Continuing with my thoughts on Frances and Richard Lockridge....
Richard Lockridge wrote in an artsy, almost arch, style. He combined stream-of-consciousness, with omniscient, with a dry "reporting" style which was common in early police procedural (think Dragnet). This combination actually makes sense if you think of it this way:
The story is narrated by an invisible reporter who can report people's thoughts and emotions nearly verbatim when he needs to. This allows him to give us the voices and deep subjectivity of the point of view characters, while being able to see into the experience of several at once, and also having the detachment of an objective voice overall.
When I look at it that way, it reminds me a little of Dashiell Hammett's stories narrated by the Continental Op -- especially Red Harvest. The Op is a pro, dispassionate sometimes to the point of being dissociative. He isn't omniscient -- although he will give you a good guess as to what is going on in the heads of others -- but he reports on some of his own emotions and behavior as if he is reporting on someone else.
And I use the word "reporting" intentionally. With the Op, a story often feels not like he's telling a tale, but making a report. This is a common thing in both hard- and soft-boiled fiction, where the voice might be less detached, and it might feel more like the narrator is trying to entertain you. For instance, Archie Goodwin is glib and sarcastic as he tells his story, but you will notice that when he makes an official report, it is in exactly the same glib and sarcastic (and precise) voice in which he tells the story. Raymond Chandler and Damon Runyon and a few others may sometimes make you feel like you are being told a story in a bar, but that person you are listening too feels like a reporter or detective, someone who files official reports all the time and it colors their storytelling style.
Of course, those early hard-boiled reporting voices were not omniscient (except for maybe Runyon) but their style developed in modern writers to a new dry, objective omniscient, which allows the reader closer to the characters while it keeps the narrator's emotion under control. I've seen Robert Crais use an omniscient version of the reporter voice very effectively. Sometimes he even mixes first person and third person so he can do that. I also love the way Stuart Kaminsky used it in his Chicago police procedurals featuring Abe Lieberman.
But Richard Lockridge was not writing hard-boiled fiction. As I said last week, he did have elements of the old Dragnet-style police procedurals ("Just the facts, ma'm") but he was really writing in a more touchy-feely genre: a combination of cozy mystery and romantic suspense. And these genres require a lot more emotion.
Furthermore, Lockridge was something of an arty writer, who liked stream-of-consciousness as a literary trope.
The result is both aggravating and effective. Aggravating because it often feels artificial, and because stream-of-consciousness is so freaking confusing sometimes; in particular with all those incomplete thoughts about things the audience doesn't yet know. This is not a big problem throughout the bulk of a story, but when it happens on the first page, it can truly put a reader off.
One example is in The Dishonest Murderer. It starts with a couple of pages inside the head of the protagonist, who is trying to rationalize an odd event she just witnessed -- but we don't know that. It's a page and a half before we know that there even was an event driving these half-thoughts. I mean, it's not utterly confusing. We get lots of great establishing information about the character and her situation and all that, but it's annoying enough that, if I didn't know I liked the Lockridges, I would never ever have gotten past the first page on this one.
There are times when it is useful to withhold information from the reader, though, and just giving us character thoughts without explanation is a tried-and-true way.
For instance, Lockridge sometimes used this stream-of-consciousness style was to give us a teaser of the victim of the story. I would describe it as the equivalent of the scene in many TV shows where we see the victim doing something, like hiding some mysterious object and rushing away, only to be met by the killer, who we don't see. Selective camera work keeps us from seeing key information, and Lockridge's oblique style would do the same thing in this situation. It makes for a nice teaser that way.
But I think where it works best is in those moments when he gives us more information, not less. Omniscient can let us know not only what the heroine is thinking, as she worries about her deep dreaded secret, but also gives us a glimpse of what the maid is thinking, or the cop. So we not only get the woman's paranoia, we also know enough to see where she's right and wrong.
I also think that the dry reporting voice can also let us get closer to a character. Becuase we've got a buffer between her feelings and our own, we can actually look closer. Maybe even feel more, because it's safer to get so close.
It's also good for a "fair play" detective story, because we have a better sense of reliable and unreliable narrators. This differs a little from some of the hard-boiled narrators I mentioned above, because even though they give you dry facts, they themselves are not really omniscient, and can be fooled.
Tomorrow, back to the subject of serial fiction. I'm going to muse a bit on my options for what's next, as well as talk about some of the bigger issues in writing the online novel.
See you in the funny papers.
Daring to live life as a full time writer, with or without success.
Showing posts with label craft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label craft. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Friday, February 15, 2013
Cozy Mysteries, Guest Protagonists and The Lockridges
One of my early influences were the books of Frances and Richard Lockridge. They had a strange combination of styles and elements -- firmly cozy mystery and romantic suspense, and yet with elements of arch literary verbal styles and the dry factuality of early police procedural.
Unfortunately, I think that this very combination, which made the books stand out at the time, now makes the series feel even more dated and more inaccessible to modern audiences. All the same, I was really delighted to see one of their Mr. and Mrs. North mysteries come back into print. (See my tumblr review of The Dishonest Murderer here.)
Richard Lockridge was a short story writer. I don't know a lot about him really, except that he was writing short fiction for the New Yorker, and his style reflects that. He wrote a short story about Mr. and Mrs. North, a charming New York couple who swilled martinis and had cats. (Actually, I don't know if the cats make an appearance in the short story.)
Frances Lockridge was not a writer, but she was an avid reader of mystery thrillers. She came up with plots, and he started writing them into mysteries, featuring Mr. and Mrs. North. The Norths were not detectives. They were socialites who befriend a police lieutenant, Bill Weigand. Bill is the detective. The Norths tend to just be involved as witnesses or acquaintances of people in the case. Though Pam sometimes stumbles into a dangerous situation, most of the time the detecting is done over cocktails. Bill, and later in the series his wife Dorian, join the Norths and they chat through the case.
Pam North appears to be a ditz, sort of like Gracie Allen. Her mind seems to flit at random without connection, but Bill has figured out that she just thinks too fast for most people to keep up. She is always good for bringing a new perspective to the case.
And I will admit without shame that my character Karla (from The Man Who Did Too Much) is partly influenced by her. (Miss Marple, the other influence, also has a tendency to make leaps that others don't follow, and say things that sound nonsensical. I like this trope a lot, though it can be over used.)
I think, though, that the most interesting element of the Lockridge mysteries in general is that the recurring characters tend not to be the protagonists of the story.
Enter the Guest Protagonist
This is one of my favorite tropes, and certainly you see it in a lot more series than just the Lockridges. The main character of the story is a guest in the series: a client, a person who stumbles into trouble. Sometimes even a detective... or a killer. You saw this a lot with Miss Marple, the protagonist would be someone else in trouble or trying to solve the case or someone Miss Marple calls in to do the dirty work. And Miss Marple kind of lurks, saying mysterious things. You also see it in TV shows that have been running for a long time, and using a guest protagonist allows the writers to do something new. You even see it as a series formula, as with Columbo, where the protagonist is the guest murderer of the week.
But the Lockridges made a special use of this trope: They used it to add one more subgenre to the mix they already had with the existing characters:
The Norths provided the cozy mystery puzzle element. Bill Weigand's part was dry, old-style police procedural, and the guest character was almost always a woman-in-jeopardy (or man-in-jeopardy), which made it classic romantic suspense. None of these three subplots were ever very deep (though sometimes the story would emphasize one genre or character over the others) but the three working in combo kept the story interesting.
