Writtenwyrdd

The flavor of a culture, or a truism? (repost)

Reposted from February 24, 2008

"There was a great simplicity and openness of character about the Gauls, a love of liberty and a generous sympathy with the oppressed.  They scorned surprises and strategems in war, trusting only to strength and valour.  This absense of craft was indeed one of the reasons why they succumbed to the Romans so much sooner and more easily than the Spaniards.  The conquest of Gaul was begun about a century later than that of Spain, but it was concluded earlier.  For the Spaniard kept up a scattered guerilla warfare, protecting himself in his mountains, whereas the Gaul came on with fire and fury, and shattered his whole strength at once against the Roman legions.  Another reason for the comparatively easy subjugation of the Gauls lay in their inability to combine.  Their internal animosities were of more importance to them than the exclusion of the foreigner." De Bello Gallico, According to the Text of Emanuel Hoffman via Google book search. (footnotes and bibliographical refs are omitted)

Does this sound familiar?  I'd bet it does if you have read ANY epic fantasy or military SF! 

First published in 1898, this tome talks about the Gauls and their conquest by the Romans. 

However, from Lord of the Rings to many of the recent epic fantasies I've read, the dynamics are remarkably similar. 

Which tells us something about epic fantasies.  Either the cultures we prefer to see in them are divisive and troublemaking, or this rather ubiquitous social dynamic of divisiveness and inner cultural conflict obscuring threats from outside is a pervasive human condition. 

I rather think the latter.  How do you weigh in on this? 

In terms of writing, though, the loosely connected tribal society that can't get its act together because of internal conflict is rather useful from a plot conflict perspective.  A major obstacle to overcome!

Happy writing!

The muddle in the middle

Jen Debenedictus has a great article on middles and such.  Check it out here.

Plot, the perpetual need to overthink it, and some simple ways to get a handle on the plot monster

"Contrary to many general-purpose dictionaries, a plot is not the main story of a work. A plot is the series of events providing conflict within a story. The search for a murderer is a plot. Surviving a natural disaster is a plot. A plot can be summarized without specific names or settings. (Do not argue with teachers about this… plot is whatever they want it to be!)

The plot is sometimes called the “spine” of a story. The plot is the action, while the story is the emotions associated with the action. Yes, a plot can be caused by the emotions of characters, but the action is apart from the story. Plots are the results of choices made by the characters: the characters take action (or don’t) and events happen as a result.

Aristotle set the “rules” for modern plots: there is a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning is short, the ending shorter, and the middle is where most of the plot twists reside. If you write 100 pages, it might take 30 to introduce the characters and plot, 50 for the twists, and 20 for the ending. The beginning ends with the introduction of the primary plotline. The middle ends with a climactic showdown.

Many writers “plot” their plots, like a timeline. It helps to see where choices are made and actions taken, so you can pace the story. Pacing is important because most stories accelerate in action as they progress. While the beginning events might last days, the end usually occurs in hours."  Tameri guide for writers article

The most important thing to take from this is that "story is the emotions associated with the [plot] action." But all the rest of the above is great stuff to tattoo on the backs of your hands. 

As I have a terrible tendency to get all confused about plot (overcomplicating things, as is my wont) this quote particularly resonated with me.  There are many excellent points on story structure (including a nifty chart you can cadge for your own use).  Something I found particularly useful, though, was this handy rule of thumb for discerning plot:

"It should be possible to state a plot in one or two sentences. If a plot requires more than two dozen words to describe, it is too complex. The primary plot is simple; the story is complex. The more provocative, unusual, and thoughtful a plot, the more likely a reader or audience is to want to know the complete story. Shakespeare’s plots are simple, but the plays have wonderful depth. Tom Clancy spy novels are long and complex, but the plots are easy to state. Think about your favorite stories and how simple the primary plots are." 

Short story tips

"The ultimate crime in writing is to be boring.  You risk that every time you are careless with your plot."  p7, Creating Plot by J. Madison Davis. 

I'm sure you all are aware that short stories differ somewhat from novels.  Not including length, of course.  And then there are the varieties of short stories, to include flash fiction (which can be of various lengths from 100 to 1,000 words, generally); short stories; novellas; and the mid-range category between short story and novella length, the .

I've been considering this topic all during NaNo November, because one of the difficulties with working on my WIP was that I have plot issues.  I think that A Lighter Shade Of Pale needs to be reconsidered some, and it's making me stick at the point where the story is supposed to be heading into the confrontation.  Things are off, and it's a plot issue.  So, unless I can figure a way to avoid rewriting the story and keep most of what I've got written, I'm going to have to rewrite the whole blankety blank thing at some point to make it work.  (But I think the ace in the hole is that I can expand the story and keep what I've got by making it a full on novel.  We shall see.)

Anyhow, this bunch of forehead-bunching think sessions has caused me to look around for information and thoughts on short story writing.  I like the three-act format, but it isn't the be-all and end-all of plot structure.  And it's not working to help me get the kinks out of ALSOP. 

Tips on constructing a short story.  I borrowed this from Kate Kelly's excellent post on the subject, here.

1. Stick to a single POV. Multiple POV short stories can be made to work, but if a story can be told from a single perspective it’s better to do so.

2. Avoid preamble. You don’t have much space so get into the story and your character’s head right from the very first sentence.

3. Make every word count – a short story should be tight.

4. Minimise number of settings – try to keep the number of scenes down – only those that the story actually needs.

5. Minimise number of characters – you don’t have the space to develop a wide cast of interesting and varied characters, so keep these to the bare minimum.

6. Keep it consistent – this goes for voice and rhythm as well as POV.

7. Finish with a punch – make your last line really memorable to that it resonates with the reader after they have stopped reading.

8. Don’t write on beyond the story’s natural end – this is so easy to do. Come back to it later and check whether where you have ended it is the best place or whether it would have more impact if you finished it a couple of paragraphs earlier.

9. Edit it – let it rest for a few days, then come back to it with a critical eye. Rewrite if necessary – I’ve been known to turn a story completely about!

