I have a cold. It's been going around and it finally hit me, on my longest work day, of course. So I lack functioning braincells at the moment. However....
Yesterday I rewrote a couple of scenes in Harsh Climate rather than move forward. I was having trouble with the male lead - who is kind of a "still waters run deep" kid. In a script, it works just letting him be quietly overlooked by the other characters until he starts showing his stuff.
However, in prose, I could not make it work. And I finally figured out that I was acting like the other characters: I was looking at his surface. It just wasn't working for me when he'd take a minor insult or when I'd try to explain why he is not wearing socks. He came off as a loser, and I knew that wasn't right. He's not the underdog nebbish who makes good (a la Woody Allen) he's more Zorro-esque, really. Well, not, perhaps, the greatest swordsman in the world, but he's a perfectly capable young hero who just hasn't been called to action yet.
So I sat, and I thought about what he does and says later, and suddenly, finally, he started to talk to me. He looked me in the eye and said "Listen, if you take offense at things, you miss out on the coolest parts of life."
So on Sunday I rewrote a few scenes in his point of view. They work much better now. And I think Vicki's scenes will play better if we have an inkling of why he puts up with her attitude. (I may, however, switch one of the scenes from his point of view to hers, for that reason. The only one I haven't rewritten....)
Today, I was too sick and weary to really write, so I worked on reformatting some screenplays.
In the meantime, yesterday's free story posting seems to have gone really well. Not many comments, but a LOT of traffic. I may make samples and stories a feature of Sunday. And songs. I have a great Christmas carol I wrote for my cats' website many years ago. ("We three cats of orient do, help our mom wrap presents for you. Paper crinkles oh so beautifully... give us some stuff to chew!")
See you tomorrow, though, with some real progress.
Daring to live life as a full time writer, with or without success.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
The Enchanted Tree - a Free Story for the Holiday
Instead of an excerpt, I decided to post a whole story - it's short - which is my favorite of the stories I've written. It's the lead story in my new collection The Enchanted Tree and Other Stories. This story was first published in Cricket Magazine, although it was almost published in Pulphouse, the small literary sf magazine. (Unfortunately, like so many such magazines, Pulphouse folded, and the story never got printed - however, I reached a much greater audience with Cricket. Plus, kids send you fan mail. Sophisticated grownups don't.)
* * * *
The Enchanted Tree
by Camille LaGuire
They cut down the enchanted tree the other day. Sad, but it was old. Most of the branches were dead and we all admitted it was becoming a hazard.
We stood on the sidewalk across the street from it and sang songs about Coral Simmons, and about other people touched by that tree. We didn’t sing a song about me, but then nobody knows how the tree touched me.
Some people say that Coral Simmons was a runaway slave who’d almost made it to Canada when the slave catchers caught up with her. Some say she was just some white farm girl being chased by drunken loggers (or soldiers or trappers). Some even say her name wasn’t Simmons at all, and that she was a Chippewa girl running away from the French or the English or warriors from another tribe. Whatever she was, she was running for her life when she came upon a leafy young tree. She hid among the leaves and spread her arms among the branches, and wished herself hidden. The bark spread over her arms and body, and the tree absorbed her.
So when you have troubles, you go and tell Coral, because she knows troubles.
I went to the tree one Christmas when I was thirteen. There was a terrible snowstorm that year. I was in foster care, and I waited for my mother to come visit for the holiday. I kept telling myself that the storm had delayed her. Then the day after Christmas the present came. If she’d have been coming, she’d have brought it herself. She wouldn’t have mailed it.
It was wrapped in a grocery sack, postmarked from Las Vegas. She did not live in Las Vegas, so she must have gone there for Christmas rather than visit me. Still, maybe she got a job, you know? So I opened it.
It was a little kid’s makeup kit, the kind with glitter eye shadow, smelly perfume, and red lipstick—all bubble packed to a piece of cardboard. I hated makeup, and she knew it. She even made fun of me because of it. She really liked make up, though, so I might have forgiven her if it had been good make up. I held in my disappointment and started to open it. But then I saw the price tag on the back. “$2.95” crossed out with a big red marker. It had been marked down to fifty cents. She had got it out of a remainder bin.
I just knew she left that price tag on purpose. She wanted me to see how cheap it was, because I wasn’t the kind of daughter she wanted. I knew it because she’d actually said it to me before. I felt a raging chill boil up inside me. I ripped up that paper and that Las Vegas postmark and I threw it across the room. Then I threw the present after it. Mrs. Price yelled at me, so I grabbed my coat and mittens and I ran out of the house.
It was already dark, but the night was clear and the snow was bright as a lamp. I plowed through it up to my knees. The tiny crystals flew up like sand and turned my tears into slush. I kept plowing for three whole blocks, all the way to the tree.
It stood there, naked and spidery, the stars showing through its dark branches. It looked so cold, I burst out crying. I threw my arms around the trunk and felt the rough bark and smooth ice against my cheek.
Oh, Coral, I said, oh Coral Coral. Nobody loves me and nobody ought to. I’m ugly and stupid and clumsy. I can’t do anything right. I can’t even get my own mother to give me something I like. She sent me make up, Coral. And the Home just gave me mittens knitted by the ladies’ auxiliary because I’m too old for toys. Can’t I just come into the tree and be like you and be nice to people and just not have anything happen?
I probably said a whole lot more, but all I remember is after a while I heard something buzzing and cracking overhead. I pushed away from the tree and wiped the tears and ice and bark dust off my cheek. Just above my head, a little branch, a twig really, was shaking, and it was shaking real funny. Like a person shakes down a thermometer. Like it was trying to shake something out of itself.
After a minute, I could see a little bud at the tip. A little green bud. Green in the middle of winter, and it kept shaking and getting bigger. I crouched back against the trunk, my hands behind me, and I watched it. It stopped shaking, and then it started to open. It was white, and then pink, and at first it looked like a lily. Then it seemed fancier than a lily, more like an iris. The color started going red and blue and purple, and the blossom got more and more exotic. Maybe that’s what an orchid looks like. I wouldn’t know, but it grew to the size of my hand, and the colors were just wonderful. Just then the smell came out, and it was like a cross between roses and raspberry pie. I stood up straight to get a better look, a better whiff.
Then the fruit started growing out of the middle, but the petals didn’t wither and die. They just got smaller and seemed to grow back into the fruit. By the time it was the size of a walnut, I could tell it was a peach. It got bigger, and golden and fuzzy with a bright red blush. It smelled so good, I reached up and cupped it in my hand.
It was warm. Warm as an August day. It fell off into my hand so I bit into it. It was soft and sweet and juicy, and the syrup dribbled down my chin and made me all sticky. I ate it down to the pit, and as I sucked the last bit of juice from it, I realized that the pit felt funny. It was cold. I took it out of my mouth and looked at it. It was made of brass, or something like that. And it had a loop on the top like.... It was a locket!
It was shaped exactly like a peach pit, except that it had that loop, and a hinge and a hasp. I opened it and the inside was polished so smooth, I could read the inscription by the light of the snow.
Believe in yourself.
I leaned back against the tree and sank into the snow, holding the locket to my heart and not thinking, just feeling. Feeling that I was worth a miracle for Christmas.
So, when the tree was too old to survive the cement and pollution, and it posed a hazard to traffic and power lines, the city took it down. A bunch of old friends decided to go and sing, so I went along.
The thing that surprised me was the number of people who came up silently and looked on. Town leaders, teachers, the janitor over at the department store. Some of them took their hats off, some just looked. Then they went away.
