Category: tips

May 5, 2017

Top Ten B-Movie Mistakes

            A full day late. So very sorry.  I could make excuses about surgery and blood and all that sort of stuff but… well… No, actually that’s a great excuse. And it’s the truth.  So there–I regret nothing!
            Okay, I’ve brought up a few times my Saturday viewing habits and why I do it.  After a few awful flicks last weekend, though, it struck me that a ton of B-movies tend to make the same mistakes. I mean, they all usually have a unique way of doing it, but they all tend to go wrong in a lot of the same ways.
            And I say a lot of this as a guy who hasn’t just watched a lot of B-movies (and read a lot of scripts), but worked on many as well.  I saw a lot of these mistakes happen in real time.  Sometimes inherent flaws or technical issues, but many other times it was story elements that could’ve been fixed with very little work.
            No, nobody listened to me then, either.
            Of course, this is also true of a lot of stories in general.  They all tend to go wrong in similar ways.  That’s kinda how this big pile of rants got started.
            So, even if you’re not interested in screenwriting, there’s probably a helpful thought or two in here somewhere for you.
            Okay, top ten B-movie mistakes starts with…
# 10– Bad directing
            Let’s just get this one out of the way, because it’s the easy one.  This’ll be a horrible blow to anyone who likes auteur theory, but the simple truth is there are a lot of professional directors out there who have no clue what they’re doing.  None.  Yes, even some directors you’ve heard of.  They have no business sitting in a director’s chair.  Even one they bought at Target and keep on their back porch.  They have no concept of narrative, continuity, pacing, anything. 
            And I’m not just pulling this opinion out of my butt.  I worked with a lot of truly fantastic, brilliant directorsduring my time in the industry, but I also worked with some really awful ones.  And friends shared stories of awful ones they’d worked with.  It’s a lot more common (and widely known in the industry) than most film professors would like their students to believe.
            My point is, the director’s the one determining how the story is being told. Their job is to interpret the story on the page into a visual story on the screen, and the best story can be ruined by a bad storyteller.  How often have we seen a book or movie that had such a cool idea or interesting character… and it was just wasted?
# 9– Looking down on genre stories

           Lots of B-movies have kind of an ugly cynicism to them.  I’ve seen this on a few projects—directors, writers, or producers (or some mix thereof) who think they’re too good for the story they’re working on at the moment.  I was on a sci-fi project where the production designer wanted to do something glaringly inaccurate because he felt it looked better.  His justification?  “Who’ll know?”

            I’ve heard people say they might try writing romance because it’s “so easy,” or fantasy because “you can just make it all up.”  These are simplistic, demeaning ways to look at these genres, and that sort of scorn’s always going to show in the storytelling. It doesn’t matter if it’s the latest hot thing—if I don’t like it, don’t have a background in it, don’t really want to do it… it’s probably not going to turn out that great.
# 8– Too Much Stuff
            D’you ever play Dungeons & Dragons when you were young?  Remember that one kid (we all knew this kid) who got so excited to be Dungeon Master, and made that awesome dungeon with five liches and ten silver dragons and twenty gold dragons and thirty minotaurs all wearing +3 plate armor and using +5 flaming axes and a hundred zombies and Demogorgon and half the Norse gods and…
            You remember that, right?
            Some B-movies get like that.  The filmmakers have too many ideas—way more than their budget or schedule allows—and they try to stick them all into the story.  Every cool idea from every other cool story, sure to be just as cool here, right?
            Truth is, they almost never are.  All these extra ideas just end up being under-developed distractions at best.  And at the worst, well…
# 7– Wasting Time
            Okay, this is kinda related to the last  point.  The flipside of it, really.
            There are a couple shortcuts people use in storytelling to make us like characters.  There’s one called “saving the cat” that you’ve probably heard of.  There’s also giving someone a backstory that connects them to another character.  And there’s banter and bickering and all sorts of little dialogue tricks.

             Thing is, in the limited space of a movie script, all these things need to be serving a purpose.  If that touching backstory doesn’t come into play somehow, it’s just five minutes of filler I could’ve spent on something else… like the plot.  Maybe ten or fifteen minutes when we add up everyone’s touching backstories.  There’s nothing wrong with a well-rounded character, but we want those curves to go with the flow of the story, not against it.