10. And finally enjoy it!! Writing short stories is fun.

 And remember:

"One spectacular scene after another does not make a novel.  They must be connected."  Ibid, p10

 

"I don't give a sh*t"

"[A]bove all, in an ending, the reader/audience has to CARE. A good ending has an emotional payoff, and it has to be proportionate to what the character AND the reader/audience has experienced."  Alexandra Sokoloff

I highly recommend reading the linked post.  Ms. Sokoloff discusses why readers will accept your ending (if you do it right) and what you need in a climax/ending for them to be happy with your story and how you end it.  Basically, you have to give them an emotional payoff that takes into account things like who dies, who doesn't die, who suffers and transforms, do the characters suffer enough to make the catharsis of the ending/climax emotionally satisfying, etc.  (Not that she spells out all these things, but you can infer them readily enough from the text.)

And a reminder to please read and vote on the entries for the Chthulu-inspired Halloween Horror Contest.  Entries here.  Voting needs to be in by end of day, Monday, November 9th.  And please feel free to repost this information and/or mention the need for voters.  There are some great entries, and your horror-loving friends will thank you!

Your mystery's a joke (nyuk, nyuk!)

"A murder mystery is like a joke. In both cases, the storyteller sets up a situation, carefully leads the audience down a false path only to deliver a big twist at the end. We know we're being duped, and we go along willingly, happily even! That gap between expectation and delivery touches some deep and primal sense of human enjoyment.

With a joke, the gap is a twist of words ('Nope, I'm a frayed knot'), of situation ('Shut up and keep swimming') or perception ('But this one's eating my popcorn!'). With a mystery, the twist is finding out who the *real* killer is, and why. In both cases, the storyteller is deliberately lying to the audience, and the audience is happy to go along with the lie."   Steve Malley, his Full Throttle & F*** It blog

And a reminder to please read and vote on the entries for the Chthulu-inspired Halloween Horror Contest.  Entries here.  Voting needs to be in by end of day, Monday, November 9th.  And please feel free to repost this information and/or mention the need for voters.  There are some great entries, and your horror-loving friends will thank you!

 "That's the tricky thing with fiction. I have gotten into more mild arguments with critique partners, my editors, myself (nothing like arguing with yourself) over motivations and characters and so on . . . on this and this alone. The believability issue.  I think newer writers find this particularly galling. In other words, we ALL know people capabale of being yes, THAT horrid, and yes, THAT eccentric. But put them in a fictional world and it starts to stretch readers' minds as far as believability."  Erica Orloff, from her blog

The above quote is from a great post by author Erica Orloff on characters and believability.  The salient point of the post is that what might be documented fact can come across to readers as false and unbelievable. 

She's so right.  And it's because readers' sense of what is believable is affected by other factors than reality.  Writing serves in part to make sense of the world.  And this is an unvoiced, unacknowledged, subconsious expectation.  Whereas the real world does not have to make sense.  We deep down want order instead of randomness, instead of chaos...but the real world denies us this.  So in made things, we want order.  We want logic.  We want A to follow B and Slot C to be the proper form for Tab D. 

Even in a memoir, we can't just write the facts.  It has to be a good story!  In other words, memoirs have to make that sort of sense, too.  So the memoir or biography writer needs to make the facts make sense.  Needs to interpret these things that happened in a manner that is acceptable and sensical for readers.

As Ms. Orloff says:

"I have come to the conclusion watching the behaviors of people who are really just ugly at times . . . that many people's cruelties are banal. As if they are blithely unaware they are rude or mean. Do I REALLY think the snarky woman who finds a way to insult to me at cocktail parties has nothing better to do than think of insults on my mothering skills? If I repeated to her what she said now, months after the fact, she would likely say, "I never said that." Or . . . "I must have been kidding." Or, like the lady who moved out of the neighborhood, I have a sneaking suspicion that excuse would be, "I must have been drunk." Some people's cruelties are completely banal. They don't even think about them. They don't lose sleep. They just wander through life that way.

But in a fictional world, writers set up REASONS for dismemberment and cruelty. We very often even give serial killers motivations of some sort (look what Thomas Harris did when he RUINED the Hannibal Lechter franchise). Give reasons . . . and people will BELIEVE your fiction.

But real life? A lot more banal."

Amen to that. 

And a reminder to please read and vote on the entries for the Chthulu-inspired Halloween Horror Contest.  Entries here.  Voting needs to be in by end of day, Monday, November 9th.  And please feel free to repost this information and/or mention the need for voters.  There are some great entries, and your horror-loving friends will thank you!

Troubleshooting your plot holes

Mary Buckham*, co-author of Break Into Fiction, is guest posting over at the Romance University site.  Her excellent article on troubleshooting plot holes is here.  *(Attribution corrected 11/9/09.)

She gives a few tips on dealing with plot and story issues that keep your story from working:

Trouble shooting a novel length commercial fiction story and rejection letters:

- The infamous “sagging middle” indicates a lack of plot, lack of turning points, lack of stakes rising and possibly a lack of character development.

 - A rejection that says “Interesting story concept but I didn’t connect with the characters” means character development is lacking.

- A rejection that says “…not big enough to be single title” may indicate a large enough premise for a single title but what you consider subplot is not significant to the central story line. 

How do you find these holes?  A good place to start is with the character to see if he/she is truly motivated or just “doing things the author needs them to do.”  Or, ask yourself if your character’s external goal is really strong, or worthy of an entire book. 

Another problem we see often is that the central character(s) don’t really accomplish anything or move the story forward – they just go from one non-escalating action to another that has no true impact on the story.

Is your plot drifting?

Another great post on Blood Red Pencil by guest blogger Kathryn Craft.

How do you find out if your piece is drifting?
The easiest way is when a test reader says, “I’m confused.” But the piece itself has many ways of telling us “this isn’t working.” As you re-read, look for the following indicators that your structure needs reinforcement. See if you might have:

• included language that smacks of an authorial “note to self.” These can be rather entertaining, once you look for them. Possibilities include “Before I tell you more about that…”, “This may seem off-topic, but…”, “The point I’m trying to make is…”, and “All will soon become clear.”
• reiterated aspects of the story because you were so off-track you felt compelled to remind the reader where you started.
• stated the subject outright—yet never referenced it again.
• put a line break in a short piece because after several misfires you needed to start again.
• introduced too many notions for the length of the piece, thus exemplifying the very definition of “scatter-brained”—in shorter works, think depth, not breadth.
• included sentences whose topics open up a whole different world—they may need their own story.
• said you would “show” something when you’ve only shown the opposite—as in, “what not to do.”
• used passive voice, which can obscure the cause and effect which creates structure.