It was the mayor who suggested that we do something more. He stood and watched them drop another branch and shook his head.
“Maybe we should make a monument out of the wood,” he said.
“No,” I said. “We should bury her. Or maybe cremate her.”
“Yes. More respectful.”
They rolled the logs into the park and held a bonfire. Everybody in town came. We sang the song about Coral Simmons again, as a kind of service, and then we all stood and watched the smoke rise.
And for a moment the haze seemed to form the shape of a woman. She was both dark and light, short and tall. Her streaming hair both curly and straight, her fluttering skirt was of calico and lace and buckskin all at once. For a moment, as she flickered up, she even looked like me.
“Goodbye, Coral,” I whispered before she disappeared. At least a hundred voices whispered with me, and I knew she’d touched them all. Her shape rose and spread, and she raised a hand to wave. Then she grew, fainter and larger, until she seemed to fill the whole sky. Until she seemed to have her arms around the world.
But by then she had faded, and we watched the fire burn down to embers, and in the morning we buried the ashes.
* * *
If you want to read more of the stories in The Enchanted Tree, you can buy the collection (seven stories in all) for 99 cents, at Amazon Kindle, Amazon Kindle UK, or or Smashwords. (Smashwords carries formats readable by nearly any ereader.) Also read some of my comments about the collection on the book page here on The Daring Novelist.
Camille
* * * *
The Enchanted Tree
by Camille LaGuire
They cut down the enchanted tree the other day. Sad, but it was old. Most of the branches were dead and we all admitted it was becoming a hazard.
We stood on the sidewalk across the street from it and sang songs about Coral Simmons, and about other people touched by that tree. We didn’t sing a song about me, but then nobody knows how the tree touched me.
Some people say that Coral Simmons was a runaway slave who’d almost made it to Canada when the slave catchers caught up with her. Some say she was just some white farm girl being chased by drunken loggers (or soldiers or trappers). Some even say her name wasn’t Simmons at all, and that she was a Chippewa girl running away from the French or the English or warriors from another tribe. Whatever she was, she was running for her life when she came upon a leafy young tree. She hid among the leaves and spread her arms among the branches, and wished herself hidden. The bark spread over her arms and body, and the tree absorbed her.
So when you have troubles, you go and tell Coral, because she knows troubles.
I went to the tree one Christmas when I was thirteen. There was a terrible snowstorm that year. I was in foster care, and I waited for my mother to come visit for the holiday. I kept telling myself that the storm had delayed her. Then the day after Christmas the present came. If she’d have been coming, she’d have brought it herself. She wouldn’t have mailed it.
It was wrapped in a grocery sack, postmarked from Las Vegas. She did not live in Las Vegas, so she must have gone there for Christmas rather than visit me. Still, maybe she got a job, you know? So I opened it.
It was a little kid’s makeup kit, the kind with glitter eye shadow, smelly perfume, and red lipstick—all bubble packed to a piece of cardboard. I hated makeup, and she knew it. She even made fun of me because of it. She really liked make up, though, so I might have forgiven her if it had been good make up. I held in my disappointment and started to open it. But then I saw the price tag on the back. “$2.95” crossed out with a big red marker. It had been marked down to fifty cents. She had got it out of a remainder bin.
I just knew she left that price tag on purpose. She wanted me to see how cheap it was, because I wasn’t the kind of daughter she wanted. I knew it because she’d actually said it to me before. I felt a raging chill boil up inside me. I ripped up that paper and that Las Vegas postmark and I threw it across the room. Then I threw the present after it. Mrs. Price yelled at me, so I grabbed my coat and mittens and I ran out of the house.
It was already dark, but the night was clear and the snow was bright as a lamp. I plowed through it up to my knees. The tiny crystals flew up like sand and turned my tears into slush. I kept plowing for three whole blocks, all the way to the tree.
It stood there, naked and spidery, the stars showing through its dark branches. It looked so cold, I burst out crying. I threw my arms around the trunk and felt the rough bark and smooth ice against my cheek.
Oh, Coral, I said, oh Coral Coral. Nobody loves me and nobody ought to. I’m ugly and stupid and clumsy. I can’t do anything right. I can’t even get my own mother to give me something I like. She sent me make up, Coral. And the Home just gave me mittens knitted by the ladies’ auxiliary because I’m too old for toys. Can’t I just come into the tree and be like you and be nice to people and just not have anything happen?
I probably said a whole lot more, but all I remember is after a while I heard something buzzing and cracking overhead. I pushed away from the tree and wiped the tears and ice and bark dust off my cheek. Just above my head, a little branch, a twig really, was shaking, and it was shaking real funny. Like a person shakes down a thermometer. Like it was trying to shake something out of itself.
After a minute, I could see a little bud at the tip. A little green bud. Green in the middle of winter, and it kept shaking and getting bigger. I crouched back against the trunk, my hands behind me, and I watched it. It stopped shaking, and then it started to open. It was white, and then pink, and at first it looked like a lily. Then it seemed fancier than a lily, more like an iris. The color started going red and blue and purple, and the blossom got more and more exotic. Maybe that’s what an orchid looks like. I wouldn’t know, but it grew to the size of my hand, and the colors were just wonderful. Just then the smell came out, and it was like a cross between roses and raspberry pie. I stood up straight to get a better look, a better whiff.
Then the fruit started growing out of the middle, but the petals didn’t wither and die. They just got smaller and seemed to grow back into the fruit. By the time it was the size of a walnut, I could tell it was a peach. It got bigger, and golden and fuzzy with a bright red blush. It smelled so good, I reached up and cupped it in my hand.
It was warm. Warm as an August day. It fell off into my hand so I bit into it. It was soft and sweet and juicy, and the syrup dribbled down my chin and made me all sticky. I ate it down to the pit, and as I sucked the last bit of juice from it, I realized that the pit felt funny. It was cold. I took it out of my mouth and looked at it. It was made of brass, or something like that. And it had a loop on the top like.... It was a locket!
It was shaped exactly like a peach pit, except that it had that loop, and a hinge and a hasp. I opened it and the inside was polished so smooth, I could read the inscription by the light of the snow.
Believe in yourself.
I leaned back against the tree and sank into the snow, holding the locket to my heart and not thinking, just feeling. Feeling that I was worth a miracle for Christmas.
So, when the tree was too old to survive the cement and pollution, and it posed a hazard to traffic and power lines, the city took it down. A bunch of old friends decided to go and sing, so I went along.
The thing that surprised me was the number of people who came up silently and looked on. Town leaders, teachers, the janitor over at the department store. Some of them took their hats off, some just looked. Then they went away.
It was the mayor who suggested that we do something more. He stood and watched them drop another branch and shook his head.
“Maybe we should make a monument out of the wood,” he said.
“No,” I said. “We should bury her. Or maybe cremate her.”
“Yes. More respectful.”
They rolled the logs into the park and held a bonfire. Everybody in town came. We sang the song about Coral Simmons again, as a kind of service, and then we all stood and watched the smoke rise.
And for a moment the haze seemed to form the shape of a woman. She was both dark and light, short and tall. Her streaming hair both curly and straight, her fluttering skirt was of calico and lace and buckskin all at once. For a moment, as she flickered up, she even looked like me.
“Goodbye, Coral,” I whispered before she disappeared. At least a hundred voices whispered with me, and I knew she’d touched them all. Her shape rose and spread, and she raised a hand to wave. Then she grew, fainter and larger, until she seemed to fill the whole sky. Until she seemed to have her arms around the world.
But by then she had faded, and we watched the fire burn down to embers, and in the morning we buried the ashes.