#6– Bad action
            We’ve all seen this one, right?  The awkwardly-slow fight scenes.  The medium-speed chase that drags on waaaaaay too long.  The melodramatic challenge that clearly didn’t need to happen.  Or just shouldn’t’ve happened.
            Action gets seen as filler a lot, and it doesn’t help that a lot of gurus teach it that way.  “Hit page 23, action beat. Hit page 42, action beat.”  There’s nothing wrong with action, but bad action hits worse than just about anything, especially in the visual storytelling format of movies.  If it drags on the page, it’s not going to be better when we film it.
            Think of scale, too.  It’s always better to have a small, well-done action scene than a sprawling, poorly-executed one.  I can relate to two people fighting so much better that two gangs of sixty people each slamming together.

#5– Not knowing what genre my story is
            I worked on a B-level sex-revenge-thriller once, and the director was convinced he was making a noir mystery.  I’ve seen sci-fi and fantasy movies that were done as horror films, and vice versa.  Heck, I’ve written stories where I’d planned it as one thing, and realized halfway through it was something very different.
            I just talked about this a few weeks ago, so I won’t go into it too much here. To sum up quick if you don’t want to hit the link, all genres have certain expectations when it comes to tone, pacing, and even structure.  If I’ve got a story in one genre that I’m telling with the expectations of another, there’s going to be a clash. And that clash probably won’t help my storytelling.
#4– Killing the wrong people
            Okay, so there’s always going to be collateral damage in stories—especially action stories. The nameless bystander who catches a bullet.  The dozens of office workers crushed when a giant monster slams into their building.  The person who dies in the early weeks of the epidemic.
            Thing is, by nature of being collateral damage, the story doesn’t focus on these people and their deaths don’t really register with the audience or within the plot.  And they shouldn’t. That’s what collateral means after all—they’re secondary. Not as important.
           I’ve mentioned before the awful habit of introducing characters for no purpose except to kill them.  We meet Phoebe, get five minutes of backstory and –bang- dead without moving the plot forward an inch.  Because Phoebe was never part of the plot, she was just there to wear a bikini top and let the FX crew show off.  That kind of thing is wasting time, as I just mentioned above.
            The only thing worse than this is when it’s time for the heroic sacrifice… and my hero doesn’t make it.  A minor character steps forward to leap into the monster’s mouth or climb up to connect that last cable to the junction box, even though the power flowing through it could kill him.  So the “hero” sits and watches while someone else saves the day.
            Why are they the hero…?
#3– Showing the wrong thing
            This comes up so often it’s sad.  It kinda falls under bad directing, but I’ve  seen it many times where it was clearly a problem inherent in the story.  Sometimes a story keeps pushing X in our face when we really want to see Y.  Or Z.  Sometimes the story calls for Y to be the center of focus, but we still keep seeing X.
            I saw a B-movie recently that didn’t show the love interest’s face until almost twenty minutes into the film.  The movie kept having clever angles and shots… but it didn’t show her face.  Watched another one where the monster was revealed in a horrible panning shot that racked to it in the background.  In both of these cases, we were seeing the wrong thing—or the right thing the wrong way.
            I’ve talked about subtlety, using the scalpel vs. the sledgehammer.  That’s part of this, too.  Sometimes there’s a reason we’re seeing a swirling mass of blood and gore, but all too often… it’s just because the storyteller doesn’t know what else to show us.
#2– Horrible dialogue
           In any storytelling medium, bad dialogue makes for unbelievable characters.  If I can’t believe in the characters, I can’t believe in the story.  If I can’t believe in the story… well, that’s kind of it, isn’t it?
            So many movies have painfully bad dialogue.  Arguments for no reason. Awful technobabble.  Annoying characters who won’t stop talking. And sometimes—too much of the time—it’s just bad.  It’s awkward, clumsy dialogue that sounds more like people reciting prepared statements than, well, talking.
            Bad dialogue always drives me nuts because it means the storytellers have no idea how human beings talk or sound. It’s a massive failure of empathy, and that lack of empathy almost always shows up elsewhere.  I’ve never, ever seen a story with bad dialogue that excelled everywhere else. This almost took the #1 slot.
            But, the number one thing B-movies tend to screw up…

#1– Who am I rooting for?
            This is the killer. This one brings so many B-movies to a grinding halt. 
            I’ve seen sooooooo many movies with absolutely no likable characters.  Everyone’s self-centered or obnoxious, idiot or arrogant.  They’re just awful, sometimes disgusting people. All of them.  The bad guys and the good guys.  People start dying and I’m honestly not sure if I’m supposed to be sad or cheer.
            If I’m going to sit here for ninety minutes—and remember the story afterwards–I need a reason to follow someone besides “they’re the main character.”  I need to like them and I need to be able to identify with some aspect of their personality.  The story needs to have someone I actually care about, because if it doesn’t I just won’t care if they win or lose. And if I don’t care about that… well…
            Game over, man.
           So there you have it. My top ten B-movie flaws, based on years of awful movie watching. And reading. And making.
            Feel free to offer one or two of your own.
            And then go write.
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April 6, 2017 / 1 Comment

Can You Describe the Suspect?