Each sentence must tip the reader into the next, but from any one sentence, the possible directions are legion. It is up to you as author to pick one and guide the reader on the journey. If you find that the possibilities inherent in your prose are too numerous for one piece, great! Dump them into a file on your computer for development into other pieces at another time.

New terminology:  Pinch points vs turning point.

From Romance University's post by CJ Lyons:

"In a novel or movie,  a turning point takes the plot in a new and different direction, often through a decision and action taken by the main character.  A pinch point is often a much quieter scene, not so much action as emotional, setting up the character’s motivation for the following action.

We show WHY the character must change through the main plot’s action with its turning points.

Pinch points let you take a short breather from the main action and show HOW the character changes by letting the reader in on their inner conflicts and goals.  More emphasis is on what they NEED rather than what they WANT.

In romances (and thrillers!) these are often the “quiet” scenes—the ones that nothing seems to be happening but you can’t forget them because so much actually DID happen, emotionally.

Think emotion, think theme.  Theme is what separates Drama from Action. Theme reflects primal, universal emotions.  It’s the ultimate emotional velcro to connect your audience with your story."

Plot: The three-act, eight sequence structure

Shamelessly borrowed from Alexandra Sokoloff, whose advice on story structure is fabulous:

THE INDEX CARD METHOD.

This is the number one structuring tool of most screenwriters I know.

Get yourself a pack of index cards. You can also use Post-Its, and the truly OCD among us use colored Post-Its to identify various subplots by color, but I find having to make those kinds of decisions just fritzes my brain. I like cards because they’re more durable and I can spread them out on the floor for me to crawl around and for the cats to walk over; it somehow feels less like work that way. Everyone has their own method - experiment and find what works best for you.

Now, get a corkboard or a sheet of cardboard big enough to lay out your index cards in either four vertical columns of 10-15 cards, or eight vertical columns of 5-8 cards, depending on whether you want to see your movie laid out in four acts or eight sequences. You can draw lines on the corkboard to make a grid of spaces the size of index cards if you’re very neat (I’m not) – or just pin a few marker cards up to structure your space. Write Act One at the top of the first column, Act Two at the top of the second (or third if you’re doing eight columns), Midpoint at the top of the third (or fifth), Act Three at the top of the fourth (or seventh).

Then write a card saying Act One Climax and pin it at the bottom of column one, Midpoint Climax at the bottom of column two, Act Two Climax at the bottom of column three, and Climax at the very end. If you already know what those scenes are, then write a short description of them on the appropriate cards. These are scenes that you know you MUST have in your story, in those places - whether or not you know what they are right now.

And now also label the beginning and end of where eight sequences will go. (In other words, you’re dividing your corkboard into eight sections – either four long columns with two sections each, or eight shorter columns).

Now you have your structure grid in front of you.

What you will start to do now is brainstorm scenes, and that you do with the index cards.

A movie has about 40 to 60 scenes (a drama more like 40, an action movie more like 60), so every scene goes on one card. This is the fun part, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. All you do at first is write down all the scenes you know about your movie, one scene per card. You don’t have to put them in order yet, but if you know where they go, or approximately where they go, you can just pin them on your corkboard in approximately the right place. You can always move them around. And just like with a puzzle, once you have some scenes in place, you will naturally start to build other scenes around them.

I love the cards because they are such an overview. You can stick a bunch of vaguely related scenes together in a clump, rearrange one or two, and suddenly see a perfect progression of an entire sequence. You can throw away cards that aren’t working, or make several cards with the same scene and try them in different parts of your story board.

You will find it is often shockingly fast and simple to structure a whole story this way.

And this eight-sequence structure translates easily to novels. Now, if you’re structuring a novel this way, you may be doubling or tripling the scene count, but for me, the chapter count remains exactly the same: forty to sixty chapters to a book. And you might have an extra sequence or two per act, but I think that in most cases you’ll find that the number of sequences is not out of proportion to this formula. With a book you can have anything from 250 pages to 1000 (well, you can go that long only if you’re a mega-bestseller!), so the length of a sequence and the number of sequences is more variable. But an average book these days is between 300 and 400 pages, and since the recession, publishers are actually asking their authors to keep their books on the short side, to save production costs, so why not shoot for that to begin with?

I write books of about 300 - 350 pages (print pages), and I find my sequences are about 50 pages, getting shorter as I near the end. But I might also have three sequences of around 30 pages in an act that is 100 pages long. You have more leeway in a novel, but the structure remains pretty much the same.

 

Excellent info on story plot elements

Check out these articles on Beyond The Ruins of Elechan.  Lengthy, but excellent stuff.

Inserting fantasy into your story

A recent post on Electric Spec ezine's editor blog discussed various means a writer can use to introduce fantastic elements into their writing.  She refers to an interesting book for this talk, namely Rhetorics of Fantasy (RoF) by Farah Mendlesohn.  (FYI - You can read parts of the book on Google Books.)

Apparently, Mendlesohn states there are five sorts of approaches:

1. The Portal-Quest Fantasy, "...where a character leaves her familiar surroundings and passes through a portal into an unknown place.  Although portal fantasies do not have to be quest fantasies the overwhelming majority are, and the rhetorical position taken by the author/narrator is consistent." (Chapter 1)
2. The Immersive Fantasy.  "The immersive fantasy is a fantasy set in a world built so that it functions on all levels as a complete world.  In order to do this, the world must act as if it is impervious to external influence; this immunity ismost essential in its relationship with the reader.  The immersive fantasy must take no quarter: it must assume that the reader is as much a part of the world as are those being read about.  It shoudl construct an irony of mimesis in which ornamental speech and persuasive become inseparable (Frye, Anatomy of Criticism 245).  The immersive fantasy is both the mirror of mimetic literature and its inner soul.  It reveals what is frequently hidden: that all literature builds worlds, but some genres are more honest about it than others.  Mimetic literature, that fabulous conjuration of "the real," is the product of a mimetic "bible." (Chapter 2)
3. The Intrusion Fantasy.  This involves a world which is affected by an intruder, something from outside the story world's reality--frequently an Evil Overlord sort like an evil god or power such as Sauron in Lord of the Rings.  "The trajectory of the intrusion fantasy is straightforward: the world is ruptured by the intrusion, which disrupts normality and has to be negotiated with or defeated, sent back whence it came,or controlled.  In a few cases the intrusion wins but there is always a return of some kind....[and] once you know a novel is intrusion fantasy, its structure is unnervingly transparent." (Chapter 3) 
4. The Liminal Fantasy.  Strange things are placed in the story, but they wouldn't be so strange to the story's characters if they occurred in the right manner (ex. the right time or place.)  "We place the absurd in different moments, but doubt because the [characters seem] to question whether anything truly fantastical has happened at all.  We could even see this as an immersive fantasy because the protagonists take it all for granted.  Except that they do not."  "It can be truly liminal, 'what it's like to have fallen into the crack." (Chapter 4) (This one in particular is confusing!)