* * *
If you want to read more of the stories in The Enchanted Tree, you can buy the collection (seven stories in all) for 99 cents, at Amazon Kindle, Amazon Kindle UK, or or Smashwords. (Smashwords carries formats readable by nearly any ereader.) Also read some of my comments about the collection on the book page here on The Daring Novelist.
Camille
Dec Dare Day 8 - And Secondary Motives
Day 8 - 1088 Words on Harsh Climate
Running Total: 6503 Words.
Learning to hear the internal voices of these characters more, though still not sure of when to switch points of view. I am about to start the trickiest part of this sequence, though.
In the meantime, a little thought about another mystery technique. I was watching one of the old Boris Karloff "Mr. Wong" mysteries, and aside from being relieved that Karloff was not trying to do some tacky Pidgin English, I was struck by how these old quick and cheap movie mysteries display their techniques. They were written and filmed quickly with a strong reliance on cliches and hidden info. I find that when I watch them, I lose track of the story (what story there is) and think about the techniques, and also have flights of fantasy about where it might go.
And often I learn something.
If you write a real puzzle whodunnit - a classic - you have a particular problem. You must play fair, and you must let the suspicion fall on everyone. People feel cheated if it turns out that the butler did it - at least if the butler has not been fairly revealed as a character, with suspicious behavior and motivations and everything.
A more artfully done mystery -- say an Agatha Christie -- might do a better job of covering up the techniques used to fool the reader in spite of all the information given. However, a clunky b-movie allows you to see it in simplified form, like a picture book.
And tonight I was reminded of what a wonderful technique the Secondary Motive is. (They didn't really use it effecitively in the film, but I was reminded of it anyway.)
When you introduce a killer, you have to acknowledge certain fundamental things about his or her nature. It might be ego, or passion, but you have to reveal the essense of their motive so that the ending is satisfying. But you dont have to reveal ALL of it.
A gold-digger is desperate to marry the son of a millionaire. You can tell she doesn't love him, even though she has affection for him. But the kid is disinherited, and she knew it, and she still stands by him. It would seem that she no longer has a motive to kill the young man's father. She can't lay her hands on the money no matter what. Except, of course, that she has some other reason for wanting to marry the kid. Maybe the kid won the lottery, or marrying him can get her out of a legal fix. So she killed the father not because of his millions, but because he stood in the way of the marriage itself.
You have to lay the groundwork on these things, of course, but a secondary motive that is closely related to the first one can be one of the more satisfying ways to twist a story.
Tomorrow (Sunday) I'll probably post an excerpt from something for a new Twitter fad - Sample Sunday. On Sundays now writers will post samples of work on a blog or website somewhere, and then tweet a link. Watch for the hashtag #samplesunday.
(Of course, if you only want to read MY sample, it will be right here, and you won't have to go through Twitter at all.)
Running Total: 6503 Words.
Learning to hear the internal voices of these characters more, though still not sure of when to switch points of view. I am about to start the trickiest part of this sequence, though.
In the meantime, a little thought about another mystery technique. I was watching one of the old Boris Karloff "Mr. Wong" mysteries, and aside from being relieved that Karloff was not trying to do some tacky Pidgin English, I was struck by how these old quick and cheap movie mysteries display their techniques. They were written and filmed quickly with a strong reliance on cliches and hidden info. I find that when I watch them, I lose track of the story (what story there is) and think about the techniques, and also have flights of fantasy about where it might go.
And often I learn something.
If you write a real puzzle whodunnit - a classic - you have a particular problem. You must play fair, and you must let the suspicion fall on everyone. People feel cheated if it turns out that the butler did it - at least if the butler has not been fairly revealed as a character, with suspicious behavior and motivations and everything.
A more artfully done mystery -- say an Agatha Christie -- might do a better job of covering up the techniques used to fool the reader in spite of all the information given. However, a clunky b-movie allows you to see it in simplified form, like a picture book.
And tonight I was reminded of what a wonderful technique the Secondary Motive is. (They didn't really use it effecitively in the film, but I was reminded of it anyway.)
When you introduce a killer, you have to acknowledge certain fundamental things about his or her nature. It might be ego, or passion, but you have to reveal the essense of their motive so that the ending is satisfying. But you dont have to reveal ALL of it.
A gold-digger is desperate to marry the son of a millionaire. You can tell she doesn't love him, even though she has affection for him. But the kid is disinherited, and she knew it, and she still stands by him. It would seem that she no longer has a motive to kill the young man's father. She can't lay her hands on the money no matter what. Except, of course, that she has some other reason for wanting to marry the kid. Maybe the kid won the lottery, or marrying him can get her out of a legal fix. So she killed the father not because of his millions, but because he stood in the way of the marriage itself.
You have to lay the groundwork on these things, of course, but a secondary motive that is closely related to the first one can be one of the more satisfying ways to twist a story.
Tomorrow (Sunday) I'll probably post an excerpt from something for a new Twitter fad - Sample Sunday. On Sundays now writers will post samples of work on a blog or website somewhere, and then tweet a link. Watch for the hashtag #samplesunday.
(Of course, if you only want to read MY sample, it will be right here, and you won't have to go through Twitter at all.)
* * * * * Public Service Announcement * * * * *
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Got Carried Away and Published Something
Okay so the whole "sand into boulders" effort is not going as well as I hoped. Sometime early this afternoon I realized that I was just a few tweaks away from having my collection of short fantasy and folktales ready to upload for publication.
And since one of the stories is a really nice Christmas story, I thought, "Gee, why not do it now? You could have this published by Sunday."
So I actually just went ahead and published it an hour ago. It'll be up at Smashwords in a few hours. Amazon takes a little longer, but it could be up by late morning - although they won't put a book description on it for a while after that. (It will take much longer to get it into the Apple store and Barnes and Noble, and such.)
I wanted to have something new out this month and by golly I guess I did.
Here's the short description I wrote for Smashwords: Seven short fantasy and folktales, for children and adults. Including the title story - a bittersweet Christmas tale of a tree that touched a town. These stories were previously published in Cricket, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, and Brady Magazine, plus two written for this collection.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Making Sand Into Boulders and Boulders Into Sand
Day 6 - 1019 Words on Harsh Climate
Running Total: 5415 Words.
5415 / 30000 words. 18% done!
Made the weekly goal, with one day to work on the novel tomorrow. Ha ha! In the meantime:
I'm sure you've heard the old Zen Koan about the teacher who fills a bucket with boulders and asks his students if it is full, and they say it is, because you can't fit more boulders into it. Then he pours pebbles in and shakes the bucket and the pebbles filter down between the boulders and fit in the bucket too. "Now is it full?" he says. The students agree that it is, and so he pours sand to filter down among the pebbles, and finally tells them, okay now it's full.
Then the old master dumps the bucket out and fills it with sand, and low and behold, it's full - but no boulders or pebbles can fit.
The point, supposedly, is to illustrate how you should fit the important things into your life first -- like boulders -- and then let the unimportant ones trickle in to the spaces in between.
Except this doesn't work. Here's why:
Sand is a force to be reckoned with. Agitate it and it will not only fill in the empty spaces, but it will actually float a large object out of itself given the right conditions. Ancient engineers used to to lift huge rocks sometimes.
Basically, if you can just get a heavy object to shift a little back and forth - say, with a lever - sand can filter in under it with every movement so it can't settle back down. With enough movement, sand will push the heavy object right out of a pit.