            So, a friend of mine gave me a book a while back…
            Okay, gave might be the wrong word.  I think she got rid of the book and I happened to be the unlucky recipient, like a bottle imp or that sexually-transmitted monster in It Follows.  She needed it out of her life, I just happened to conveniently be there at the right time. It was nothing personal.
            Anyway…
            The first page of the book was nothing but exposition about the main character’s backstory. Exquisite, laboriously crafted, meticulous exposition.  Where she grew up. How she grew up. Facts about her mother, father, and brother. 
            Page two was her life as a child, a teen, and a blossoming adult.  Favorite toys, sports, and fashions.  Random crushes. Assorted adventures.
            Page three was the college years.  Classes she liked and didn’t. Boys she liked and didn’t.  Women she liked and didn’t.  Intellectual growth, sexual discovery, more fashion, and a tiny bit of body modification which would lead to arguments with her parents.
            Page four was after college. The new job. New fashions.  Being an amateur athlete. Competing in the office and out on the street. Getting better. Moving up the ladder, seeing big things in her future at the job and the sport.
            Page five was the accident. The long, drawn out accident.  Gruesome details of it as it happened.  More gruesome details as doctors took drastic action to prevent further damage.  Some of this spilled onto page six.
            Most of six and seven were recovery. Coming to terms with her new life.  Depression. Self loathing.  Breaking up with Chris.  Purging everything that reminded her of who and what she used to be. Getting rid of so many favorite clothes and shoes.  Won’t be needing shoes anymore. More sulking and self loathing.
            On page eight— we introduced the next character.
            By sheer coincidence, page eight is also where I stopped reading.
            Seven pages of long, rambling sentences showing off an impressive vocabulary, but all of it telling the story, not one line of it showing anything.  Nothing actually happened, I just got told a bunch of stuff that had happened in the past.  There wasn’t even any dialogue in all of that.  None.  After all the clothes talk, I could probably tell you how many days the main character’s bra and underwear matched, but I didn’t have the slightest clue what kind of voice she had.  Or anyone around her.
            Hell, you probably started skimming all that, right?  And that was just me describing what the book was describing.
            A common problem for all writers is when description gets too excessive.  I get caught up in giving all the details and nuances of this person I fleshed out in my character sketch.  Or mentioning every detail of that period furniture and firearms I spent three days researching.  Or maybe just taking all those little things I noticed on my hike through the woods and putting every one of them down on the page.
            And at some point, while I’m pouring all this magnificent stuff out, I lose track of the fact that somebody’s going to have to read all this.  And since most readers are more interested in the plot and story–the active elements of my writing—odds are they’re going to start skimming after the fourth or fifth flowery description they’ve come to realize has no bearing on the story. 
            So, maybe I should question why I’m including stuff my readers are just going to gloss over. Most semi-decent storytellers would.  Alfred Hitchcock once said that drama is life with all the dull bits cut out.  Elmore Leonard said he leaves out all the parts people would skip anyway.
            Excessive description that serves no purpose… serves no purpose.  That’s all there is to it.  And, no, “art” isn’t a purpose.  If I’m going to spend seven pages describing Phoebe’s wardrobe through the first twenty-six years of her life, everything that happens in the rest of the book better hinge on those clothing choices.
            (Bonus tip–this kind of overwriting is deadly in scripts.  By its very nature, screenwriting is a very concise, minimal form of storytelling.  A sure way to get rejected from a contest is to put in piles of description that just shouldn’t be there.)
            Now, I’d like to mention another issue with massive over-description.  We all tend to form our own mental pictures of people and objects in stories.  My lovely lady and I were chatting once about Jack Reacher, the Lee Child character, and realized we both had very different ideas about what he looked like.  I get notes from people all the time about how this cover got Stealth wrong or Cerberus doesn’t look like that.
            That’s part of the joy of books.  We can all have our own image of characters like Stealth or James Stark or Kincaid Strange or Sinjir Rath Velus.  In that little movie theater inside our skulls, they have a certain look and sound that’s special just to us.  And nothing’s more distracting than to be constantly reminded of all the many details that don’t match up with that mental picture we’ve already formed.
            Okay, one last thing…
            There’s a flipside to description, and that’s when I never actually describe anything.  Sometimes this is an attempt to invoke mystery or suspense.  Other times it’s a way to evoke an emotional response with a clever metaphor or simile (when the knife sinks into your gut and it’s like every painful sensation in your life got balled up, hammered flat, and pushed up under your ribs). 
            And sometimes… well, sometimes it’s just a cheat.  I can try to avoid the monster for as long as possible, which helps build suspense and dread, but eventually I need to say what it is.  It’s not uncommon for a writer to try to find a way around an actual description at this point.  After all, I’ve been talking about how fantastic the Hypotheticoid is for three-quarters of the manuscript now, and my description of it may not live up to all that hype.
            But I still need to describe it.
            So, here’s an easy tip.  It’s so easy I bet half of you will shake your head and ignore it.  And some of you are probably already doing this without thinking about it.
            If I’m going to describe something… I need a reason to describe it.  That’s all. I need a reason for the level of detail I’m using.  The cashier at WalMart and a medical examiner can both see a bullet hole in a person’s head, but they’re both going to view it very differently.  And if it takes me three paragraphs to explain what the cashier sees, what am I going to need for the medical examiner?
            If I’m going to describe a character, I should have a reason for doing it.  I can’t describe the last police officer I dealt with, but I can give a lot of details about the last few people I went out to dinner with.  I’m betting nobody here can list everyone they crossed paths with the last time they were in a grocery store.  Oh, one or two might stand out, but let’s face it… there were probably dozens of people there.  
            And they just weren’t important in the long run.  
            Y’see, Timmy, if I waste my descriptions on the little things, they won’t have any weight when I get to the big things.  Because by then my readers will already be conditioned to skim my descriptions because they don’t matter.  And once readers are just skimming…
            Well, then I’ve got nothing.
            Now go write.
adjectivesdescriptionexpositiongoyerHitchcockLeonardtips
March 28, 2017 / 2 Comments

