s not building tension in the story—it’s releasing it.

            There’s a careful balance that needs to be struck in these situations.  My bully needs to have enough unsavory traits and moments to make them a good antagonist. But if they have too many, it’ll affect how that bad scene gets received by my readers.  Likewise, if the bully isn’t that bad and catches the bad end of some truly horrific things, it’s going to make my readers empathize with them,

            Y’see, Timmy, I need to be aware of what I’m trying to accomplish with moments like this.  It can’t just be violence and/or death—there needs to be a greater purpose to it in my story.  When Carter lashes out at Hodge, do I want the audience to be rooting for Hodge or for Carter?  When Freddy Kruger murders another child, am I going for scares or for laughs?  When Jason Bourne tortures someone for information, should I be cringing or cheering?

            Because what I’m trying to achieve is going to depend on more than just that one moment.

            There’s a bully in my new book, Paradox Bound. His name’s Zeke.  He starts off as a childhood bully, ends up being an adult bully—a bad cop who abuses his position.  Alas, it happens sometimes.  We’ve all seen it, or at least heard of it.  Zeke does a lot of bad things and… well… no spoilers in case you haven’t read it, but bad things end up happening to him.

            This was a really tricky balance to achieve, though.  Y’see, in an earlier draft, we actually see Zeke violently beat a woman.  And my editor’s assistant pointed out this made it really hard for us to have any sympathy for Zeke.  And because of this, when the bad things happened to him, what I’d hoped would be a very creepy, cringe-worthy moment actually became… well, more of a “serves him right” moment.

            But Zeke needed to be a serious bully in order for other aspects of the story to work.  More than just an annoyance, we needed to believe Zeke could potentially be—on some level—an actual threat.  So there was a lot of back and forth as I tried (with some help from my editor and his assistant) to find a point where Zeke would be unlikable and dangerous… while still not coming across as so unlikable that we’d automatically cheer when something awful happened to him.

            And we found that balance.

            Find your own balance point. Make sure that when that character gets punched or tortured or killed, I’m feeling exactly what you want me to feel.

            And not… something else

            Next time…

            Y’know, nobody’s left a comment here in a while. What should I talk about next time?  Somebody offer a suggestion, just so I know I’m not ranting into the void.

            Until then… go write.

            I wanted to prattle on for a minute about a part of dialogue we ignore a lot. The unspoken part, so to speak.  Well, not so to speak.  Literally, the unspoken part.

            Wait… can something be literally unspoken in prose?

            Anyway, as I so often do… I’d like to tell you a little story.

            I was working on a movie once which had a pretty standard romantic subplot. Estranged husband and wife, pushed apart by work (he wants to stay small town, she wants to go national), and now brought back together again during a crisis.  Like so many of the lower-budget things I tended to be on, we ended up running short on time. The place they decided to tighten things up was in the reconciliation/we-still-love-each-other scene.  You know that scene, right? It’s in a bunch of stories and a lot of movies.

            The director and the two actors huddled together and started talking about how they could trim the page and a half scene without, y’know, ruining it. Were there phrases that could be combined? Maybe words that could be swapped out for… shorter words?

            At which point the lead actor suggested… “What if we didn’t say anything?”

            Which is what’s in the final movie.  You can watch it and see the one minute, one-shot scene. The two of the working together in the lab, falling right back into old habits, giving each other little appreciative glances…

            And never saying a word.

            Some folks are intent on picking “better” words and elaborate. meticulous phrasing. That gets spread as kind of a gospel.  We’ve all seen it—the people who’ll never use five words if it can be said in ten.  If there’s a longer, more roundabout way to talk about something, they’ll find it.
            But I don’t need to do this.  I’ve talked about the “less is more” idea a few times here.  A fair amount of the time I can do just as much (or more) with just a few words.  Subtext can get a point across so much stronger than the spoken (or shouted) word, and sometimes that subtext doesn’t even need dialogue.