You know how it works: the same way email and messages and checking your stats and tweeting and such can suck up all your time and eject anything important out of your life altogether. And some of those things are important enough to keep in your life, but you can't let them take over like that. And if you're an indie publisher, you can add all those other tasks which are never done - promotion, and cover design and layouts and final editing and planning and all that.
I suppose other writers may be different, but when it comes to getting real writing work done, I don't have a problem getting motivated to write so I don't have to worry about it filtering into the empty spaces. If only the important thing could be the sand and not the boulder!
Today, I went through the list of projects I have to work on, and I was getting depressed as I tried to figure out how much time I would need to finish them, and how long it would take to get to the projects further down the list. And the thing that was giving me the most trouble was intangible - how much time I would need to noodle with the plot, or do layouts, or format or edit -- and I realized that I was making a mistake.
The layouts and covers and formatting tasks, even editing; those things are the boulders. I can't get rid of them, and I can't let them ramble around loose, or they fill every available space. So I need got make boulders out of them - define their shape. I should set aside time for them in my day-to-day activities - just like bathing and eating lunch. I realize I would be WAY ahead of the game if I just set aside a half hour every morning for those kinds of tasks. Do a second session later at times when the load is heavier.
But keep it to one half-hour at a time.
Then I can let the writing be the sand. I know from experience that I do better if I live the writing - let it trickle in all day. There's always room for sand, and sometimes it can eject the stones altogether.
Starting tomorrow, I am going to try to limit my morning session of internet, and insert at least one half hour of formatting and editing of finished works.
Running Total: 5415 Words.
Made the weekly goal, with one day to work on the novel tomorrow. Ha ha! In the meantime:
I'm sure you've heard the old Zen Koan about the teacher who fills a bucket with boulders and asks his students if it is full, and they say it is, because you can't fit more boulders into it. Then he pours pebbles in and shakes the bucket and the pebbles filter down between the boulders and fit in the bucket too. "Now is it full?" he says. The students agree that it is, and so he pours sand to filter down among the pebbles, and finally tells them, okay now it's full.
Then the old master dumps the bucket out and fills it with sand, and low and behold, it's full - but no boulders or pebbles can fit.
The point, supposedly, is to illustrate how you should fit the important things into your life first -- like boulders -- and then let the unimportant ones trickle in to the spaces in between.
Except this doesn't work. Here's why:
Sand is a force to be reckoned with. Agitate it and it will not only fill in the empty spaces, but it will actually float a large object out of itself given the right conditions. Ancient engineers used to to lift huge rocks sometimes.
Basically, if you can just get a heavy object to shift a little back and forth - say, with a lever - sand can filter in under it with every movement so it can't settle back down. With enough movement, sand will push the heavy object right out of a pit.
You know how it works: the same way email and messages and checking your stats and tweeting and such can suck up all your time and eject anything important out of your life altogether. And some of those things are important enough to keep in your life, but you can't let them take over like that. And if you're an indie publisher, you can add all those other tasks which are never done - promotion, and cover design and layouts and final editing and planning and all that.
I suppose other writers may be different, but when it comes to getting real writing work done, I don't have a problem getting motivated to write so I don't have to worry about it filtering into the empty spaces. If only the important thing could be the sand and not the boulder!
Today, I went through the list of projects I have to work on, and I was getting depressed as I tried to figure out how much time I would need to finish them, and how long it would take to get to the projects further down the list. And the thing that was giving me the most trouble was intangible - how much time I would need to noodle with the plot, or do layouts, or format or edit -- and I realized that I was making a mistake.
The layouts and covers and formatting tasks, even editing; those things are the boulders. I can't get rid of them, and I can't let them ramble around loose, or they fill every available space. So I need got make boulders out of them - define their shape. I should set aside time for them in my day-to-day activities - just like bathing and eating lunch. I realize I would be WAY ahead of the game if I just set aside a half hour every morning for those kinds of tasks. Do a second session later at times when the load is heavier.
But keep it to one half-hour at a time.
Then I can let the writing be the sand. I know from experience that I do better if I live the writing - let it trickle in all day. There's always room for sand, and sometimes it can eject the stones altogether.
Starting tomorrow, I am going to try to limit my morning session of internet, and insert at least one half hour of formatting and editing of finished works.
* * * * * Advertisement * * * * *
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Exhausted, but... Free Books!
This is my other late day, and I just came home and nearly fell asleep. However, I am only 600 words or so from the week's goal, (plus work on Chapter 12) and I have until bedtime on Friday to achieve it.... so I'm going to call in sick on the dare and get some sleep.
But all is not lost. I decided to give away some free ebooks while I sleep.
For a short time, HAVE GUN, WILL PLAY will be free at Smashwords. Use the coupon code below when you check out and the book will be free. Smashwords provides ebooks in formats which are good for nearly every reader out there - including .mobi for Kindle, epub, pdf, rtf, lrf, pdb, plain text. You can also read online.
Coupon Code: VA63M
Expires: December 9, 2010
I believe the expiration date is good until the END of the day on the ninth, but if it isn't, leave a message for me here, and I'll schedule a short repeat of the sale.
Here's the book description:
Two gunslingers, one little girl, a big bag of toys...and murder.
Mick and Casey McKee aren't exactly your average gunslingers. He's young and inexperienced, and has much too sunny a disposition for a gunman. She's younger, meaner, less experienced, but a much better shot.
When they get a job protecting the daughter of a stagecoach king--and her grand collection of toys--it seems like an opportunity to go someplace new. But after the wrong kidnapping, a murder, another wrong kidnapping, a couple of jewel heists and a few knocks to the head, Mick and Casey are left holding the bag of toys. Mick, however, is not as dumb as he seems, and as for Casey...nobody steals her gun and gets away with it.
Get HAVE GUN, WILL PLAY free at Smashwords. Use coupon code VA63M on check out, through December 9, 2010.
But all is not lost. I decided to give away some free ebooks while I sleep.
For a short time, HAVE GUN, WILL PLAY will be free at Smashwords. Use the coupon code below when you check out and the book will be free. Smashwords provides ebooks in formats which are good for nearly every reader out there - including .mobi for Kindle, epub, pdf, rtf, lrf, pdb, plain text. You can also read online.
Coupon Code: VA63M
Expires: December 9, 2010
I believe the expiration date is good until the END of the day on the ninth, but if it isn't, leave a message for me here, and I'll schedule a short repeat of the sale.
Here's the book description:
Two gunslingers, one little girl, a big bag of toys...and murder.
Mick and Casey McKee aren't exactly your average gunslingers. He's young and inexperienced, and has much too sunny a disposition for a gunman. She's younger, meaner, less experienced, but a much better shot.
When they get a job protecting the daughter of a stagecoach king--and her grand collection of toys--it seems like an opportunity to go someplace new. But after the wrong kidnapping, a murder, another wrong kidnapping, a couple of jewel heists and a few knocks to the head, Mick and Casey are left holding the bag of toys. Mick, however, is not as dumb as he seems, and as for Casey...nobody steals her gun and gets away with it.
Get HAVE GUN, WILL PLAY free at Smashwords. Use coupon code VA63M on check out, through December 9, 2010.
Dare Day 4 - Can Fiction Have Cinematic Quality?
Day 4 - 1157 Words on Harsh Climate
Running Total: 4396 Words.
And today I began to adapt the first truly tricky scene. It's the climax of act one -- which is one of those long action climax scenes, where the story has a lot of simultaneous action. It's the sort of scene where you have the bad guy stalking, then you cut away to the hero lying in wait, and then you cut away to the other bad guy who finds a clue that he hero is there, and meanwhile the comic relief characters who are clueless about all of it are having a funny conversation, and the time bomb is ticking.