Con Etiquette, Pt I

             D’you see what I did there…?
            So, Emerald City Comic Con was a few weeks back,  Wondercon’s this weekend, and we’re kinda lunging full force into the spring con season (followed by the summer con season, the fall con season…).  I think I may be doing eight or nine cons this year, which may be a new record for me.
            I love cons.  I think I went to my first convention, in Boston, for my thirteenth or fourteenth birthday. I met artist/writer Dave Cockrum (who gave young me some career advice), a few Marvel editors, and Matthew Waterhouse (who played Adric on Doctor Who back in the day).  And we won’t talk much about when that was, but I’m pretty sure Reagan was president at the time…
            Over the past couple of years, though, I’ve been seeing conventions in a whole new way.  I started going as a vendor, hawking my books to whoever I could attract over to my little folding table.  Nowadays I’ve hit the point where more of my con time is panels and signings.  If I happen to be at a table, it’s not quite so much work to get somebody to talk to me.
            Anyway, while my experience isn’t exactly overwhelming, I thought it might be cool to toss out a couple of convention tips I’ve gleaned over my years of con-going, seeing things from a few different angles.  But I thought I’d divide them up a bit.  Today I’ll talk about attending cons as a fan, next week as a vendor, and that last week I’ll talk about the holy grail—being a guest of the con.
            Sound interesting?
            Well, good.  ‘Cause that’s how I’m doing it.
            Let’s start with the basic form of con-attendance—as a fan.

1) Be aware of my surroundings – Soldiers and police have a great term called situational awareness.  Really simply put, it means I’m being constantly aware of what’s going on around me and how it might affect me… or vice-versa.