            I know this sounds kinda weird and contradictory. I think I’ve said here two or three or forty-four times that dialogue is one of the key ways we show character, so it just feels unnatural to have characters not say anything.  Especially when there are so many cool lines and comebacks tingling on our fingertips.

            Let’s consider it, though.  How often can a grim silence have so much more impact than the longest, most detailed monologue?  Think about how flirty someone can be with just the right gesture or look.  There’s whole schools of comedy based around the idea of an awkward silence.

            And this is going to be harder to write.  I won’t lie to you.. Depending on unspoken subtext means I need to have my descriptions perfect—not one extra adverb or adjective cluttering them up and slowing them down.  It means I need to have a great sense of empathy—that I know exactly how this moment will be interpreted by everyone who reads it, and not just by a few of my friends.

            Y’see, Timmy, this kind of subtlety is what makes my writing soar.  It’s how I bring my story to life and raise it up to the next level.  I want to recognize the chance to say nothing–to use that delicate balance of silence and description and subtext–and take advantage of it.

            Or, as K.M.Weiland once put it—“Never miss a good opportunity to shut up.”

            Next time, I wanted to discuss some basic geometry.  We haven’t done that in a while.

            Until then… go write.

            It’s Valentine’s Day.  Well, almost. And any good Valentine’s Day will boil down to either love or sex.  Both, if you’re lucky.

            That being said, I thought I could use this time to talk about one of humanity’s favorite pastimes and how I can use it as a good writer.

            Apologize up front if this is a bit coarse and/ or graphic for your personal tastes.  Things may get a little NSFW this week.  I’ll try to use polite terminology where possible.  And where it isn’t, well… sorry.

            I’d like to ask you a question.  You don’t have to answer it here, but I’d like you to think about the answer in your mind.  It relates to my point this week.

            How many people have you had sex with?

            Lets take a moment while we all think about this.  For some folks, this is a very quick, easy to answer question.  For some others, there may be a small amount of finger-counting involved.  Maybe even a list. 

            And I’m betting a few of you may also be asking a common follow-up to this question, and that actually ties more into what I wanted to talk about.

            What are we counting as sex? 

            Are we strictly referring to intercourse, or are broader definitions at work here?  Does just being naked with someone count?  Only using your hands? Only using your mouth?

            Before you answer any of those, let me toss out a few of those coarse moments I warned you about. Some names/genders may have been changed or completely made up to protect the… well, innocent’s not the best word to use here, is it?  Let’s just say to protect the people involved.

            I knew a woman a few years back who’d been to bed a few times (and at least once on a couch) with other women, but staunchly insisted she wasn’t bisexual.  When I looked confused by this, she explained that she had no problem with other women doing things to pleasure her, she just didn’t like reciprocating.  Therefore, as she saw it, she wasn’t bi.

            I also had another friend who was married, but slept around a bit.  Thing is, he honestly believed he wasn’t cheating because he always, well, concluded things outside, to be polite.  He never said it in quite so many words, but after a while it became clear that was his definition of being faithful.  And since he was kind of blatant about it, I have to wonder if his wife agreed with that definition.

            And then there’s a whole school of thought in some more conservative areas of the U.S. that…  well, that sex involving a rear entry (again, to be polite) doesn’t “count” as actual sex. Both parties can do this a hundred times and, with no shame, call themselves virgins in the eyes of the Lord. 

            No, I’m dead serious.  This is an actual belief.  Google “God’s loophole.”  But you probably shouldn’t do it at work.

            For some of you, these views and beliefs might make perfect sense.  Or maybe some do and some don’t.  Or maybe you’re openly laughing at some of the mental gymnastics these folks are doing to rationalize things.

            So what’s the point of all this, besides getting the ranty blog banned from a few dozen work servers?

            Let me explain with an example.

            There’s a pretty mediocre movie called What’s Your Number?starring Anna Faris.  Anna plays Ally, a woman who sees nothing wrong with her sexual history until she reads a magazine article that points out she’s had almost double the average number of lovers for a woman her age before getting married.  At which point she becomes terrified that she may have already missed “the one,” and vows to revisit past exes to figure out who said man (or woman) is. 