In a movie, a situation like this can be intertwined into a seamless scene. As a matter of fact I wrote this sequence specifically to be very intertwined. There's a lot of quick set up and pay off which depends on what you see, from which point of view, and when.
Example: at the end of the movie of The Fugitive, Richard Kimball, the bad guy, and the U.S. Marshals are all stalking each other through a hotel laundry. None of them can see the other, but we the audience see them all. This is a part of Hitchcock's suspense thing -- we are kept in suspense by knowing what the characters don't. However, the audience also misses things. We may see a character find something or get an idea, but then we cut away to the others, and we're left in suspense about what that character will do. But the stuff happening with the other characters is exciting and suspenseful too, and we may even forget about that first character.... So the marshals are closing in on Kimball, but then the bad guy pops out and knocks the marshal out! Oh, no! Oh, yes! I don't know what to think. And then later the bad guy almost takes out the other marshal... and Richard Kimball shows up out of nowhere and whaps him good!
And in such a long and complicated scene, there are many surprises, and each works best if in exactly the right point of view -- you may need to be with the character who is most surprised, or the character who can reveal the irony of the situation to us.
In the upcoming sequence, I have five points of view, and five lines of action. The characters, what they know, and their motivations all intersect in all sorts of interesting ways. I had FUN writing that sequence as a screenplay. How am I going to do that in regular prose fiction?
Classically, you first pick the point of view that can encompass the most other points of view. If Vicki is hiding from the kidnappers while trying to untie the kid, she can overhear what the kidnappers say in the next room. But later, if she's hiding under the bed, she will not be able to see the expression on the scary guy's face, or smell his breath when he's terrifying the kid. She won't be privy to the conversation one bad guy has on the phone to the boss bad guy.
So the next variation is breaking it up into small scene-lets. This point of view, extra line space, that point of view. It might work.
There will be some scenes -- in this section or later one -- where things might have to move too fast for that. Then what? Head hopping? Or go screenplay style -- maybe still using the extra line space, but literally have mini-scenes that are only a line or two long?
Or do you just plain rewrite? Cut the whole sequence and find a whole different approach for fiction?
I think, in this modern age, most readers are visually sophisticated, and are used to screen storytelling. I think that the story will benefit if I can give the audience the full experience they would have on screen -- or as close as I can. It may mean bending some rules and regular practices.
For this first run, I'm going to try to do this by instinct. I'll try what seems to be the best approach for the scene in front of me, and when I find something that works, I'll try it for the next.
Running Total: 4396 Words.
And today I began to adapt the first truly tricky scene. It's the climax of act one -- which is one of those long action climax scenes, where the story has a lot of simultaneous action. It's the sort of scene where you have the bad guy stalking, then you cut away to the hero lying in wait, and then you cut away to the other bad guy who finds a clue that he hero is there, and meanwhile the comic relief characters who are clueless about all of it are having a funny conversation, and the time bomb is ticking.
In a movie, a situation like this can be intertwined into a seamless scene. As a matter of fact I wrote this sequence specifically to be very intertwined. There's a lot of quick set up and pay off which depends on what you see, from which point of view, and when.
Example: at the end of the movie of The Fugitive, Richard Kimball, the bad guy, and the U.S. Marshals are all stalking each other through a hotel laundry. None of them can see the other, but we the audience see them all. This is a part of Hitchcock's suspense thing -- we are kept in suspense by knowing what the characters don't. However, the audience also misses things. We may see a character find something or get an idea, but then we cut away to the others, and we're left in suspense about what that character will do. But the stuff happening with the other characters is exciting and suspenseful too, and we may even forget about that first character.... So the marshals are closing in on Kimball, but then the bad guy pops out and knocks the marshal out! Oh, no! Oh, yes! I don't know what to think. And then later the bad guy almost takes out the other marshal... and Richard Kimball shows up out of nowhere and whaps him good!
And in such a long and complicated scene, there are many surprises, and each works best if in exactly the right point of view -- you may need to be with the character who is most surprised, or the character who can reveal the irony of the situation to us.
In the upcoming sequence, I have five points of view, and five lines of action. The characters, what they know, and their motivations all intersect in all sorts of interesting ways. I had FUN writing that sequence as a screenplay. How am I going to do that in regular prose fiction?
Classically, you first pick the point of view that can encompass the most other points of view. If Vicki is hiding from the kidnappers while trying to untie the kid, she can overhear what the kidnappers say in the next room. But later, if she's hiding under the bed, she will not be able to see the expression on the scary guy's face, or smell his breath when he's terrifying the kid. She won't be privy to the conversation one bad guy has on the phone to the boss bad guy.
So the next variation is breaking it up into small scene-lets. This point of view, extra line space, that point of view. It might work.
There will be some scenes -- in this section or later one -- where things might have to move too fast for that. Then what? Head hopping? Or go screenplay style -- maybe still using the extra line space, but literally have mini-scenes that are only a line or two long?
Or do you just plain rewrite? Cut the whole sequence and find a whole different approach for fiction?
I think, in this modern age, most readers are visually sophisticated, and are used to screen storytelling. I think that the story will benefit if I can give the audience the full experience they would have on screen -- or as close as I can. It may mean bending some rules and regular practices.
For this first run, I'm going to try to do this by instinct. I'll try what seems to be the best approach for the scene in front of me, and when I find something that works, I'll try it for the next.
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Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Dec Dare Day 3 - Short but Sweet
Day 3 - 453 Words on Harsh Climate
Running Total: 3239 Words.
3239 / 30000 words. 11% done!
Long day at work. Very tired. (They "realigned" the college today. Our division disappeared, but the whole thing seems to be designed to fix what the earlier leadership did to break things. We hope.)
I still wanted to get some writing done tonight, so I did a little bit. Still very jazzed about this novella. I'm curious about how the chaptering equates with screenplay format. I haven't gone far enough with it, though, to have formed an opinion so I'll have to talk about it later.
In the meantime, I was watching some early Fred Astaire, and I suddenly have great ideas for the cover concepts for the novellas that will make up The Serial. Yes, the thirties were a little late for the period, but they had an old-fashioned longing for the money of the twenties, and a grand Art Deco style. Plus in the art design and in the choreography, there was a LOT of old fashioned drama of the exact right sort. Besides, Guy-fashions are more timeless than Chick-fashions.
Running Total: 3239 Words.
Long day at work. Very tired. (They "realigned" the college today. Our division disappeared, but the whole thing seems to be designed to fix what the earlier leadership did to break things. We hope.)
I still wanted to get some writing done tonight, so I did a little bit. Still very jazzed about this novella. I'm curious about how the chaptering equates with screenplay format. I haven't gone far enough with it, though, to have formed an opinion so I'll have to talk about it later.
In the meantime, I was watching some early Fred Astaire, and I suddenly have great ideas for the cover concepts for the novellas that will make up The Serial. Yes, the thirties were a little late for the period, but they had an old-fashioned longing for the money of the twenties, and a grand Art Deco style. Plus in the art design and in the choreography, there was a LOT of old fashioned drama of the exact right sort. Besides, Guy-fashions are more timeless than Chick-fashions.
* * * * * Public Service Announcement * * * * *
Check out your agents and markets at Preditors and Editors before submission - you'll be glad you did!
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Dec Dare Day 2 - Visceral to Verbal
Day 2 - 1519 Words on Harsh Climate
Running Total: 2786 Words.
2786 / 30000 words. 9% done!