This is especially true of the suspense aspect of the story -- which unfortunately was particularly formulaic at the time. There was always a stock set of characters and you knew exactly every turn just by who the woman trusted or didn't trust. (If she trusts somebody, they're bad, if she doesn't they're good.) But with the police and the Norths mixing in, you would end up with more variations.
Another reason this mixture works is because it allowed thrillers and romantic suspense to have the stability of a series.
Normally thrillers and romance don't support a series. After all, an innocent person only gets tangled in a life-changing event once or maybe twice. A detective series has to be stable, especially if you have romantic pairings who are not dysfunctional and are really in love. And even if they are dysfunctional and always fighting, you have to find a way to maintain that status quo -- or else one of two things will happen. Either you will anger the audience because you raise anticipation without paying off, OR you do pay off, and they feel the story is over.
I love the stability of a Mr. and Mrs. North, or of Nick and Nora Charles, and other detecting couples. There's teasing and tension, but their relationships are solid. They're trustworthy. They're like a security blanket. And they are just too darned stable to drive the anticipation of a romance plot. But when you add a guest protagonist, you have a lot more leeway in the kind of plot you can run. You can create a plot where things change completely for the main character.
I hope to use guest characters to keep the Starling and Marquette series fresh. And in some ways I've already used it for the first story. George is like a guest protagonist, and what is very wrong with his life gets settled. And he's got a long way to go before he really achieves stability in his life. The series will continue to develop that way, but I think even by the end of the first act, somewhere around Chapter 6, the series finds it's status quo, it's direction.
At some point, though, I think that using guest characters could allow something else for this series: A guest character creates brings fresh eyes to the familiar characters and backstory.
When I think about it, some of the most delightful moments in series fiction can be when we get to see a familiar character through the eyes of someone who doesn't know who they are. The opening of TV show The Saint always would set up a situation (often someone in trouble) and Roger Moore would make his entrance -- sometimes in a flashy or daring way, or sometimes in a subtle and understated way -- and someone would ask who he is, and someone else would say "Why, that's Simon Templar," and Roger Moore would cast his eyes upward, and a little halo would appear over his head, and the music would star, and the credits would roll.
We would often see Columbo first through the eyes of the killer, or of the someone who didn't realize they had a genius detective on their hands. He'd bumble his way onto the scene to much sighing and eye-rolling on the part of the person who didn't know better, while we the auidence chuckle.
And my favorite entrance for Miss Marple is in a book in which she barely appears, The Moving Finger. Halfway through the book, as the puzzling story gets more sinister, the Vicar's wife declares that they need to call in an expert. "But Scotland Yard already sent an expert," says the protagonist. "No, no, not that kind of expert. What we need is an expert in Evil." The characters didn't know what she meant, but fans of Miss Marple certainly knew.
This trope is also appealing in that the main character can then become a marvelous guardian angel to the protagonist -- a miracle worker. Furthermore, since the guest protagonist doesn't know this person, it makes perfect sense that she doesn't tell this guardian angel about things she ought to. She has no reason to trust this person, no reason to think this person can help. So you can ramp up the tension higher without making your protagonist out to be an idiot. Or at least not much of one.
I can't really use this for Mick and Casey McKee, because Mick is the narrator of those stories. But George and Karla are really suited for the Fairy God Parents role in a light thriller. But as with Mr. and Mrs. North (or The Saint) I would not want them to receed too far into the background. I would never want to do like The Moving Finger and have them only make a cameo in a story in their own series.
Because of that, I think this series should be, as with the Norths, a balance of subgenres, balancing a guest character's story with George's compulsive action heroing and Karla's puzzle solving.
Next week I hope to talk more about an odd element of the writing of Richard Lockridge -- his artsy, almost arch writing style and strange blend of objective, omniscient and tight, emotional third person -- all in the same sentence.
I suspect that some of the worst habits I had as a young writer came from Richard Lockridge. Now, as a mature writer, I think I begin to see what he was doing.
See you in the funny papers.
Unfortunately, I think that this very combination, which made the books stand out at the time, now makes the series feel even more dated and more inaccessible to modern audiences. All the same, I was really delighted to see one of their Mr. and Mrs. North mysteries come back into print. (See my tumblr review of The Dishonest Murderer here.)
Richard Lockridge was a short story writer. I don't know a lot about him really, except that he was writing short fiction for the New Yorker, and his style reflects that. He wrote a short story about Mr. and Mrs. North, a charming New York couple who swilled martinis and had cats. (Actually, I don't know if the cats make an appearance in the short story.)
Frances Lockridge was not a writer, but she was an avid reader of mystery thrillers. She came up with plots, and he started writing them into mysteries, featuring Mr. and Mrs. North. The Norths were not detectives. They were socialites who befriend a police lieutenant, Bill Weigand. Bill is the detective. The Norths tend to just be involved as witnesses or acquaintances of people in the case. Though Pam sometimes stumbles into a dangerous situation, most of the time the detecting is done over cocktails. Bill, and later in the series his wife Dorian, join the Norths and they chat through the case.
Pam North appears to be a ditz, sort of like Gracie Allen. Her mind seems to flit at random without connection, but Bill has figured out that she just thinks too fast for most people to keep up. She is always good for bringing a new perspective to the case.
And I will admit without shame that my character Karla (from The Man Who Did Too Much) is partly influenced by her. (Miss Marple, the other influence, also has a tendency to make leaps that others don't follow, and say things that sound nonsensical. I like this trope a lot, though it can be over used.)
I think, though, that the most interesting element of the Lockridge mysteries in general is that the recurring characters tend not to be the protagonists of the story.
Enter the Guest Protagonist
This is one of my favorite tropes, and certainly you see it in a lot more series than just the Lockridges. The main character of the story is a guest in the series: a client, a person who stumbles into trouble. Sometimes even a detective... or a killer. You saw this a lot with Miss Marple, the protagonist would be someone else in trouble or trying to solve the case or someone Miss Marple calls in to do the dirty work. And Miss Marple kind of lurks, saying mysterious things. You also see it in TV shows that have been running for a long time, and using a guest protagonist allows the writers to do something new. You even see it as a series formula, as with Columbo, where the protagonist is the guest murderer of the week.
But the Lockridges made a special use of this trope: They used it to add one more subgenre to the mix they already had with the existing characters:
The Norths provided the cozy mystery puzzle element. Bill Weigand's part was dry, old-style police procedural, and the guest character was almost always a woman-in-jeopardy (or man-in-jeopardy), which made it classic romantic suspense. None of these three subplots were ever very deep (though sometimes the story would emphasize one genre or character over the others) but the three working in combo kept the story interesting.
This is especially true of the suspense aspect of the story -- which unfortunately was particularly formulaic at the time. There was always a stock set of characters and you knew exactly every turn just by who the woman trusted or didn't trust. (If she trusts somebody, they're bad, if she doesn't they're good.) But with the police and the Norths mixing in, you would end up with more variations.
Another reason this mixture works is because it allowed thrillers and romantic suspense to have the stability of a series.
Normally thrillers and romance don't support a series. After all, an innocent person only gets tangled in a life-changing event once or maybe twice. A detective series has to be stable, especially if you have romantic pairings who are not dysfunctional and are really in love. And even if they are dysfunctional and always fighting, you have to find a way to maintain that status quo -- or else one of two things will happen. Either you will anger the audience because you raise anticipation without paying off, OR you do pay off, and they feel the story is over.