The Plan

"In the first act of a story, the hero/ine is introduced, and that hero/ine either has or quickly develops a DESIRE. She might have a PROBLEM that needs to be solved, or someone or something she WANTS, or a bad situation that she needs to get out of, pronto.  Her reaction to that problem or situation is to formulate a PLAN, even if that plan is vague or even completely subconscious. But somewhere in there, there is a plan, and storytelling is usually easier if you have the hero/ine or someone else (maybe you, the author) state that plan clearly, so the audience or reader knows exactly what the expectation is."  Alexandra Sokoloff*

So, you have a character with a problem.  they come up with a plan, it clashes with the plans of others, and (as Ms. Sokoloff points out in her article) the hero/ine doesn't succeed the first or even the second try.  Secondary plans come into play.  Things get complicated, and it looks like your character won't win (and they might not, if you want that sort of ending.) 

The point of this ramble, though, is the important point in the quote:  There needs to be that initial plan.

Something worth thinking about also is this:  "So almost always, the initial plan fails. Or if it seems to succeed, it’s only to trick us for a moment before we realize how wretchedly the plan has failed. That weak initial effort is because it’s human nature to expend the least effort possible to get what we want, and only take greater and more desperate measures if we are forced to."*

And, something which occurred to me whilst contemplating The Magus of Athlinar (stalled on a plot point conundrum this past month):  You can say to hell with the beginning and write the middle,where you know the pivotal action is!  And that probably means that the short story will be starting at the right place!  Woot!  I think I'm a genius, lol.

Nobody promised it was easy. Now, give me a beer.

"Just so you know--it is excrutiatingly difficult to plan a novel really, really slowly so you can write each scene in full detail at the same time.  It's like running a snow-plow while stoppign to examine each snow flake with a magnifying glass.  Chances are almost certain your snow-plow's going to wind up in a lake, and you'll spend the rest of the year getting it back out again.  Plannign and writing use different parts of the brain, and writers who regularly attempt this [plotting while writing] and expect tolike the results are the ones who wind up drunks." A. Victoria Mixon

Well, we know Ms. Mixon's on the side of the planner and not the pantser, don't we?  I am by nature a pantser most of the time, but I at least don't (still) make the mistake of plotting out too many scenes in extreme detail as I'm writing.  But I get something out of seat-of-the-pants writing that Ms. Mixon doesn't mention, and that is ideas. 

I discover my fictional world by writing scenes, by discovering the characters.  Sure, it's probably a lot of 'wasted' writing that's more backstory than useful to the final product; but it's what works for me.  I have tried to do this on 4x6 notecards, filling in ideas, putting the ideas into a relational database, drafting out complex plots and what not.  But what ends up happening is that, when I start actually writing, other ideas and details come up and then the complicated scene ideas are no longer that wonderful...although they can come in handy to keep me on a generally straight road.

But I continually get snarled up in the middle.  That old muddle in the middle is the quagmire of death, and it's the reason I've temporarily abandoned novels for shorter works.  I need to discover my inner A. Victoria Mixon, apparently!

Avoid commando plot elements

"Fiction's like a spider web—each thread belongs to the whole and has some essential function. Spiders don't go around pimping their webs with ghastly and unnecessary props that do nothing to help them catch the fly. Neither should fiction. Not saying fiction should be utilitarian or strictly weblike, but come on—is there a valid *reason* that spiderweb is full of penguins?" The Intern

That everything should have a purpose in your writing is generally true.  However, I do disagree with the above in part: I think that random world-building observances to add a sense of scene or place or to underscore theme or emotion are very useful--just not useful when overdone.  However, for plot elements specifically, you should have a reason for all the threads, because they all need to weave together to form the web of story. 

Perhaps the motto to take from this post is: Leave nothing dangling.  Don't go...commando.  (Yes, I did have to make the obligatory allusion to a guys parts.  Really.  It's in the contract.)

Tension and expectations in your story

Victoria Mixon's got a fabulous post on tension and story plotting up on her blog.

Writing for teenagers

I see a teenage novel as a story with a teenage character(s) at the centre, written from a teenage viewpoint, which explores a situation which teenage readers often fear, aspire to, dream about or experience, and which provides an emotional connection to themselves as teenagers now. It has no visible boundaries or safety-nets and may be frightening, cutting-edge, brutally honest, shocking or sad, (but doesn't have to be) but in fact there are boundaries of acceptability and hope: 
"it takes them to the edge but will not throw them over."  Nicola Morgan

Nicola Morgan at Help! I Need A Publisher! blog has an excellent article on writing for teen (with links at the bottom to other great articles.  The quote above is from one of them.)  If you have ever considered a YA project, step on over and see what she has to say.  Great stuff!

Why your plot may suck

Victoria Mixon, editor, is guest posting at Nathan Bransford's blog today.  And her post is a keeper!  It's "Everything You Need to Know About Writing a Novel, in 1000 Words."

Confusing action scenes

"The trouble is, suspense involves a bit of fear. You're scared something bad will happen to a character you care about. That's how it works. If the hero is completely unassailable there's no tension: they'll win, so why get interested? You already know what's going to happen. Conversely, if the scene is going to have any dramatic tension, there has to be a chance the hero will suffer, will lose, will fail."  Kit Whitfield, from her blog

Blog hopping this morning, I came across Kit Whitfield's post on, basically, some of the reasons why Transformers 2 is considered to suck, big time.  [Before we go on to the main topic, let me just say that, although I gave it an immediate "too long and boring despite the noise and explosions and things morphing all over the goddamn place" I didn't hate it; it was just dull and dumb with confusing scene cuts.  Not engaging.  Brain candy of the glitteriest and most unfulfilling sort...but I didn't hate it.]