I was going to update you on the eBook Experiment, but I don't remember what I was going to say. (Progress is slow. Must write more. Something like that. I'll be more specific later.)
So instead I'm going to talk about what I'm excited about. Adapting this screenplay. It's cool.
Writing a screenplay is kind of like writing with manacles on. You have one point of view - objective. When you depict a character you have to put the words in their heads on mute. That is, they are thinking, they are reacting, you know their motivations, but it's visceral - not verbal. But you, as the writer are verbal, and you have to restrain yourself to think only visually. (Okay, you can think in terms of sound too.)
There is one advantage, you do get to tell a few things directly so that the reader knows what the actor might be doing. (You don't do that too much or you'll annoy the actors, but your readers at first will not be actors, and the actors can black it out if they want - so you do get to just outright "tell" something if it's important.) But mostly you are going so straight to "show" that you skip words altogether in your head when you write it. You start to think in gestures and sounds only.
So as I adapt this to fiction form, I find myself holding back when I get to reactions. "Show don't tell!... Oh, wait, it's okay if the audience knows he's thinking about this. Never mind, go ahead and say it."
In the meantime, I did a cover when I took a break. I found the perfect picture at Fotalia, and did a little Photoshop magic. The colors are garish - which is good actually - you want a thriller to have garish colors.... Okay I really picked that blue because it really looks cold, and that yellow because it's the only color that seems to stand out against the blue (especially at tiny thumbnail size). Still looking for the perfect font that gives that brittle feeling of ice while also being blocky like an action thriller.
The story is about two runaway teenagers who run out of gas on a freezing night, and they seek shelter in a remote cabin - which just happens to be the hideout of a gang of vicious kidnappers, who don't know they're there at first. However, the cold is as big an enemy as the bad guys, and it keeps everybody trapped together. Call it "Die Hard in a cabin."
I think this story is not going to take long. The question is whether I will speed up or slow down - tomorrow is the long day at the Day Job. We'll see, won't we?
Running Total: 2786 Words.
I was going to update you on the eBook Experiment, but I don't remember what I was going to say. (Progress is slow. Must write more. Something like that. I'll be more specific later.)
So instead I'm going to talk about what I'm excited about. Adapting this screenplay. It's cool.
Writing a screenplay is kind of like writing with manacles on. You have one point of view - objective. When you depict a character you have to put the words in their heads on mute. That is, they are thinking, they are reacting, you know their motivations, but it's visceral - not verbal. But you, as the writer are verbal, and you have to restrain yourself to think only visually. (Okay, you can think in terms of sound too.)
There is one advantage, you do get to tell a few things directly so that the reader knows what the actor might be doing. (You don't do that too much or you'll annoy the actors, but your readers at first will not be actors, and the actors can black it out if they want - so you do get to just outright "tell" something if it's important.) But mostly you are going so straight to "show" that you skip words altogether in your head when you write it. You start to think in gestures and sounds only.
So as I adapt this to fiction form, I find myself holding back when I get to reactions. "Show don't tell!... Oh, wait, it's okay if the audience knows he's thinking about this. Never mind, go ahead and say it."
In the meantime, I did a cover when I took a break. I found the perfect picture at Fotalia, and did a little Photoshop magic. The colors are garish - which is good actually - you want a thriller to have garish colors.... Okay I really picked that blue because it really looks cold, and that yellow because it's the only color that seems to stand out against the blue (especially at tiny thumbnail size). Still looking for the perfect font that gives that brittle feeling of ice while also being blocky like an action thriller.The story is about two runaway teenagers who run out of gas on a freezing night, and they seek shelter in a remote cabin - which just happens to be the hideout of a gang of vicious kidnappers, who don't know they're there at first. However, the cold is as big an enemy as the bad guys, and it keeps everybody trapped together. Call it "Die Hard in a cabin."
I think this story is not going to take long. The question is whether I will speed up or slow down - tomorrow is the long day at the Day Job. We'll see, won't we?
Dec Dare Day 1 - Update
I failed to post yesterday's progress in my post about the goals for the December Dare.
Day 1 - 1267 Words on Harsh Climate
Running Total: 1267 Words.
1267 / 30000 words. 4% done!
In Today's Pages: A father daughter fight. An under-appreciated not-a-boyfriend comes to the rescue in his rusty Oldsmobile.
I'll post today's progress tonight.
Day 1 - 1267 Words on Harsh Climate
Running Total: 1267 Words.
In Today's Pages: A father daughter fight. An under-appreciated not-a-boyfriend comes to the rescue in his rusty Oldsmobile.
I'll post today's progress tonight.
December 2010 Dare Goals
Okay, today I finally pull the mess that is my life back together and get back on the Dare. I've had a chance to take a look at my direction and my goals, and I've come to two conclusions:
My old friend Dean would probably not be pleased with me for conclusion number two. He's a great believer in "Dare to be Bad" and getting your work out there and not messing around with rewrites and critiques and all of that.
And I agree with him.
Except.... I'm not slowing down in order to futz with endless rewrites, or because the story isn't good enough. It's just that this story is an elephant - it goes at it's own pace, and all of my efforts to speed it up just wear me out and annoy the elephant. Sometimes I've gotten as much or more work done when I work on it once a week, as I have when I've worked every day. Hmmmmm. (Does that sound like a clue-by-four to you?)
It's slowing me down. And the truth is the main reason I want to hurry is because I want to publish another book soon. This book has momentum (such as it is) and I need to write it next. That's undeniable - but does that mean I should publish it next? Especially when it just starts one more freaking series with readers saying "when's the next book coming out?"
A friend of my sister's has a saying for when you are travelling and you're eating out at restaurants a lot -- and your conscience says you should clean your over-sized plate.
"You don't have to eat it, you just have to pay for it."
I'm thinking, I don't have to publish it, I just have to finish it. Sure, it's always a good policy to ship a finished story out to market right away. Get it out of your head and take away the tempation to fuss with it rather than work on something new. (As Heinlein says - you must put in on the market, and you must keep it on the market until sold.)
However, I'm thinking that once this is done, I should put it in a drawer until I've started drafting the second story in the series. For all I know, this slow pace is going to infect that story too. So if it doesn't want to hurry, I'm not gonna hurry either.
I'm going to work on it once a week, the way it seems to prefer, and I'll work on something else for the rest of the week. Something I can get published more quickly. So not a full-length novel yet. I have a fun little screenplay that I realized will make a very fun little novella.
Goals For December:
Work-In-Progress: get one chapter done per week - to the point of being ready for my critique group. I should be finished in March or April. (If not sooner - it's mostly done.)
Main December Dare: Adapt a screenplay called HARSH CLIMATE into a 30,000 word novella. (I thought it would be shorter than that, but the work I've done so far seems to be headed for 30k.) I'm looking to be done by the end of the day on January 2, 2011.
Other work: I have a collection of my published and unpublished children's fiction - mainly fairy tales that cross-over nicely to adult fantasy - to collect and format. And since several reviews of Have Gun, Will Play have asked for more back story on the characters, I will reformat the screenplay which is the back story, and publish it as a 99 cent special too. More about these later.
I also hope to have some interesting blog posts for you, including some updates on the ebook experiment, and a few other observations about books and audience and marketing. But I expect my posts will be shorter and more focused on progress for a while.
But the writing comes first, and I hope to exceed both of of my first two goals. We'll see how that goes, and set January's goals accordingly.
1.) I must finish the work in progress while I have momentum on it.
2.) I'm not going to publish the work-in-progress any time soon.