I love the stability of a Mr. and Mrs. North, or of Nick and Nora Charles, and other detecting couples. There's teasing and tension, but their relationships are solid. They're trustworthy. They're like a security blanket. And they are just too darned stable to drive the anticipation of a romance plot. But when you add a guest protagonist, you have a lot more leeway in the kind of plot you can run. You can create a plot where things change completely for the main character.
I hope to use guest characters to keep the Starling and Marquette series fresh. And in some ways I've already used it for the first story. George is like a guest protagonist, and what is very wrong with his life gets settled. And he's got a long way to go before he really achieves stability in his life. The series will continue to develop that way, but I think even by the end of the first act, somewhere around Chapter 6, the series finds it's status quo, it's direction.
At some point, though, I think that using guest characters could allow something else for this series: A guest character creates brings fresh eyes to the familiar characters and backstory.
When I think about it, some of the most delightful moments in series fiction can be when we get to see a familiar character through the eyes of someone who doesn't know who they are. The opening of TV show The Saint always would set up a situation (often someone in trouble) and Roger Moore would make his entrance -- sometimes in a flashy or daring way, or sometimes in a subtle and understated way -- and someone would ask who he is, and someone else would say "Why, that's Simon Templar," and Roger Moore would cast his eyes upward, and a little halo would appear over his head, and the music would star, and the credits would roll.
We would often see Columbo first through the eyes of the killer, or of the someone who didn't realize they had a genius detective on their hands. He'd bumble his way onto the scene to much sighing and eye-rolling on the part of the person who didn't know better, while we the auidence chuckle.
And my favorite entrance for Miss Marple is in a book in which she barely appears, The Moving Finger. Halfway through the book, as the puzzling story gets more sinister, the Vicar's wife declares that they need to call in an expert. "But Scotland Yard already sent an expert," says the protagonist. "No, no, not that kind of expert. What we need is an expert in Evil." The characters didn't know what she meant, but fans of Miss Marple certainly knew.
This trope is also appealing in that the main character can then become a marvelous guardian angel to the protagonist -- a miracle worker. Furthermore, since the guest protagonist doesn't know this person, it makes perfect sense that she doesn't tell this guardian angel about things she ought to. She has no reason to trust this person, no reason to think this person can help. So you can ramp up the tension higher without making your protagonist out to be an idiot. Or at least not much of one.
I can't really use this for Mick and Casey McKee, because Mick is the narrator of those stories. But George and Karla are really suited for the Fairy God Parents role in a light thriller. But as with Mr. and Mrs. North (or The Saint) I would not want them to receed too far into the background. I would never want to do like The Moving Finger and have them only make a cameo in a story in their own series.
Because of that, I think this series should be, as with the Norths, a balance of subgenres, balancing a guest character's story with George's compulsive action heroing and Karla's puzzle solving.
Next week I hope to talk more about an odd element of the writing of Richard Lockridge -- his artsy, almost arch writing style and strange blend of objective, omniscient and tight, emotional third person -- all in the same sentence.
I suspect that some of the worst habits I had as a young writer came from Richard Lockridge. Now, as a mature writer, I think I begin to see what he was doing.
See you in the funny papers.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Writing the Cozy Mystery - Twisting Your Contrivances
Once upon a time a writer friend had a problem with her mystery/suspense story.
She had a character who had to miss a phone call -- a phone call that would warn her she was driving into a dangerous situation. The problem was that the character was just not the sort of person who ever would or could miss a phone call. She was a smart, on-top-of-it businesswoman who had a no-fail cell phone that she would not only have on her, but she would check for messages just in case she missed any.
And as a group we had a lot of suggestions for how she could miss the phone call. Mainly they were simple things like have her drive through a tunnel where there was no reception.
The problem with those simple answers is that they often come off contrived. If the audience believes that this woman would never miss a phone call, and then circumstances just happen to make her miss it, they see the mechanics of the story cranking away, and tension is lost.
Still, for minor things, that can be okay. They do the job and you move past them as quickly as possible.
However....
Something like that could be a place where you delight your audience too. IMHO, every time you come across a contrived coincidence, you're looking at a delightful irony that wasn't set up right.
You just have to lay the seeds so that the audience can feel satisfied, rather than bored or annoyed, when it happens. Further more, a little contrivance like that can be turned into something that makes the whole story sparkle.
It's All About the Red Herrings
There are several ways to do this, but you have to start with raising an expectation that will lead them astray -- a red herring.
It can be especially effective if you actually start by raising the expectation of exactly what will happen, only it's so early in the story, the audience doesn't know where you're going with it. It's easy to divert them into another direction at this time. But they will remember that first thought and be satisfied when it pays off later.
For instance, say this woman has this really super cool never-fail phone, and she happens have one of the recall list because the battery won't hold a charge. This detail is already satisfying, all by itself, because it's ironic. A no-fail phone which fails. It's a great joke. Plus we also feel a little satisfaction (and a little shadenfreud) that this person who is so perfect actually has a flaw.
Still, when the audience learns that the phone is faulty, they will think "Ah ha! It will fail her when she most needs it!"
They feel smart having figured that out, but they will be bored if they wait until the end to see that pay off. So you distract (and delight them) by paying off early. You make them think that some other event is going to be the one where it fails her. She's waiting for an important call, for instance, on which her entire business hinges.
You can double the value of that red-herring if you make this a part of an interesting subplot. Her super spiffy phone doesn't work, and that pays off almost instantly when you learn she is waiting for an important phone call. But then the audience learns that they don't want her to get the call. Maybe it will help her business, but it could make her miss her son's birthday party.
So the audience isn't fearing it will fail, they're hoping it will fail. They want it to fail, dangit. And because they want it, it stays in their mind, but in the wrong context. And you can even drop the issue of the phone and the phonecall completely, and focus on the kid and the party and the business deal.
Then, later, when she needs to be warned that the killer is waiting for her, the audience remembers the phone and goes "Oh, no, that's right, that phone doesn't work!"
Which is satisfying, but...
You can do better than that.
Remember that the more conscious the audience is of something, the more impact you can have.
So.... remind them that the phone doesn't work just before the person tries to call her. The audience thinks "Oh, she's not going to get the call..." and they start to sigh... and then you hit them with the twist.
The phone rings. It works. She answers. Great! The audience sits up. This is not how it's supposed to go. But it's the business call she was waiting for. And _that's__ what prevents her from getting the warning call. That danged call we didn't want her to get in the first place! Oh, the agony.
Worse yet, she might even see the warning call is coming in -- she has call waiting -- but the friend who is trying to warn her is against that business deal, and she's pissed at him, so she ignores his call. She chats away. The warning goes to voicemail.
And she is so happy to have got the business deal, and so satisfied with having thwarted her friend, that she never checks the voicemail.
But it gets better!
Final payoff? We know that voicemail is there. There is still time for her to check it and be warned. She might even regret being rude to her friend, and think about calling him back. She looks at the phone with guilt. But she's got to get where she is going first.
She's there, she's getting out of the car and she looks at her phone and sees "1 voicemail message" on the display. It's the very last moment where she could possibly get away... she flips open the phone to get the message, and _then__ the phone craps out. (Or the phone works and just as she's listening to the message, the killer shows up and it's too late anyway.)