            This is barely fifteen minutes of the movie, but it’s told us a bunch of stuff about Ally. It gives us a good sense of her views on sex–that she isn’t a prude, but also isn’t exactly sex-crazed.  We know she’s a bit concerned with how other people may view her, and that she’s a bit flexible about her orientation (or was, at one point).  We know she sometimes makes poor choices, like when she says she’s done sleeping with random people and then almost immediately ends up in bed with her ex-boss.  We also know she’s a bit impressionable—she feels fine about her sex life until a magazine article implies she should feel otherwise.

            So this also confirms these magazines only make you feel bad about yourself.

            Just like all of us, how my characters define, describe, and sometimes rationalize sex says something about them.  It invades their language, their behaviors, and the way they act and react to other characters.  There was a very funny moment on Orphan Black when suburban housewife Allison snidely tells her caseworker “I don’t believe I’ve ever done ‘the nasty.’”  And even if you’ve never seen the show that one response tells you a few things about Allison.

            Is it sex?  Making love?  A quickie?  A nooner?  Something a little more graphic or coarse?   There are still lots of people who wait for marriage before having sex.  Some folks only want to do it with people they’re in a serious relationship with, while others are fine with jumping someone on the first date.  And then there’s one night stands, friends with benefits, and a bunch of other situations that all boil down to sex.  Plus, views change over time and depending on the situation, too.  

            And any one of these things will tell a reader something about a character.

            Now, here’s one last  thing to keep in mind.  Just because I know Wakko never sleeps with anyone on the first date doesn’t mean I need to show a second date.  Or even a first one.  I’m not saying every short story, novel, or screenplay should have a sex scene so I can develop the characters more.   But, as I mentioned above, if I know how my character would react to such things, there’s a good chance it’s going to give me a better sense of how they’ll speak and act. 

            So go forth this weekend and have fun.  And take notes.  For writing purposes.

            And now, after all the fun sexy talk, here comes the big let down.  As usual.

            Probably going to miss next week because I have a deadline coming up and I really want to get this draft done so I have time to do one, possibly two, more before this book’s due.  So next week is all focus.

            In the meantime, if there’s a particular topic I could blab on about that interests you, please mention it in the comments below.  I like taking requests.  Makes me feel like I’m helping.

            If not, two weeks from now I’ll probably end up talking about spelling again.

            Very sorry for missing a week.  And a day.  I’m really trying to get this draft done before I have a bunch of late spring/ early summer cons.  Like next week, when I’ll be at ConDor in San Diego…

            Anyway, for today’s rant… a little storytelling history lesson.

           I’m sure most of you reading this are familiar with the classic film Satan Met a Lady.  It’s adapted from a novel, something Hollywood really did a lot of at the time (thank God that phase is over).  The story focuses on a pair of detectives who take on a simple missing persons case and  find themselves in a complicated web of double and triple-crosses involving a bunch of murderous collectors and mercenaries searching for a priceless artifact lost since the Crusades.  One of the detectives is killed and the other one ends up playing a dangerous game, bluffing the assorted treasure hunters while he tries to figure out who he can trust and how far he can trust them.

            Not ringing any bells?

            No, of course not.  Nobody ever remembers the originals, just the remake.  The third remake, in this case.  But at least this time Warner Brothers decided to stick with the title of the book—The Maltese Falcon.

            Alas, there was a slight problem… 

            The Maltese Falcon is a story chock full of adultery, violent crime, seduction, backstabbing, womanizing, and more than a sprinkling of (gasp!) homosexuality.  Today these all seem like good, wholesome American values and activities, I know.  In the early 1940s, though…

            Y’see, when Warner Brothers decided to film their now-legendary remake, Hollywood was operating under an incredibly restrictive set of rules called the Hays Code.  One way to think of it would be that the Code was Prohibition for the film industry.  It put severe and very strict limits on what could be shown or spoken about in a movie.  Swearing was not allowed, especially taking the Lord’s name in vain.  Same with drugs in pretty much any form.  Blood and violence had to be minimal.  There was a list of crimes you could only show in very specific ways (including arson, prostitution, theft, smuggling, murder, sabotage, and more).  Nudity—even suggested nudity—was right out. 