However, Ms. Whitfield expresses one reason Transformers 2 was dull and hard to grasp:  The action director broke the 180 degree rule, which basically states when you make a scene cut, you need to maintain continuity so as not to confuse the viewer, for example "if a vehicle leaves the right side of the frame in one shot, it should enter from the left side of the frame in the next shot. Leaving from the right and entering from the right will create a ...sense of disorientation."

Or, more clearly, "The 180° rule is a basic guideline in film making that states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle." (From Wiki, link above.)

How this applies to writing.
Ms. Whitfield's post got me to thinking about action scenes and about emotional hooks.  I read Lilith Saintcrow's new book, Strange Angels last night, and although a few spots made my eyes cross (descriptions in the character's style were sometimes convoluted to the point of meaninglessness) it was a gripping read that had me staying up until I finished the book...because I was hooked emotionally.  I cared about the characters, and I also wanted to know what happened next.  So both suspense and emotional hook accomplished.

Now, the reader has to care about the outcome of all the crises your characters face.   If s/he doesn't, you will lose their interest.  These mini-crises build up to the major crisis, and the main character has to come out of these early crises to get to the big climactic crisis.  The important thing out of all these moments building to the climax is that the reader has to have serious doubt that your character can actually reach her goal, that the character really could lose or die or fail.  And, sometime, your character does experience a set back, so you have to ensure that if that does happen, readers believe your character can overcome this new obstacle, too, and keep slogging forward. 

It's not straightforward always, but the emotions you create in a reader are. They must care about your characters, must want them to win. 

And this applies to fight scenes, or action scenes in books as well.

In Ms.Saintcrow's book Strange Angels, there were a number of fight scenes.  I found them really well crafted and very clear as to what was occurring.  Here and there i think they got a bit overlong and a touch too descriptive about things like sounds (and I say this because I stopped to notice during the fight scenes, which did pull me from the reading a teensy bit) but the actions were very clear and the emotional drama was high.  It flat worked for me as a reader.

And after reading Kit Whitfield's post on Transformers, I realised something about how movie structure and book story structure overlap.  It's not quite the 180 degree rule, but it is something worth considering, and which I think Lilith Saintcrow used to good effect:  Keeping the focus of the pov character written so it stayed in focus yet keeping her also feeling and worrying about her compadres in the middle of a fight. 

That sounds rather simplistic and obvious, but I can think of other fight scenes where the character's emotions weren't engaged (e.g. not blended in with the writing) and where others were involved but the pov character doesn't feel for them.

So maybe this is s bit of hair splitting, but like the quote at the top of this post, it occurs to me that if you don't fully engage the readers' emotions your story won't grab them as much...but that can't happen if your character doesn't care herself.  You need to write them so they care, and that has to be a strong, clear thread throughout the story you write.  It doesn't have to be overt, but it needs to be there...at least for me. 

What do you think? 

The double edged device

Pure research for its own sake is probably the best way we have of discovering random things that eventually lead to dramatic breakthroughs that save lives, promote health and all good things.

But research can also be a double-edged and dangerous things.  Because we humans have a tendency to take neutral stuff, even stuff that can save lives, and twist it to ugly things.  This study disturbs me for that reason.  Imagine if the military had that sort of stuff and used it as an interrogation method.  Get someone seriously jonesing for a drug he's never taken.  While they might be tough-minded enough not to crack, add that withdrawal trauma to waterboarding or whatever other official "non torture" method of interrogation is in use at the time, and the victim might crack faster.

I can see using this in a novel.  I do hope no one uses it in real life, however.

But this dichotomy brings to mind a useful trait of devices that can be used for good or ill.  We need radioactive materials developed as sources for medical instrumentation and scanning devices, or for scanners at border ports, or to source the power of space probes.  We dread it because of nuclear bombs, North Korea becoming worryingly shrill and waving the "I'll nuke you!" flag just yesterday (re conflicts in the DMZ) being the latest example of why.

But this edge of danger to an item, a technology, a device can be really fruitful when used in a story.  You have a technology that has major benefits for life, the universe and everything...but it can also end life as we know it.  Whether that technology is your MacGuffin and your characters are chasing after it or trying to remove it from the hands of terrorists (24 anyone?) or it's just an ancillary item that suddenly is used in a surprizing way (I rather like this approach) after an innocuous introduction, tech like that can be very useful to your plot development.

It can also increase tension when something "bombproof" goes awry.  An example of this is in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series.  She has a drug called "penta" which when used causes people to spill their guts.  The drug has vast implications because torture is not needed.  And we the readers chug along not worrying for Miles our protagonist until he's captured by an enemy and is injected with the drug.  Then we learn that a very few, including her protagonist Miles Vorkosigan, have an idiosyncratic reaction.  Penta doesn't work on him!  It works somewhat in that he can keep babbling to the point he says nothing really, because if he can segue into reciting something like Shakespeare he can't stop until he gets to the end.  I thought that was a clever device, because it both was funny, and it served to give the reader the sudden worry that Miles might be tortured instead of just questioned.  This added lots of tension!

Besides all that, itsn't it always intriguing and pleasing when something seemingly mundane suddenly arises as a great big nasty bugaboo?  As a reader I like having something 'normal' become part of a clever plot twist.  I suppose the danger is in being too clever, or trying this too often.  Like Goldilocks, that little housebreaker, you need to find what works juuuust right.

The Hawthorne Effect

A blog I stop by frequently for interesting ideas and plain old feel good tips is Vlad Dolezal's "Fun Life Development" blog (formerly known as "An Amazing Mind".)  A recent post on "The Hawthorne Effect" is an interesting tidbit of information which I thought useful to share for your future story plotting needs.

Basically, the Hawthorne Effect is that, when people know they are being observed, they are more efficient.  They don't need to even try; they just are.  The trick is, though, that you cannot be critical, you have to be neutral when you let someone know they are being observed.  So, you can have your evil genius use this principal by just mentioning to his lackeys, "I notice that you are using five bullets to kill the enemy when Evil Minion #5 is only using three," walking away and laughing while the Evil Minions automatically strive to do better.