And thus the conveniently missed phonecall becomes more than an author's contrivance which bores the audience. It becomes a riveting, amusing, delightful center of attention.
Hitchcock specialized in this sort of multi-threaded red herring, but it isn't just a thriller tool. It's also something that every great comedy writer has to master. Read P.G. Wodehouse or Donald Westlake, or watch madcap movies like Arsenic and Old Lace. You'll see detail after detail set up and pay off again and again, twisting in new and better directions all the time.
The thing that makes this trail of twists and red herrings work so well is that it doesn't just solve one problem with one pay off -- it makes the whole darned story interesting and satisfying. It pays off again and again, like a government bond.
Now, you might think: well, that works fine for people who plot things out in advance, but a "pantser" can't make use of that technique... can she?
Actually, the best writers I know who are pantsers are masters of this technique. They do it one of two ways. The first way is that they learn to recognize details with great possibilities. So they might start the story with the wonky phone and the expected business call, and they have no idea where it's going to go, but they keep playing with it and complicating it while it's interesting and then drop it when it's not, and then bring it back when they need something to pay off later.
The other way is that many pantsers have a general idea of where they are going. They might know, for instance, that the protagonist is going to be lured into a confrontation with the killer at the end, and that a missed phonecall might be a good way to ramp up tension -- and then they start laying the groundwork for it, even if they have no idea how they're going to get from point A to point Z.
That's pretty much how I came up with the scenario above. I knew the problem and I found a starting place and just rambled out the complications, building one on the other. (I have seen too many Hitchcock movies. And madcap comedies.) And if you're a plotter, you can plan it out in advance, but you can also change it as you go, becuase it builds.
The one thing that's hard is to retrofit something you've already written. Still, you can do simpler versions by just planting in a few small details earlier. Look among your existing subplots for one that might do the equivalent of the "important business call".
The key is that you have to have fun all along the way. Because that's what you want the audience to have.
See you in the funny papers.
A Round of Words in 80 Days Update
This Segment's Progress:
Saturday Day 62 - 1000 words (mostly blogging)
Sunday Day 63 - 697 words (fiction)
Monday Day 64 -thousands of uncounted blogging words, but mostly I just had an existential crisis.
Tuesday Day 65 -2692 words (half fiction half blogging)
And as a group we had a lot of suggestions for how she could miss the phone call. Mainly they were simple things like have her drive through a tunnel where there was no reception.
The problem with those simple answers is that they often come off contrived. If the audience believes that this woman would never miss a phone call, and then circumstances just happen to make her miss it, they see the mechanics of the story cranking away, and tension is lost.
Still, for minor things, that can be okay. They do the job and you move past them as quickly as possible.
However....
Something like that could be a place where you delight your audience too. IMHO, every time you come across a contrived coincidence, you're looking at a delightful irony that wasn't set up right.
You just have to lay the seeds so that the audience can feel satisfied, rather than bored or annoyed, when it happens. Further more, a little contrivance like that can be turned into something that makes the whole story sparkle.
It's All About the Red Herrings
There are several ways to do this, but you have to start with raising an expectation that will lead them astray -- a red herring.
It can be especially effective if you actually start by raising the expectation of exactly what will happen, only it's so early in the story, the audience doesn't know where you're going with it. It's easy to divert them into another direction at this time. But they will remember that first thought and be satisfied when it pays off later.
For instance, say this woman has this really super cool never-fail phone, and she happens have one of the recall list because the battery won't hold a charge. This detail is already satisfying, all by itself, because it's ironic. A no-fail phone which fails. It's a great joke. Plus we also feel a little satisfaction (and a little shadenfreud) that this person who is so perfect actually has a flaw.
Still, when the audience learns that the phone is faulty, they will think "Ah ha! It will fail her when she most needs it!"
They feel smart having figured that out, but they will be bored if they wait until the end to see that pay off. So you distract (and delight them) by paying off early. You make them think that some other event is going to be the one where it fails her. She's waiting for an important call, for instance, on which her entire business hinges.
You can double the value of that red-herring if you make this a part of an interesting subplot. Her super spiffy phone doesn't work, and that pays off almost instantly when you learn she is waiting for an important phone call. But then the audience learns that they don't want her to get the call. Maybe it will help her business, but it could make her miss her son's birthday party.
So the audience isn't fearing it will fail, they're hoping it will fail. They want it to fail, dangit. And because they want it, it stays in their mind, but in the wrong context. And you can even drop the issue of the phone and the phonecall completely, and focus on the kid and the party and the business deal.
Then, later, when she needs to be warned that the killer is waiting for her, the audience remembers the phone and goes "Oh, no, that's right, that phone doesn't work!"
Which is satisfying, but...
You can do better than that.
Remember that the more conscious the audience is of something, the more impact you can have.
So.... remind them that the phone doesn't work just before the person tries to call her. The audience thinks "Oh, she's not going to get the call..." and they start to sigh... and then you hit them with the twist.
The phone rings. It works. She answers. Great! The audience sits up. This is not how it's supposed to go. But it's the business call she was waiting for. And _that's__ what prevents her from getting the warning call. That danged call we didn't want her to get in the first place! Oh, the agony.
Worse yet, she might even see the warning call is coming in -- she has call waiting -- but the friend who is trying to warn her is against that business deal, and she's pissed at him, so she ignores his call. She chats away. The warning goes to voicemail.
And she is so happy to have got the business deal, and so satisfied with having thwarted her friend, that she never checks the voicemail.
But it gets better!
Final payoff? We know that voicemail is there. There is still time for her to check it and be warned. She might even regret being rude to her friend, and think about calling him back. She looks at the phone with guilt. But she's got to get where she is going first.
She's there, she's getting out of the car and she looks at her phone and sees "1 voicemail message" on the display. It's the very last moment where she could possibly get away... she flips open the phone to get the message, and _then__ the phone craps out. (Or the phone works and just as she's listening to the message, the killer shows up and it's too late anyway.)
And thus the conveniently missed phonecall becomes more than an author's contrivance which bores the audience. It becomes a riveting, amusing, delightful center of attention.
Hitchcock specialized in this sort of multi-threaded red herring, but it isn't just a thriller tool. It's also something that every great comedy writer has to master. Read P.G. Wodehouse or Donald Westlake, or watch madcap movies like Arsenic and Old Lace. You'll see detail after detail set up and pay off again and again, twisting in new and better directions all the time.
The thing that makes this trail of twists and red herrings work so well is that it doesn't just solve one problem with one pay off -- it makes the whole darned story interesting and satisfying. It pays off again and again, like a government bond.
Now, you might think: well, that works fine for people who plot things out in advance, but a "pantser" can't make use of that technique... can she?
Actually, the best writers I know who are pantsers are masters of this technique. They do it one of two ways. The first way is that they learn to recognize details with great possibilities. So they might start the story with the wonky phone and the expected business call, and they have no idea where it's going to go, but they keep playing with it and complicating it while it's interesting and then drop it when it's not, and then bring it back when they need something to pay off later.
The other way is that many pantsers have a general idea of where they are going. They might know, for instance, that the protagonist is going to be lured into a confrontation with the killer at the end, and that a missed phonecall might be a good way to ramp up tension -- and then they start laying the groundwork for it, even if they have no idea how they're going to get from point A to point Z.
That's pretty much how I came up with the scenario above. I knew the problem and I found a starting place and just rambled out the complications, building one on the other. (I have seen too many Hitchcock movies. And madcap comedies.) And if you're a plotter, you can plan it out in advance, but you can also change it as you go, becuase it builds.