            This ability can make me a convention ninja, no joke.
            If I’m going to wander around the con for a day, I should at least try to be aware of the other people around me.  At a crowded convention, all it takes is one person who decides to stop in the middle of a busy aisle or intersection.  I don’t want to be the person everyone’s glaring at… or deliberately slamming their shoulder into.
            Another factor here—what have I brought for bags?  We all have something at cons. I generally just have a messenger bag, but lots of folks have whatever big bag they’re handing out with passes.  I’ve even seen a couple folks wearing backpacks that are probably larger than you’d need to spend a summer backpacking in Europe. There’s nothing wrong with any of these, I just need to be aware of how much space they take up. Suddenly those random stops or turns make me a serious menace (and a major annoyance).
            Also, most cons are going to have limited dining facilities.  I really shouldn’t camp out for an extra hour after I’m done eating.  I know this is a tough one, because so many big cons—looking at you, SDCC—have very, very limited places to stop and rest.  Once I actually score a table, there’s a mad desire to hang onto it as long as possible. I just need to remember—everyone else wandering around feels exactly the same way.
2) Be respectful of everyone’s time—Most con events are timed one way or another.  Panels and autograph sessions are rarely more than an hour.  Even vendor interactions don’t last long—they’re generally trying to manage a large area and juggle numerous potential clients at once.
            If I’m spending five minutes at the microphone or in front of a line or even in front of somebody’s booth… that’s a big chunk of time. We’ve all been there when that guy gets up in front of the panel and talks for three minutes before getting to his question.  I’ve seen people argue their case for submitting book manuscripts and art samples at publisher’s booths, no matter how often the random marketing intern has to explain they’re not the person for that.  I’ve watched people stand dead center in front of a booth, talking to the vendor for ten minutes, then admit they don’t have any money.
3) Don’t be creepy—Okay, I know this is a tough one because nobody… okay, most people don’t think they’re being creepy. Just remember—not everybody likes it. No, it doesn’t matter what kind of con it is.  I just really need to be honest with myself when I engage with cosplayers, vendors, professionals, con staff. How am I coming across? 
            No, not in a perfect world, in this world. How are people going to react to what I’m saying or doing?  Is that woman reallygoing to be happy I wrapped myself around her or pinched her ass? Is that vendor really going to be pleased that I stood by his booth breathing heavily for twenty minutes? Is it okay that I keep staring at that woman’s cleavage?
            Yes, a lot of these involve women—go figure!  It’s kinda sad how many times this has to get brought up.  No staring, no touching, no rude comments.  If I’m trying to justify how whatever I’m about to say or do is okay… I’m probably doing something creepy.
             Seriously, don’t be creepy. 

4) Remember, everyone here is human—Yes, even that artist/writer/actor I’ve worshipped as my personal god/dess for the past five/ten/twenty years.  Some people aren’t dealing well with the crowd.   Some need to hydrate.   Some people need a drink of the other variety.  Some folks are just tired—cons can be exhausting.  Maybe they’ve answered that same question I just asked fifty times today.
            If someone seems annoyed or they get a little short with me, I should try to give them the benefit of the doubt before tweeting about what a horrible person they are.  Granted, maybe they are a horrible person—they’re out there, sure—but there’s a good chance they’re just kinda burned out.
            And let’s not also forget that… well, maybe I already messed up one or two of those first three rules.
            So there’s that.  Four simple rules that can make me a lot more popular at  a convention. Or, at the very least, not as annoying.
            Remember them at Wondercon.
            And come back in a couple days for my next pearl of writing wisdom.
            Until then, go write.
conventionsempathySDCCtips
March 21, 2017 / 5 Comments

Scribbling

            Okay, so here’s a simple tip. One you’ve probably heard before.  One you’ve probably ignored until it’s too late.
            Always carry a notebook.
            Now, I know what some of you are thinking.  A notebook.  How quaint.  How 19th century.  What a delightful little writery affectation.  I’m too young and vibrant to forget things.  I’ve trained my mind to function like a steel trap!
            Yeah. 
            You’ll forget stuff.
            Back when I was in college, I was trying to write and drifting back and forth between a werewolf detective novel and another one I’ve mentioned here called The Trinity, about rival immortals.  And I also had this idea dancing in my head.  A scene with a few snippets of dialogue.  Something about it called to me.  Tickled me.  Gnawed at me.  It was one of those things I kept playing with, spinning it different ways, trying to find just how and where it would fit in a story.  Or maybe a story that fit around it.
            So one night I was talking with a friend down at the dorm security desk and somehow ended up talking to a foreign exchange student. For, like, two hours.  There at the desk. I don’t remember much about her except she had an amazing accent,very clever (hey, we talked for two hours), and was kinda stunning in that casual way some women pull off really well.
            And about halfway through this conversation, I suddenly realized where that little scene fragment fit. Something she said flipped it around and I suddenly knew justhow this would work in a story. How it would be the seed of an entire powerful, amazing book.
            But… I was having a fascinating conversation with an attractive foreign exchange student.  I didn’t want to break that off.  Besides—there was absolutely no wayI’d forget an idea this good.
            Reader… I forgot it.
            To this day, my most solid memory of that night is the sheer joy of knowing I’d figured out how to perfectly use that idea.  I don’t remember how.  Or the exchange student.  But I remember how thrilled I was, knowing I’d finally get to use that idea.
            I just don’t remember how.
            Write it down.  On a notepad. On your computer. On your arm. On your phone (there’s usually a notepad app, and there are some great ones out there you can grab cheap).  Doesn’t matter if it’s an idea, an editing note, a clarification—always write it down somewhere.
            But don’t tell yourself you’ll remember it.
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