            Also, films had to be morally upright.  People had to be good or bad—no gray areas or questionable ethics.  The good guys always won, the bad guys always got what was coming to them.  No one insulted the church or the flag or anyone else’s flag.  This was not a time of moral conundrums.  Y’know, like whether or not white and black people should date…

            The thing is, though, in the end, the Hays Code really did make The Maltese Falcon a better movie… just not in the way the censors expected. 

            Unable to use graphic images or even mention certain topics out loud—such as Spade’s affair with Archer’s wife, Joe Cairo’s homosexuality, or even the extent of Gutman’s ruthlessness—the writers and filmmakers were forced to rely much more on subtlety, subtext, and implied action.  Several major events happened off-camera.  Some of the relationships are revealed in a few carefully chosen words.

            (also, fun fact—Elisha Cook Jr., the actor who played Gutman’s hired gunslinger, Wilmer, was later cast as Captain Kirk’s lawyer on one of the original episodes of Star Trek.  No, seriously. Check it out…)

            You might remember a few months back I mentioned a movie from the same era that did something similar.  Chain Gang had two rival reporters discussing whether or not they were going to blow off a court case they were covering and go have a nooner.  The woman eventually shot the man down.  Except all they really did was talk about how certain the outcome of the case was and order lunch.

            What am I getting at?

            One of my favorite shows right now, Person of Interest, recently made an interesting distinction between two of the lead characters.  Mr. Reese, the former black-ops-turned CIA assassin-turned-avenging angel, is the team’s scalpel.  Miss Shaw, the sociopathic former NSA killer, is their hammer.  This was a big moment in a somewhat uneven third season, because it finally nailed down what role each of them filled. As their employer points out, there are times you need a hammer, but there are far more times you should use a scalpel.

            These days, there’s a lot of freedom for writers.  No one telling them what works or what doesn’t.  Very little is considered taboo.  Because of this, I think, I see a lot of folks who rely on the hammer.  They’ll show all the gore.  In fact, they’ll dial the gore up to eleven.  And the sex.  Same with violence.  If I may tread on sensitive ground, rape gets used as a hammer quite often in fiction—it’s a blunt, graphic act that gets an equally blunt reaction from the reader and other characters.

            There are many times the hammer works.  The hammer tends to get an immediate emotional response.  The downside to it is that after three or four hammer blows, my target’s just not going to be feeling that much.  The very extreme nature of it means I can’t keep hammering forever without reducing things to mush.

            That’s why we have the scalpel, and why it’s good to fall back on it now and then.  Anyone can swing a hammer, but there’s a reason surgeons have several years of training before they’re set loose in an operating room.  If someone knows what they’re doing with a scalpel, well, they can keep getting a reaction out of you… pretty much forever.

            See that?  That was a scalpel moment.  I just left the implications there for you to figure out.  And the thoughts and images that cut through your mind were so much worse than anything I could’ve described.

            Y’see, Timmy, if I can train myself to use a scalpel instead of always falling back on the sledgehammer, it’s going to give my writing much more variety and depth.  It’s also going to make my readers feel smart, because the scalpel depends on them doing a lot of the work.  And they’ll like that.  Honest.

            So here’s my challenge.  Next time you sit down to write (which will either be later today or first thing tomorrow, yes?), make a point of using the scalpel.  If your story calls for a sex scene, go out of your way not to describe body parts or sounds.  If there’s a moment of gruesome horror, see what happens when you don’t use blood and gore.  If it’s a romantic conversation, try not talking about anything romantic.  See where it gets you.

            Next time, I’d like to talk about New York’s hottest club—Stufft.

            Until then, go write.

            With a scalpel.