The one thing that's hard is to retrofit something you've already written. Still, you can do simpler versions by just planting in a few small details earlier. Look among your existing subplots for one that might do the equivalent of the "important business call".
The key is that you have to have fun all along the way. Because that's what you want the audience to have.
See you in the funny papers.
A Round of Words in 80 Days Update
This Segment's Progress:
Saturday Day 62 - 1000 words (mostly blogging)
Sunday Day 63 - 697 words (fiction)
Monday Day 64 -thousands of uncounted blogging words, but mostly I just had an existential crisis.
Tuesday Day 65 -2692 words (half fiction half blogging)
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Writing the Online Novel - Walking, and Dancing, to the Story
I got off on the wrong foot with Test of Freedom. I made a couple of small bad decisions with each of the first four episodes, mainly due to distraction. So I took a week off to get it back in gear.
Walking to the Story
The original draft of this story was written under Nanowrimo-like conditions. Just sit down and start writing. One really common problem for the "just sit down and write" process is called walking to the story. That's where you stall on paper by having your characters walk through all their motions between one scene and another while you think.
It's like when your character gets an urgent phone call that her husband is in the hospital, and you don't just cut from her getting the call to arriving at the hospital: you have her hang up the phone, and then get her coat, and then go down stairs, and then open the door, and then go out, and then close the door, and then walk to the car, and then unlock the car door, and then open it, and then get in, and then....
You get the idea.
But this kind of nothing scene isn't always bad. It's only bad if it's actually stalling. It can be a great place for information and character development. Your character hangs up and races about looking for her keys, which she can't find because she's too worried sick to pay attention to what she's doing. That could be a powerful scene of it's own.
There are also what I call "bridge scenes" which are usually less powerful -- more summarized -- which you can use for timing and also to set up something to come. For instance if the character had a frustrating time getting to the hospital and finding where her husband is, that can set up her state of mind for the next scene. However, you have to be careful about how you use it, how much impact you want.
For instance, full vivid scenes will give you more impact and may actually compete with the next scene. A summary, on the other hand, will have less impact, but can be more of a quiet set up so that the reader is really ready for the next scene. You have to decide with any bridge scene how important it is: how visceral, how central to the overall story.
Walking on a Journey
Some stories are about a journey. Classic road movies and quest fantasies are examples here. (Or on the literary side, the "picaresque" novel.) That kind of story is pretty much ALL "walking to the story." That's what it's about.
It's harder, then, to differentiate between the stalling wasteful bits and the necessary bits. And that's the trouble I've been having with Test of Freedom -- and why I delayed Episode 5 for a week. I needed my wits about me to really judge what to keep and what to throw out and how to handle the pacing of the first ten episodes or so of this story.
But there is another thing that complicates this... or perhaps clears it up, because it leaves fewer choices: I'm publishing this as an online novel, and in particular I'm publishing it as a short episode online novel.
If my episode lengths were longer, say 2000 words, I would have space for less important bridge scenes. The first 600 words of such a chapter could be a whole set up scene that leads into the meat of the chapter. I could also take a couple hundred words for a mini "capper" scene at the end, what Algis Budrys used to call a "validation" scene. (Cappers can also be twists -- a cliffhanger that happens after you resolve the issue of the scene.)
But that that kind of structure presupposes that the reader is reading all those parts as a whole piece. But with a short episode style I'm using, each of those scenes have to stand alone.
So for bridging sequences, I either have to make that bit stand alone with its own importance, or I cut it down to maybe a paragraph or two. Or... cut it out entirely. (Or take very short summary paragraphs and turn them into full episodes.)
So the problem is deciding which is which.
Dancing to the Story
In this first section, all the characters are basically walking to their part in the story.
Jackie's journey is easier, because it's pretty much covered in Episode 4. His main story will take off later, but there isn't more to write about him until then. Mary and Lady Ashton, on the other hand, are on a quest, so they're going to be on the road longer, and for this first part, they have to carry the story alone.
What had me in a dither was this: as with any good journey/buddy story, there's character development and revealations going on in the trivial scenes of the journey. It's what the story is about, at least in part. When I look at it one way, whole rafts of story seem unnecessary, and then I look at it another way and I think that's the most important part.
In writing Misplaced Hero, I learned this: every episode is a vignette. Every episode has a purpose in and of itself, and it's more important for it to work individually and just to move on to the next episode, than it is for it to advance the whole overall arc of the story. This story is going all winter long. Hurrying doesn't help.
When I look at things I follow eagerly -- blogs, comic strips, a friend's adventures in parenthood which she relates on a forum I frequent -- I notice one thing about them all. I get hooked not because they are leading somewhere, but because they're interesting NOW. Each unit is worth reading, and that makes me look for more units.
And that is the hard part with this story, because I already wrote it, thinking it was a novel. Some of the interesting bits don't stand alone. And sometimes the less interesting bits fare better as an episode.
Heres' the irony: I drafted this post before I finally got Episode 5 in the can. At that point, I firmly intended to skip what happens in the episode as useless business, just something the characters do. And I was going to move straight to a scene with the ladies in their carriage, headed for a port city in Acteron. That traveling scene was a bit of character development, just a little discussion of feelings and moods: Mary's frustrated because while she's sitting in a carriage, she's not DOING anything, and the others try to distract and amuse her and all agree that traveling is all they can do right now.
In other words a scene about the characters not doing anything but talking about how they aren't doing anything. Still, it was a more fun, more character-filled, more enjoyable scene overall than the scene I posted.
The problem is that the scene failed at its only actual purpose. It missed the one thing that it really needed to do:
In the first book, Mary describes herself as a "Mary-in-the-box." She has a high capacity for latency. Sure, she is a coiled spring inside, but when she has no choice but to wait, she can wait like nobody's business. She doesn't waste time or energy fretting over things she can't help.
But Jackie's arrest, of course, threw her for a loop, and I suppose I wrote that scene -- as a part of a sequence -- to show her getting her equilibrium back. But like so much about Mary, her equilibrium came back instantly when Lady Ashton offers to fund the expedition. Heck, she got it back the instant she learned that Lady Ashton knew more about Jackie's transportation. "What's the name of the ship and when did it sail?" -- that was Mary back to normal.
I realized that one little sentence in the scene about crossing the border actually did a better job of character development than a whole scene: Lady Ashton describes Mary as like a dog who never strains at the leash, but is gone the instant the leash is released.
Showing is better than telling, and a descriptive sentence is not as vivid or visceral as a real scene, but that one did the job better than the scene I had in mind. So I went with the scene where the characters were actually doing something -- even if it wasn't as clever and entertaining as it could be.
In the end, I'm not sure I danced to the story yet. I think there are upcoming scenes where that happens, but I don't have to dither over them, because they actually work. They're intersting and they have a purpose.
If I were writing this story afresh, and not just reworking an existing story, I would make some different choices. When your options are wide open, you can make anything dance. But when you're editing, you're more about skipping the boring parts.
The next story in this cycle -- League of Freedom -- is much more maleable in this way. It is less goal-driven at least at first. It's the middle of a trilogy and the characters have to adjust to the situation. That's where dancing to the story will really come in handy, and I hope to be more ready for it.