Or something like that.

Seriously, though, you can have a cop utilize this human trait to effect, or your hero, or an artificial intelligence that is seeking to manipulate humanity (for their own good, of course.)  A parent can do so as well.

Might be a fun bit of business to use, or you could hang major plot elements off this concept.

The cool thing about The Hawthorne Effect is that it only improves the behaviors observed.  It could cause backfiring and poorer performance, though, if you do not word the mention neutrally and make the object of the experiment think s/he is being manipulated, criticized or ordered about.  If they feel out of control, you have lost.

Plot summaries

Can you summarize your plot?  What is your elevator pitch?  I sure hope it is not boiled down to something like these, which are funny, but not a great pitch.  Enjoy.

(This link was all over Twitter. I don't know how to retweet so you get it on the blahg.)

Kill your darlings--the hard way

"When you’ve reached that place where you don’t know what happens next, start shaking things up. I firmly believe one must mistreat one’s characters. Smack them around. Up the ante, dish out some injury. Plenty of new authors treat their characters like fragile flowers. Don’t fall into that trap. Beat them up! They can take it–they’re tough! Really!"  Lilith Saintcrow

And the whole post is excellent advice.  When the middle sags, do something drastic. Might not always work, but if you feel like your plot is dying on you...send in the guns, metaphorically speaking.  Or I suppose you could send in the clowns...but that might only work if you are good at funny.  Dunno.  YMMV and all that.  And she also recommends killing the other kind of darlings--the bits of story and writing that are lovely and which do not move the story along.

In my writing classes, I’m famous for getting out the red pen. A student is never required to submit their work for an in-group critique, but if they do they must expect no mercy. The catchphrase my students love most is, “I know you love this…but it has to DIE.” Dead weight in a story, unless it’s slowing down the pacing for a good reason, must go. No matter how beautifully written dead weight is, you’ve got to get rid of it. You don’t have to delete it–many a good book has been spurred by a choice nugget in the slush pile–but you can’t afford to weigh a good story down.

I have to ask, though:  Is it deus ex machina if you drop a complication on the story from out of nowhere?

On the writing front, I am on some new medication that seems to be bringing back the haunting refrain of depression.  Whee!  So it's been all that backchatter from my negative tapes replaying in my head, making it very difficult to get past it.  Also, been having my migraine cycle, which makes me have a distracting headache (Thank the gods for the preventatives I take; they make it bearable!) and occasional nausea and really painful light sensitivity.  Makes looking at the computer difficult.

Sigh.  My self pity goes hand in hand with the migraines and being blue.  You can't talk yourself out of being depressed when it's your medication doing it to you.  I keep telling myself that it will pass, and that once I get the bypass surgery over with (later this year) I won't be taking all these meds any longer anyhow, so buck up, yada yada.

I don't think I heard that right...

"Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking." Albert Einstein

The above quote cracked me up.  I wish I could be full of gentle humor, brilliance and true wisdom like Einstein.  I'd have liked to have met him.

I've actually had that thought about myself from time to time.  It has to do with the way the human mind likes to make assumptions, a form of mental shorthand, I suppose.  We interpret data based on past performance and experience and while it may be wrong we still fall for it and are surprised to discover we erred. 

And it occurs to me you might use this tendency in your plot structuring.  As in you set up your readers the same way you set up your characters.  They see a tendency to do one thing several times over in a particular secondary character, and when the secondary character does something just slightly different, you have the main character either not notice or misinterpret the behavior or words in a manner that aids in the plot development.

I'm sure I've seen this done before a zillion times, but have I ever really considered that the writer was exploiting our human nature in this way?  I had not. 

Now that I point it out, however, I hope to use it scientifically.  And I hope you do, too. 

Happy writing!

Is that stinky cheese or your feet?

True misdirection enables the reader to look back and go, "Oh, of course!" when they see the clues that were there all along.  Debbie, posting on GUD Magazine's blog.

Your reader wants to feel smart.  I say that a lot because it's true.  That doesn't mean they want to see through your clever misdirections.  Because part of the fun of reading a story is trying to determine the correct logical trail to take along with--and preferably just slightly ahead of--your protagonist. 

Reread that quote.  Remember that point.  It is important to note, because readers hate to have you play tricks upon them, and they really hate to be treated like they are stupid.  And, if those demands aren't enough, they lose interest if you go too far the other direction and make your clues way too opaque.  Good luck with your verbal dragging of the red herrings, blog friends! 

Also, the book being discussed in the review from which I quoted sounds like a great little anthology of horror stories.  Read by Dawn, Adele Hartley, editor.  (Duly added to the wish list.)

The McGuffin

From wikipedia:

"A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin) is a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance otherwise. The element that distinguishes a MacGuffin from other types of plot devices is that it is not important what the object specifically is. Anything that serves as a motivation will do. The MacGuffin might even be ambiguous. Its importance is accepted by the story's characters, but it does not actually have any effect on the story. It can be generic or left open to interpretation. The MacGuffin is common in films, especially thrillers. Commonly, though not always, the MacGuffin is the central focus of the film in the first act, and later declines in importance as the struggles and motivations of characters play out. Sometimes the MacGuffin is all but forgotten by the end of the film."

Is a McGuffin good or bad?  If the story is good and entrancing, probably it doesn't matter.  If the plot and writing is weak, however, and the character motivations are not strong enough, probably a bad thing to have the McGuffin be the source of motivation.  But, as per usual, it depends.  It depends on your writing. 

In the referenced article, George Lucas is quoted as saying the "MacGuffin should be powerful and that the audience should care about it almost as much as the dueling heroes and villains on-screen."  I rather agree with that.  You need to take the plot motivations seriously if you want your audience to take your characters and their choices seriously.  Unless, of course, you are writing humor.