My old friend Dean would probably not be pleased with me for conclusion number two. He's a great believer in "Dare to be Bad" and getting your work out there and not messing around with rewrites and critiques and all of that.
And I agree with him.
Except.... I'm not slowing down in order to futz with endless rewrites, or because the story isn't good enough. It's just that this story is an elephant - it goes at it's own pace, and all of my efforts to speed it up just wear me out and annoy the elephant. Sometimes I've gotten as much or more work done when I work on it once a week, as I have when I've worked every day. Hmmmmm. (Does that sound like a clue-by-four to you?)
It's slowing me down. And the truth is the main reason I want to hurry is because I want to publish another book soon. This book has momentum (such as it is) and I need to write it next. That's undeniable - but does that mean I should publish it next? Especially when it just starts one more freaking series with readers saying "when's the next book coming out?"
A friend of my sister's has a saying for when you are travelling and you're eating out at restaurants a lot -- and your conscience says you should clean your over-sized plate.
"You don't have to eat it, you just have to pay for it."
I'm thinking, I don't have to publish it, I just have to finish it. Sure, it's always a good policy to ship a finished story out to market right away. Get it out of your head and take away the tempation to fuss with it rather than work on something new. (As Heinlein says - you must put in on the market, and you must keep it on the market until sold.)
However, I'm thinking that once this is done, I should put it in a drawer until I've started drafting the second story in the series. For all I know, this slow pace is going to infect that story too. So if it doesn't want to hurry, I'm not gonna hurry either.
I'm going to work on it once a week, the way it seems to prefer, and I'll work on something else for the rest of the week. Something I can get published more quickly. So not a full-length novel yet. I have a fun little screenplay that I realized will make a very fun little novella.
Goals For December:
Work-In-Progress: get one chapter done per week - to the point of being ready for my critique group. I should be finished in March or April. (If not sooner - it's mostly done.)
Main December Dare: Adapt a screenplay called HARSH CLIMATE into a 30,000 word novella. (I thought it would be shorter than that, but the work I've done so far seems to be headed for 30k.) I'm looking to be done by the end of the day on January 2, 2011.
Other work: I have a collection of my published and unpublished children's fiction - mainly fairy tales that cross-over nicely to adult fantasy - to collect and format. And since several reviews of Have Gun, Will Play have asked for more back story on the characters, I will reformat the screenplay which is the back story, and publish it as a 99 cent special too. More about these later.
I also hope to have some interesting blog posts for you, including some updates on the ebook experiment, and a few other observations about books and audience and marketing. But I expect my posts will be shorter and more focused on progress for a while.
But the writing comes first, and I hope to exceed both of of my first two goals. We'll see how that goes, and set January's goals accordingly.
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The Miracle Inspector, a mystery for Kindle, by Helen Smith
"Smith is, at the very least, a minor phenomenon." - The Times
"Smith is, at the very least, a minor phenomenon." - The Times
Saturday, December 4, 2010
How Tropes Can Trip You Up, Part 2
Yesterday's post was theory and explanation. This one should be more practical: how am I going to deal with the same issues in one of my own stories. I'm having troubles with a scene in The Serial, in particular.
And I just realized that, when described simply, the scene I'm having trouble with is very much like the scene from The Ice House I talked about in yesterday's post: A radical suffragette is questioned by a cranky policeman. (Except no "assault and kissery" involved. Unless you count the fact that she unintentionally aided and abetted in dumping him into a muddy pond in the scene before it.)
The similarity makes this an especially splendid example though, because it is a sort of reverse of the problem of yesterday's scene. To whit:
In that scene, the Forceful Kiss (tm) causes the situation to be misinterpreted. In this one, the situation causes the audience to expect a forceful kiss, or something like it.
The story is a comedy adventure, of the kind with romantic misadventures. And when a spunky woman dumps a cranky man into a muddy pond (semi-unintentinally) it's a classic example of what the RomCom industry calls the "Meet Cute." (I.e. the lovers first meet in some unique or "cute" way.) In the chickflick universe, he is almost guaranteed to turn out to be the love of her life, or her boss. (Or the boss or father of the love of her life.) This is a well established trope that goes back to the madcap comedies of the thirties. (Just check out Bringing Up Baby trailer from 1938 - that story was "meet cute" all the way through.)
The fact that the guy is a policeman, though, at least puts it in the "boss" side of the equation, and that's actually kind of where I intended the whole sequence to be.
But as I wrote the subsequent scene, which I had planned to use to get some character development in, along with some information, I had this sinking feeling. The characters were in prickly conflict. The more conflict, the more it seemed they were destined to marry, settle down and adopt a leopard of their own.
Which is definitely not going to happen. And the more I tried to signal that it wasn't, the stronger the trope became. That's the nature of that trope - denial breeds certainty: "Your lips may say no-no, but there's yes-yes in your eyes!" Aaaaaggggghhhhh!
So I started pulling my punches. I started to steer away from conflict and character development and anything that would trigger the romance trope, and I ended up turning the scene to mush. I had inadvertently shown the audience a bomb that wasn't going to go off, and I was stuck with it.
What to do?
Luckily there are a number of ways to deal with such things. The one thing you can't do is ignore it. (Well, you can try. In a subtext situation like this, you can hope the audience will forget it - but they will be waiting for any hint that they were right about it, and they will jump on any scrap of clues they find.)
So the first thing is to figure out what elements of the scene caused the anticipation. That can almost always be described as tension - in this case, romantic tension.
A trope like this will break if the characters don't fit the "type" - if they are diverging ages, or one is particularly unattractive or evil or delusional. Unfortunately, these characters are not diverging ages. They are both both moderately (and equally) unattractive, but they're sidekick characters and so the feeling would be that they were made for each other. Neither is evil - as a matter of fact I was counting on this scene to humanize the detective who will be a major antagonist in the story. It would be convenient if one of them misjudged the other completely. If, for instance, he thought she were looking for a husband and decided to slick back his hair and make embarrassingly inappropriate advances.
But that's just the thing - they aren't delusional. Both of them understand the other all too well. They are, if anything, the least delusional characters in the story. This is where the personal tension in the scene comes from. They may be in natural opposition, but they also share something that the other characters don't. They are both realistic, and that's a connection between them.
So, if the romantic tension in the trope is because characters delude themselves and deny the truth, I think the best solution for me is to dig out that connection. The more they (or you) try to prove there is no chemistry, the more the audience says "ah ha! They're in love!" So cut the denials. Go after the truth, fast and sure. They have a connection that sets them apart, so let them bring that straight out and use it as a part of their negotiation - and let it be a negotiation, not a fencing match.
And finally, I said the characters were not evil. However, they are not friends, and they don't have to be fair, and they don't have to feel guilty about not being fair. Behaving like a villain (not a scoundrel or rogue) kills romantic tension. Yes, it happens in romances, but when it does, the purpose is to break the trope - to kill the romantic tension - and then it will take a lot of effort to bring it back in unexpected ways.
And if it doesn't fully break the romantic tension, that's okay, too. If I've cracked that trope far enough, it's a way to keep the audience guessing. Is this a possible relationship? What's going to happen next? Oh! Not that, but this!
Tomorrow I start on the Dare again. I've done some thinking and I've revamped some overall goals. I will post these tomorrow.
And I just realized that, when described simply, the scene I'm having trouble with is very much like the scene from The Ice House I talked about in yesterday's post: A radical suffragette is questioned by a cranky policeman. (Except no "assault and kissery" involved. Unless you count the fact that she unintentionally aided and abetted in dumping him into a muddy pond in the scene before it.)