Anyway, I wavered from my original conclusion to this post, but I'll give it to you anyway because I think it's right:
So in the end, it's about skipping the boring parts, but it's also about making the boring parts interesting. If a story is a journey, the journey matters. If your actor has to get across the stage, then get him across the stage in an interesting way, whether it's waddling like a duck, or leaping like Najinsky.
The thing that makes it interesting, though, isn't the novelty, but rather that it makes a commentary on the story. There's a purpose to it.
See you in the funny papers.
A Round of Words in 80 Days Update
Other folks checking in today, and this segment's progress:
Sunday Day 35 - 150 minutes
Monday Day 36 - 105 minutes
Tuesday Day 37 - To heck with it, it's election night.
Walking to the Story
The original draft of this story was written under Nanowrimo-like conditions. Just sit down and start writing. One really common problem for the "just sit down and write" process is called walking to the story. That's where you stall on paper by having your characters walk through all their motions between one scene and another while you think.
It's like when your character gets an urgent phone call that her husband is in the hospital, and you don't just cut from her getting the call to arriving at the hospital: you have her hang up the phone, and then get her coat, and then go down stairs, and then open the door, and then go out, and then close the door, and then walk to the car, and then unlock the car door, and then open it, and then get in, and then....
You get the idea.
But this kind of nothing scene isn't always bad. It's only bad if it's actually stalling. It can be a great place for information and character development. Your character hangs up and races about looking for her keys, which she can't find because she's too worried sick to pay attention to what she's doing. That could be a powerful scene of it's own.
There are also what I call "bridge scenes" which are usually less powerful -- more summarized -- which you can use for timing and also to set up something to come. For instance if the character had a frustrating time getting to the hospital and finding where her husband is, that can set up her state of mind for the next scene. However, you have to be careful about how you use it, how much impact you want.
For instance, full vivid scenes will give you more impact and may actually compete with the next scene. A summary, on the other hand, will have less impact, but can be more of a quiet set up so that the reader is really ready for the next scene. You have to decide with any bridge scene how important it is: how visceral, how central to the overall story.
Walking on a Journey
Some stories are about a journey. Classic road movies and quest fantasies are examples here. (Or on the literary side, the "picaresque" novel.) That kind of story is pretty much ALL "walking to the story." That's what it's about.
It's harder, then, to differentiate between the stalling wasteful bits and the necessary bits. And that's the trouble I've been having with Test of Freedom -- and why I delayed Episode 5 for a week. I needed my wits about me to really judge what to keep and what to throw out and how to handle the pacing of the first ten episodes or so of this story.
But there is another thing that complicates this... or perhaps clears it up, because it leaves fewer choices: I'm publishing this as an online novel, and in particular I'm publishing it as a short episode online novel.
If my episode lengths were longer, say 2000 words, I would have space for less important bridge scenes. The first 600 words of such a chapter could be a whole set up scene that leads into the meat of the chapter. I could also take a couple hundred words for a mini "capper" scene at the end, what Algis Budrys used to call a "validation" scene. (Cappers can also be twists -- a cliffhanger that happens after you resolve the issue of the scene.)
But that that kind of structure presupposes that the reader is reading all those parts as a whole piece. But with a short episode style I'm using, each of those scenes have to stand alone.
So for bridging sequences, I either have to make that bit stand alone with its own importance, or I cut it down to maybe a paragraph or two. Or... cut it out entirely. (Or take very short summary paragraphs and turn them into full episodes.)
So the problem is deciding which is which.
Dancing to the Story
In this first section, all the characters are basically walking to their part in the story.
Jackie's journey is easier, because it's pretty much covered in Episode 4. His main story will take off later, but there isn't more to write about him until then. Mary and Lady Ashton, on the other hand, are on a quest, so they're going to be on the road longer, and for this first part, they have to carry the story alone.
What had me in a dither was this: as with any good journey/buddy story, there's character development and revealations going on in the trivial scenes of the journey. It's what the story is about, at least in part. When I look at it one way, whole rafts of story seem unnecessary, and then I look at it another way and I think that's the most important part.
In writing Misplaced Hero, I learned this: every episode is a vignette. Every episode has a purpose in and of itself, and it's more important for it to work individually and just to move on to the next episode, than it is for it to advance the whole overall arc of the story. This story is going all winter long. Hurrying doesn't help.
When I look at things I follow eagerly -- blogs, comic strips, a friend's adventures in parenthood which she relates on a forum I frequent -- I notice one thing about them all. I get hooked not because they are leading somewhere, but because they're interesting NOW. Each unit is worth reading, and that makes me look for more units.
And that is the hard part with this story, because I already wrote it, thinking it was a novel. Some of the interesting bits don't stand alone. And sometimes the less interesting bits fare better as an episode.
Heres' the irony: I drafted this post before I finally got Episode 5 in the can. At that point, I firmly intended to skip what happens in the episode as useless business, just something the characters do. And I was going to move straight to a scene with the ladies in their carriage, headed for a port city in Acteron. That traveling scene was a bit of character development, just a little discussion of feelings and moods: Mary's frustrated because while she's sitting in a carriage, she's not DOING anything, and the others try to distract and amuse her and all agree that traveling is all they can do right now.
In other words a scene about the characters not doing anything but talking about how they aren't doing anything. Still, it was a more fun, more character-filled, more enjoyable scene overall than the scene I posted.
The problem is that the scene failed at its only actual purpose. It missed the one thing that it really needed to do:
In the first book, Mary describes herself as a "Mary-in-the-box." She has a high capacity for latency. Sure, she is a coiled spring inside, but when she has no choice but to wait, she can wait like nobody's business. She doesn't waste time or energy fretting over things she can't help.
But Jackie's arrest, of course, threw her for a loop, and I suppose I wrote that scene -- as a part of a sequence -- to show her getting her equilibrium back. But like so much about Mary, her equilibrium came back instantly when Lady Ashton offers to fund the expedition. Heck, she got it back the instant she learned that Lady Ashton knew more about Jackie's transportation. "What's the name of the ship and when did it sail?" -- that was Mary back to normal.
I realized that one little sentence in the scene about crossing the border actually did a better job of character development than a whole scene: Lady Ashton describes Mary as like a dog who never strains at the leash, but is gone the instant the leash is released.
Showing is better than telling, and a descriptive sentence is not as vivid or visceral as a real scene, but that one did the job better than the scene I had in mind. So I went with the scene where the characters were actually doing something -- even if it wasn't as clever and entertaining as it could be.
In the end, I'm not sure I danced to the story yet. I think there are upcoming scenes where that happens, but I don't have to dither over them, because they actually work. They're intersting and they have a purpose.
If I were writing this story afresh, and not just reworking an existing story, I would make some different choices. When your options are wide open, you can make anything dance. But when you're editing, you're more about skipping the boring parts.
The next story in this cycle -- League of Freedom -- is much more maleable in this way. It is less goal-driven at least at first. It's the middle of a trilogy and the characters have to adjust to the situation. That's where dancing to the story will really come in handy, and I hope to be more ready for it.
Anyway, I wavered from my original conclusion to this post, but I'll give it to you anyway because I think it's right:
So in the end, it's about skipping the boring parts, but it's also about making the boring parts interesting. If a story is a journey, the journey matters. If your actor has to get across the stage, then get him across the stage in an interesting way, whether it's waddling like a duck, or leaping like Najinsky.
The thing that makes it interesting, though, isn't the novelty, but rather that it makes a commentary on the story. There's a purpose to it.
See you in the funny papers.