In a TV IV article, the MacGuffin is described as

"...a storytelling tool became more prevalent with the popularization of the mystery and suspense, westerns, science fiction, etc. In fact, one of the greatest pre-20th century known examples of a MacGuffin is the titular object in the short story "The Purloined Letter" by Edgar Allan Poe, who is often credited as the inventor of the detective genre. As a result, MacGuffins play a significant role in 20th- and 21st-century literature. Author Raymond Chandler frequently employed them in his Philip Marlowe stories, as did Dashiell Hammet (who, like Poe [ed: The Purloined Letter], made his MacGuffin the title of one of his most famous novels, The Maltese Falcon). George Orwell uses a MacGuffin in the form of Room 101 and its horrors in 1984. The ring is a MacGuffin in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, as is Ice-Nine in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle."

genres, although its usage would eventually spill over into all generic types of stories—

It sounds like anything that motivates your characters is a McGuffin.  But when I've heard it used, it implies contrivance, that the Holy Grail of the story is an obvious device of a heavy handed author.  Not sure what the reality is in common useage, but it comes across in use as derogatory to me.

Any thoughts on this, folks?

A trope to avoid & a cool site

The Cool Site. 
An interesting place to see the newest twists and tryouts of our English language is Doubletongued.  Fascinating stuff. 

The trope to avoid?
Ever hear of the "Magical Negro"?  I hadn't, but I recognized the trope when I read about it in wikipedia.  The explanation of the "Magical Negro" is that this trope is a reworking of the "Noble Savage" where a character in a lower cultural status or different race (generally, as in the "Noble Savage" version, one which is less sophisticated as perceived by the culture where the story is created)takes a subservient role (despite posession of some form of magical or superpower skill) to aid or save "a white, typically male protagonist."  Bagger Vance immediately sprang to mind, but the article also mentions Morpheus in The Matrix among other examples.

On the surface, the use of a trope such as the "Magical Negro" is only offensive.  But there has always been room and a use for a "cultural outsiders" to act as agents of good or bad fortune in every culture's fairy tales, religions, and myths.  The deus ex machina rescue by a god bestowing powers, a wise old teacher dispensing knowledge to the runaway, the fairy godmother assisting the downtrodden waif.  So while I deplore racially derogatory tropes, there's something deeper in this tired old tactic to think about and use.

The point being twofold:  As writers, it is incumbent upon us to consider when we are using a trope that has wider implications than just the convenience of forwarding our plots.  This is a complicated issue that I find difficult to write about without risking sounding like a bigoted idiot.  Because the old archetype of the wise teacher is also in use here, as well as a grudging respect for the "closer to nature and thus wisdom" of cultures other than our own--which smacks of an inherint belief that our "more advanced" ways, while superior, can be aided by the more animalistic/instinctual ones of the "Noble Savage" or "Magical Negro."

And secondly:  There's richness in the diversity you can use by finding exotic injections for the story.  But you have to be careful and respectful. If the character you use for the role of wisdom-imparter or wise teacher comes from another culture, does your treatment of that character make him/her subservient or a buffoon?  I think it's a fine line between insult and envy, and that if you have a protagonist who embodies the current cultural "ideal" (for lack of a better word) and he or she is assisted by one who is superior yet subservient, you might want to think about that and read the linked article.  (Maybe the character of Hanuman the monkey god is a good example in that he's not human...but, oops! what about aliens?)

Really, it depends.  Above all else, using an old literary crutch without considering what you are doing and why is bad story crafting.  And you might be showing unconscious bigotry.  There's all too much of that going around without adding to it in your fiction.  To sum it up, I'm not telling you what to write, just that you probably should think about the subtext and your unrecognized cultural or personal assumptions.  Happy pondering!

Philosophical conundrums and your plot

Not sure why, but it never occurred to me (until this afternoon) to consider philosophical nuts for story ideas.  Conflict is generally considered to be when what the character desires is limited or obstructed by circumstances or problems; but if the conflict involves a decision which has no desirable outcome, we are approaching philosophy.

Such is the problem I am facing in a short story I am trying to finish.  This would be The Redemption, which I posted an excerpt of a few months ago.  I've been letting it hang fire since Spring because I realized I didn't have a clue what the conflict was, even though I knew what the events were.  (Isn't that an odd thing?) I've been sitting her all afternoon, trying to take what I feel is a great start and make it to the end.  And I'm stuck. Stuckety stuck stuck, damn it.

So of course I start wasting time reading science articles on New Scientist, National Geo, Science Daily and all my favorite writing and time-wasting blogs. 

And I hit PAYDIRT!!! (Sqeeing sound as voice rises in pitch.)

I found an article on how the brain works at How Stuff Works, and started reading about The Trolley Problem.  Essentially, the set up is you have a runaway trolley and a person who has two possible options to stop the trolley and save the five passengers.  First, she might pull a lever and send the trolley onto a side track where it will safely stop--except there's a guy standing there and to act will get him killed because there is no time to alert him.  Second, she might push a big guy in front of the trolley becaue he's big enough to jam up the wheels and stop the trolley, which would, of course, kill him in the process.  Which is morally acceptible?  (Most are more likely to say the first option is moral, the second is not, the distinction being the first choice allows a person to die while the second one is actual deliberate murder.)

But I contend a third option is possible:  The watcher sacrifices herself.  She sees both options as bad, but manipulates the situation so that her moral compass is not wavering from her moral sense. 

And this solved the conundrum for my character, who cannot resolve disparate demands on her sense of obligation and honor.  She chooses a form of sacrifice.

Which brings to mind a thought:  Philosophical problems probably can be translated to spec fic stories fairly readily.  Where mankind meets moral choices, we have conflict that is rooted in the guts and which should tap into that strong reaction we like our stories to receive.  Or I hope so.

As I haven't studied philosophy at all with the exception of Humanities in high school and college, I admit I come to this discussion unarmed, lol; but I think there's a lot to be said for this.  Because philosophy isn't all that far removed from mythology, which addresses a lot of the conflicts and issues that mankind finds in daily living.

Thoughts?  Reading material you want to share?  I'm all ears!

Reference:  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Plot driven vs. Character driven

You likely have heard these terms bandied about the net with regards to novel structure.  I've always had trouble determining which one applied because there seems to be some overlap between plot driven, because events always cause other events, making it feel like every story is plot-driven.  But there is a distinction.  So where does the character driven bit come in to play?  Apparently it is about the opportunity for the character to make choices.

The book Story Structure Architect by Victoria Lynn Schmidt has an excellent explanation on page 5, which I now share with you. The clarity of this explanation is awesome.

Plot driven
"In a plot-driven story the events of the story move the story forward and cause the character to react to those events.  Characters are secondary to the plot.  They act in accordance with the plot and do not create events or situations on their own.