A Round of Words in 80 Days Update
Other folks checking in today, and this segment's progress:
Sunday Day 35 - 150 minutes
Monday Day 36 - 105 minutes
Tuesday Day 37 - To heck with it, it's election night.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Writer Wednesday - In Control
As a writer...You don't control your readers.
You don't control your sales.
You don't control your reviews.
You don't control your word-of-mouth.
You don't control what other people decide to think...
...about you.
....about your work.
.....about the world.
......about self-publishing or the publishing industry.
.......about spelling, or tense, or word choice, or subject matter.
You don't control your reputation... No, make that, you CAN'T control your reputation, no matter how hard you try.
All you can control is what you write.
When the things you don't control distract you, you take your eye off the ball.... and then you lose control of the only thing within your power.
Keep your eyes on the prize, folks. Don't get distracted.
See you in the funny papers.
Progress report for "A Round of Words in 80 Days"
Sunday Day 63 - 240 minutes (approximately - kept forgetting to set the timer)
Monday Day 64 - 95 minutes.
Tuesday Day 65 - 75 minutes.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Red Herrings Must Lead to a Truth
To a dog, a stinky old red herring smells awfully interesting. Drag one across the path of a beagle or bloodhound, and he'll follow it rather than what he's supposed to follow.
And that's where the term "Red Herring" comes from in a mystery. People tend to use it to refer to any suspects who turn out to have not done it. But as a writer, I think it's much more useful to think of it as any clue or element that leads the detective - and audience - astray.
If we're going to write a mystery, it's important to mystify. And to properly mystify, you have to let the audience feel that they know something. If everything is a complete puzzle, and they know nothing, the audience will only be confused and bored and likely never follow the trail.
A red herring has to fascinate the reader. It's got to be nice and stinky and distracting and full of all kinds of great information.
I think, more importantly, that a red herring has to be more than a trick of the trade. We're not just mystery writers, we're storytellers. And in a good story, nothing is wasted and everything is relevant.
So above all, a red herring must pay off. It must lead to good information for the detective, and the reader. For one thing, the reader will not feel that her time has been wasted when she finds out the truth. For another, it gives the reader respect for the detective, if the detective overcomes both the lure and the failure of a red herring, and wrestles a triumph out of it.
So the fact that the butler was behaving so suspiciously only because he was having a fling with the daughter of the house must lead to the revelation that the daughter, on her way to the assignation, saw a blue car pull away from the grange an hour earlier than anyone knew. And it may also cause some other alibi to crumble, or reveal a motive.
This is basic stuff, but it can be easy to forget or overlook when you are wrestling with all the layers and complications of a good whodunnit. Red Herrings are not just distractions, they are pieces of the puzzle.
In the meantime today was a really hellish day at the day job, and my favorite Cantonese restaurant would not answer the phone, so I didn't get to have any Three Cup Chicken as reward. I consoled myself with a bag of potato chips, a container of sour cream and a bag of double-chocolate Milano cookies, and watched Chuck on Hulu with my cats.
I think, though, that I shall take tomorrow off from blogging. (Unless I come up with some really interesting thing to say.)
And that's where the term "Red Herring" comes from in a mystery. People tend to use it to refer to any suspects who turn out to have not done it. But as a writer, I think it's much more useful to think of it as any clue or element that leads the detective - and audience - astray.
If we're going to write a mystery, it's important to mystify. And to properly mystify, you have to let the audience feel that they know something. If everything is a complete puzzle, and they know nothing, the audience will only be confused and bored and likely never follow the trail.
A red herring has to fascinate the reader. It's got to be nice and stinky and distracting and full of all kinds of great information.
I think, more importantly, that a red herring has to be more than a trick of the trade. We're not just mystery writers, we're storytellers. And in a good story, nothing is wasted and everything is relevant.
So above all, a red herring must pay off. It must lead to good information for the detective, and the reader. For one thing, the reader will not feel that her time has been wasted when she finds out the truth. For another, it gives the reader respect for the detective, if the detective overcomes both the lure and the failure of a red herring, and wrestles a triumph out of it.
So the fact that the butler was behaving so suspiciously only because he was having a fling with the daughter of the house must lead to the revelation that the daughter, on her way to the assignation, saw a blue car pull away from the grange an hour earlier than anyone knew. And it may also cause some other alibi to crumble, or reveal a motive.
This is basic stuff, but it can be easy to forget or overlook when you are wrestling with all the layers and complications of a good whodunnit. Red Herrings are not just distractions, they are pieces of the puzzle.
In the meantime today was a really hellish day at the day job, and my favorite Cantonese restaurant would not answer the phone, so I didn't get to have any Three Cup Chicken as reward. I consoled myself with a bag of potato chips, a container of sour cream and a bag of double-chocolate Milano cookies, and watched Chuck on Hulu with my cats.
I think, though, that I shall take tomorrow off from blogging. (Unless I come up with some really interesting thing to say.)
Thursday, April 29, 2010
With Courage, You Don't Need A Reputation
Today we went to see Gone With The Wind in a real theater. (Not a movie palace, unfortunately, just a multiplex that shows a few art films and classics in off hours - and the print was badly digitized, so that the shadows were oddly posterized and sometimes kinda freaky looking.) It was a great, if very long, experience. Four hours, but so full of great moments (and great quotes like the title of this post) you hardly notice it.
In watching it, several thoughts occurred to me in relation to the posts I've made in the last few days:
1. Inescapable Context.
Context for something Gone With The Wind is inescapable. There is no putting a lollipop around anything in it. We just can't escape what we know about that movie, especially if you are at least fifty years old.
Today, when the audience saw this....
Everybody in the whole audience chuckled because they were thinking of this....
For those of you who might be too young to remember: The Carol Burnet Show did wonderful satires of old movies, and the most classic one was "Went With The Wind." The curtain rod dress was one of the THE classic moments in TV history. For blurry video of the entire sketch (which is in two nine-minute parts) "Went With the Wind" Part1 and Part 2 (the part with the dress happens a minute or two into Part 2.) And here is a one and a half minute clip of just the famous entrance.
The other contextual issue is the political incorrectness of this tale of the South (especially in the moments when it tries to be more correct and just makes the moment worse).
2. Scarlet Overhears People Saying Nasty Things About Her.
Scarlet O'Hara, of course, is one of the classic unrepentant jerks of cinema. But she's also one of the most famously appealing ones. And right there, early on, what happens but ... she overhears a number ladies talking about her. It isn't used the same way as the clip I played the other day, but I had to smile after the post I wrote on Tuesday.
The big technique they use to make the story and Scarlet appealing is illustrated in that bit though: As Scarlet listens to the angry, mean (and accurate) things the other ladies say, Melanie defends her. Melanie is the sweetest and nicest person in the world, and thus hated by Scarlet, but she never gives up on Scarlet. Melanie's deluded faith shames Scarlet and keeps her somewhat in check throughout the movie.
In some ways, I think Scarlet is the object of the movie rather than the protagonist, the real conflict is between Melanie's unfailing faith in her, and Rhett's fond cynicism about her. Or perhaps between Scarlet and those two forces which keep her in check.
3. Jerking the Tears
One other kind of technique (not related to making jerks appealing) in Gone With The Wind was when they veiled tragedy so we could get closer to it. Sure, a lot of that movie was quite blunt about the horrors or war. (I swear they violated some Hays commission rules about display of bodies, for instance.) But one of the most affecting scenes is a scene we don't see, but only hear about. When Bonny Blue dies, they cut away, and we don't see the effect on Rhett. Instead, Mammy tells the story of what happened to Melanie. It's a major tear jerker.
I was once told by a writing instructor that the best way to get the audience to cry is to not let your characters cry. Bring them up to the edge of crying, give them every reason, but have them hold back and the audience will cry for them. After seeing this scene, I think that it can work just as well - or even better - to have other characters weep for them.
Tomorrow I'll be talking about Alpha Readers.
In watching it, several thoughts occurred to me in relation to the posts I've made in the last few days:
1. Inescapable Context.
Context for something Gone With The Wind is inescapable. There is no putting a lollipop around anything in it. We just can't escape what we know about that movie, especially if you are at least fifty years old.
Today, when the audience saw this....
Everybody in the whole audience chuckled because they were thinking of this....
For those of you who might be too young to remember: The Carol Burnet Show did wonderful satires of old movies, and the most classic one was "Went With The Wind." The curtain rod dress was one of the THE classic moments in TV history. For blurry video of the entire sketch (which is in two nine-minute parts) "Went With the Wind" Part1 and Part 2 (the part with the dress happens a minute or two into Part 2.) And here is a one and a half minute clip of just the famous entrance.
The other contextual issue is the political incorrectness of this tale of the South (especially in the moments when it tries to be more correct and just makes the moment worse).
2. Scarlet Overhears People Saying Nasty Things About Her.
Scarlet O'Hara, of course, is one of the classic unrepentant jerks of cinema. But she's also one of the most famously appealing ones. And right there, early on, what happens but ... she overhears a number ladies talking about her. It isn't used the same way as the clip I played the other day, but I had to smile after the post I wrote on Tuesday.
The big technique they use to make the story and Scarlet appealing is illustrated in that bit though: As Scarlet listens to the angry, mean (and accurate) things the other ladies say, Melanie defends her. Melanie is the sweetest and nicest person in the world, and thus hated by Scarlet, but she never gives up on Scarlet. Melanie's deluded faith shames Scarlet and keeps her somewhat in check throughout the movie.
In some ways, I think Scarlet is the object of the movie rather than the protagonist, the real conflict is between Melanie's unfailing faith in her, and Rhett's fond cynicism about her. Or perhaps between Scarlet and those two forces which keep her in check.
3. Jerking the Tears
One other kind of technique (not related to making jerks appealing) in Gone With The Wind was when they veiled tragedy so we could get closer to it. Sure, a lot of that movie was quite blunt about the horrors or war. (I swear they violated some Hays commission rules about display of bodies, for instance.) But one of the most affecting scenes is a scene we don't see, but only hear about. When Bonny Blue dies, they cut away, and we don't see the effect on Rhett. Instead, Mammy tells the story of what happened to Melanie. It's a major tear jerker.
I was once told by a writing instructor that the best way to get the audience to cry is to not let your characters cry. Bring them up to the edge of crying, give them every reason, but have them hold back and the audience will cry for them. After seeing this scene, I think that it can work just as well - or even better - to have other characters weep for them.
Tomorrow I'll be talking about Alpha Readers.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Pushing Things Further
I was just reading the long article in the New York Times Magazine about James Patterson. I am not yet a Patterson fan, because I don't like grueling books. However, I might try some of his other series after reading this....
The reason I'm remarking on this though, is that I do like the attitude that comes across in this article. He is very focused on the reader (as opposed to the critic or the publishing industry) and I am energized by the way he tramples limits. Kinda like a literary Jack Bauer.
While people criticize his books for being shallow, I do think the lesson of Patterson is actually a matter of taking things to another level. Go further, go deeper.
I think a lot of us 'advanced' writers who haven't published a book, or made a breakout yet, suffer from doing the right thing. You can write a story that doesn't make mistakes and does everything it's supposed to, but if that's all you do, you end up with a story that's no more than it's supposed to be.
Now... Patterson said something about abandoning pretty sentences and going all for story. I am a person who writes this way in the first place. (The most common comment I get is "Boy, this moves right along!") But since I don't write 17 books a year, I actually can do both. Because the first couple of drafts may be for story, and maybe a middle draft can be for taking the story to another level. But with each draft, I can also push the voice and language.
The reason I'm remarking on this though, is that I do like the attitude that comes across in this article. He is very focused on the reader (as opposed to the critic or the publishing industry) and I am energized by the way he tramples limits. Kinda like a literary Jack Bauer.
While people criticize his books for being shallow, I do think the lesson of Patterson is actually a matter of taking things to another level. Go further, go deeper.
I think a lot of us 'advanced' writers who haven't published a book, or made a breakout yet, suffer from doing the right thing. You can write a story that doesn't make mistakes and does everything it's supposed to, but if that's all you do, you end up with a story that's no more than it's supposed to be.
Now... Patterson said something about abandoning pretty sentences and going all for story. I am a person who writes this way in the first place. (The most common comment I get is "Boy, this moves right along!") But since I don't write 17 books a year, I actually can do both. Because the first couple of drafts may be for story, and maybe a middle draft can be for taking the story to another level. But with each draft, I can also push the voice and language.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Scene Location, Location, Location
I'm not one of those writers who saturates a story with a sense of place. Yes, I do love a great regional or historical novel which is thusly saturated, but I don't think every novel needs ten pages per chapter of setting.
Even so - even if you are writing a bare-bones bump-and-go adventure screenplay - setting is still extremely important to story. Even if you never mention or describe it. Setting is context. It gives shape and meaning to the other elements. ("A character in a setting with a problem.")
So often the setting is the trigger that brings a scene to life for me as a writer. It is the piece that makes a scene ready to write. I may not know what the characters are going to do yet, but once I know what they want, and where they will be when they want it, the scene flares. The ground becomes a playing board, a battle ground.
This is why, when I realized that there was a sandy trail along the rim of the old gravel pit behind karla's house, a number of scenes suddenly woke up and came to life. Not only was this trail a perfect place for a chase scene, but when you have a truly evocative setting like that, it affects other scenes. A trail like that connects other locations ... and people too. It's the path to town, to the beach, and to a small lake in another direction, and to the woods and the sledding hill. It is where you wold naturally ride your ponies and go cross country skiing. That path is the essence of Potewa county.
And as the story begins to pull together, I see that it also connects us to the perfect place for the climax of the story.
Even so - even if you are writing a bare-bones bump-and-go adventure screenplay - setting is still extremely important to story. Even if you never mention or describe it. Setting is context. It gives shape and meaning to the other elements. ("A character in a setting with a problem.")
So often the setting is the trigger that brings a scene to life for me as a writer. It is the piece that makes a scene ready to write. I may not know what the characters are going to do yet, but once I know what they want, and where they will be when they want it, the scene flares. The ground becomes a playing board, a battle ground.
This is why, when I realized that there was a sandy trail along the rim of the old gravel pit behind karla's house, a number of scenes suddenly woke up and came to life. Not only was this trail a perfect place for a chase scene, but when you have a truly evocative setting like that, it affects other scenes. A trail like that connects other locations ... and people too. It's the path to town, to the beach, and to a small lake in another direction, and to the woods and the sledding hill. It is where you wold naturally ride your ponies and go cross country skiing. That path is the essence of Potewa county.
And as the story begins to pull together, I see that it also connects us to the perfect place for the climax of the story.
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