In a sense, the plot takes over like a tornado.  If a tornado suddenly comes through a town out of nowhere, the characters can't stop it; they have to brace themselves and react to what ever happens around them.  They don't cuase the tornado--the tornado causes them to react to it."

Character driven
"In a character-driven story the character moves the story forward through action adn choices.  She initiates the events of th esotry and causes the events to happen.  Each secene is instigated by the characters within it.

If  a character chooses to stay home one day and work in her garden, no event or situation will stop her from doing so, but another character may try to make her feel guilty for it.  This may cause her to decide not to garden, but it is totally her choice even if it seems like someone else is manipulating her.

If a tornado comes through town, the charcters will always have the time needed to decide what to do.  The focus is in the characters an dhow and why they make their decisions to stay or leave.  These decisions have the power to move the plot in different directions.  The characters have options and choices that affect the outcome."

Vonnegut's rules via Stephen Parrish

Stephen Parrish has a really cool blog on writing.  This post in particular has a lot to offer in terms of plotting your  novel so your reader can't put it down. He paraphrases Vonnegut's rules for writing a great novel. 

Oh, and take the Horror I.Q. Test at Horror Garage's site.  Be sure your sound is on for the creepy music!

Genre-bending & thinking about plot

"I've never seen a clear border between Science Fiction and Fantasy. Or even Horror, if they mean supernatural, as opposed to meaning just bloody hatchets and eyeballs on corkscrews, things like that."  Tim Powers interview

Due to a crit partner's off-the-cuff reference to something Tim Powers said and my consequent search for the whole quote, I ran across the above-referenced interview where Mr. Powers discusses genre definitions.

He has a point about there not being a lot of difference between the various flavors of speculative fiction.  I am on the side of the fence that opts for the loosest definition possible--at least in terms of the shelves at the local brick and mortar store.  In terms of selling the things, well...I guess we have to split hairs in order to market in this day and age, although I'm not entirely pleased at the thought.

And a thought about plot development.
The article also quotes Mr. Powers as saying this, which I found very provocative.  (I like thinking about thinking, about finding a way to squint at something to see opportunity in the newly blurred view.):

In a way, I arrived at the plot of this book by the same method that astronomers use in looking for a new planet - they look for "perturbations," wobbles, in the orbits of the planets they're aware of, and they calculate the mass and position of an unseen planet whose gravitational field could have caused the observed perturbations - and then they turn their telescopes on that part of the sky and search for a gleam. I looked at all the seemingly irrelevant "wobbles" in the lives of these people - [ed. persons who an alternate reality were spun from] Kim Philby, his father, T.E. Lawrence, Guy Burgess - and I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearrange any days of the calendar - and then I tried to figure out what momentous but unrecorded fact could explain them all.

A fascinating take on using actual facts as a jumping off point and a means of doing so effectively.  The whole article is thought provoking.  Basically, though, Powers says you look for the gaps in your research, find what isn't explained and work from that to create your story.  That way you keep your historical facts straight but can create fiction.  (I don't know about you, but when someone cheats and alters the facts of a based-on-a-true-story tale it bugs the crap out of me.  Possibly not, though, if they footnote the changes so I know the difference without having to go research the book points myself.)

Tim Powers is an award-winning author of something like eleven novels, and he's a fine writer.

And don't forget my contest to commemorate my 2nd year blogaversary!  Entries due on Friday!

Future tech - air fueled cars & keeping it simple

A company named Zero Pollution Motors says it plans to bring a car powered by air to the U.S. sometime in 2009 or 2010. The six pistons in the Air Car's engine are pushed by compressed air rather than gasoline combustion, an idea developed by F1 race car engineer Guy Negre. The car carries a compressor, making it possible to fill its compressed air tank by plugging it into an electrical outlet.  CNET article here.

This vehicle gets 106 miles per gallon (before US DOT and EPA changes affect the mileage like the Smart Car, dropping it by a third or more). 

I have this image of a car whipping by me on the road with a loud raspberry sound of PZZZZFFFFPH!!! as compressed air moves it along.  I even have a cartoon image in my head of a baloon with wheels and a driver straddling it with a long steering column (rather like a penny-farthing bicycle) and farting its way down the road...

But the point of this, besides just sharing a cool idea, is that it can be some of the simplest ideas that can bear the most fruit in our fictional worlds.  Compressed air alone is zero pollution; and apparently another version is going to go on sale in India or is already being manufactured. 

It's such a simple, simple and elegant, idea!  Why has no one even mentioned this before? 

Now, on to writing and the use of simple solutions. 
Considering how we humans tend to complicate everything we touch, it is likely we do this in our novels.  Tangling up your plot threads with complications, I find, frequently leads to stuff that you have to cut later, or which becomes a precious darling you rigidly insist you must keep instead of deleting it, thereby causing no end of trouble for yourself.  You have more stuff per page than an erotic scene where the writer makes it seem like five people are in that bed instead of two.  Just too much.

All kinds of fuss instead of a simple solution to a dilemma in our fictional world is easy to do.  However, like a compressed air auto, we might go for an elegant and simple solution instead. 

OR, you could point up the differences between humans and an alien group by having the aliens take the simple and elegant cut-to-the-chase solution.  (Tthat would be the Wes'harr series by Karen Traviss, which I highly recommend.)

Why I can't stand Eragon (part deux)

I yammered on about hating this derivative book a long time back.  Well, I just ran across someone else's rant against Paolini's sloppy/lazy plotting.  The thing that's amusing to me is that, while the fellow writing the rant obviously detests Eragon and the sequels, he also has some great discussion about the Hero Cycle.  Read the article for that, if for nothing else.  The examples and comparisons are really thought provoking!

Plot model

To use an overly-simple metaphor, the Beginning of your story dumps the dominoes of your story out of your box onto the table. The Great Swampy Middle sets all the dominoes up into a neat pattern.  And the climax knocks them down.  Jim Butcher

That's a really useful metaphore.  Simple.  And simple is good.  From his most recent blog post on story climax.

The Climax!

Stories are like sex: the buildup and the ride can be fantastic, but if there isn't a climax before the end, you might come away from the experience feeling a little frustrated.  Jim Butcher

About the best quote on writing I've read in a long time.  Heh.  See the rest of the post here.