The similarity makes this an especially splendid example though, because it is a sort of reverse of the problem of yesterday's scene. To whit:
In that scene, the Forceful Kiss (tm) causes the situation to be misinterpreted. In this one, the situation causes the audience to expect a forceful kiss, or something like it.
The story is a comedy adventure, of the kind with romantic misadventures. And when a spunky woman dumps a cranky man into a muddy pond (semi-unintentinally) it's a classic example of what the RomCom industry calls the "Meet Cute." (I.e. the lovers first meet in some unique or "cute" way.) In the chickflick universe, he is almost guaranteed to turn out to be the love of her life, or her boss. (Or the boss or father of the love of her life.) This is a well established trope that goes back to the madcap comedies of the thirties. (Just check out Bringing Up Baby trailer from 1938 - that story was "meet cute" all the way through.)
The fact that the guy is a policeman, though, at least puts it in the "boss" side of the equation, and that's actually kind of where I intended the whole sequence to be.
But as I wrote the subsequent scene, which I had planned to use to get some character development in, along with some information, I had this sinking feeling. The characters were in prickly conflict. The more conflict, the more it seemed they were destined to marry, settle down and adopt a leopard of their own.
Which is definitely not going to happen. And the more I tried to signal that it wasn't, the stronger the trope became. That's the nature of that trope - denial breeds certainty: "Your lips may say no-no, but there's yes-yes in your eyes!" Aaaaaggggghhhhh!
So I started pulling my punches. I started to steer away from conflict and character development and anything that would trigger the romance trope, and I ended up turning the scene to mush. I had inadvertently shown the audience a bomb that wasn't going to go off, and I was stuck with it.
What to do?
Luckily there are a number of ways to deal with such things. The one thing you can't do is ignore it. (Well, you can try. In a subtext situation like this, you can hope the audience will forget it - but they will be waiting for any hint that they were right about it, and they will jump on any scrap of clues they find.)
So the first thing is to figure out what elements of the scene caused the anticipation. That can almost always be described as tension - in this case, romantic tension.
A trope like this will break if the characters don't fit the "type" - if they are diverging ages, or one is particularly unattractive or evil or delusional. Unfortunately, these characters are not diverging ages. They are both both moderately (and equally) unattractive, but they're sidekick characters and so the feeling would be that they were made for each other. Neither is evil - as a matter of fact I was counting on this scene to humanize the detective who will be a major antagonist in the story. It would be convenient if one of them misjudged the other completely. If, for instance, he thought she were looking for a husband and decided to slick back his hair and make embarrassingly inappropriate advances.
But that's just the thing - they aren't delusional. Both of them understand the other all too well. They are, if anything, the least delusional characters in the story. This is where the personal tension in the scene comes from. They may be in natural opposition, but they also share something that the other characters don't. They are both realistic, and that's a connection between them.
So, if the romantic tension in the trope is because characters delude themselves and deny the truth, I think the best solution for me is to dig out that connection. The more they (or you) try to prove there is no chemistry, the more the audience says "ah ha! They're in love!" So cut the denials. Go after the truth, fast and sure. They have a connection that sets them apart, so let them bring that straight out and use it as a part of their negotiation - and let it be a negotiation, not a fencing match.
And finally, I said the characters were not evil. However, they are not friends, and they don't have to be fair, and they don't have to feel guilty about not being fair. Behaving like a villain (not a scoundrel or rogue) kills romantic tension. Yes, it happens in romances, but when it does, the purpose is to break the trope - to kill the romantic tension - and then it will take a lot of effort to bring it back in unexpected ways.
And if it doesn't fully break the romantic tension, that's okay, too. If I've cracked that trope far enough, it's a way to keep the audience guessing. Is this a possible relationship? What's going to happen next? Oh! Not that, but this!
Tomorrow I start on the Dare again. I've done some thinking and I've revamped some overall goals. I will post these tomorrow.
Friday, December 3, 2010
How Tropes Can Trip You Up, Part 1
A while ago I wrote a series of blog posts where I took a clip of a British TV mystery off YouTube and analyzed some character techniques used in it - looking at it intentionally out of context. The show was an adaptation of Minette Walter's The Ice House, which is not available in the U.S. on DVD, and was a book I had not read. (I found other books of Walters to be grueling). The point of that exercise was to filter out the distractions of context, and look at technique directly. You can read the post about why taking away context can be useful in the first post here, and see the clip and read the analysis in the second post here.
But it's the third post that relevant to the discussion of expectations and tropes. The clip in question had three scenes, and the third one was impossible to understand without context. I was going to skip that one, but my Alpha Reader had some interesting thoughts about how it looked out of context - she interpreted it very differently than I did - so I ended up posting about the discussion, which was about how genre expectations change the meaning of the scene. I'm not going to repeat that here. You can read it if you're interested. (This is something of a follow up to that post, and it is relevant to what I'm saying here. We'll wait.)
The scene in question involves the questioning of a radical feminist by a hostile policeman, and it ends with what my Alpha Reader called "the old forceful kiss routine."
The forceful kiss is a well established trope in romance in particular, but it leaks out into a lot of genres where there are romantic subplots. Two characters are fighting, but the fighting is really a cover for the passion they feel for each other, and the forceful kiss is the release of that building tension. It reveals the truth about the character's feelings.
Since that post, I got my hands on a copy of the region 2 video, and also read the book, so I know the context now. In the book, the scene happens rather differently. They are both seated, and he reaches out and grabs her by the throat, yanks her across the desk, and the kiss is described as being "as brutal" as the rest of the attack. She's left with bruises. The author doesn't dwell on the moment - it's as fast and brutal as the action. It's not romantic at all. It's assault and battery. And the woman reacts in the same cool, detached way as she does in the video. The implication is that the sergeant has just destroyed his career, and power in the relationship has just shifted squarely to her.
So, the Alpha Reader was right that the video version had manipulated the staging, but they didn't do it to set up a passionate moment. I suspect they did it because the real scene was 1) hard to stage and 2) it was probably too intense for TV, especially given that detective, Sgt McCloughlan, will turn out to be the protagonist. The scene was a turning point for him. He was utterly out of control, and now he starts behaving more professionally, and more respectfully, and he is more attentive to the case. He will also become openly attracted to her.
Which is unfortunate, because between that and the fact that the filmmakers pulled their punches on the assault, the kiss becomes ambiguous. And worse, the theme and his motivation - and hers - become very muddled.
The theme of this story is compassion. It's a nasty universe, but those who have compassion can be saved.
A little later she will render her own tough compassion onto him. (Tough enough that he tells her that "in your hands compassion is an offensive weapon.") If the kiss was not an unambiguous assault - if it was personal and had anything positive behind it - then her act is not really compassion. It's a reciprocation of prickly affection. And if he does not witness this real act of compassion - if she's just gone soft because she likes him back - then he has not met someone the like of which he's never met before, he's not impressed, and he doesn't change. He remains a floundering drunk who has lost faith that the universe has compassion at all.
So that's the way tropes can trip you up. They have power to change meaning in your story. And of course, you can lose control of the audience expectations. Like the Alpha Reader who groaned at how the story had suddenly gone artificial and shallow. If this makes you expect a sappy romance, then you'll turn it off. Sure, those who are lusting after Daniel Craig might think "oh, goody!" and keep watching, but odds are they will be dissatisfied with the way the woman reacts. Both groups will be annoyed at this woman who doesn't react - because they misinterpreted the motivations. The trope tells them this is a love story, not a life-threatening battle for power.
So if you let a trope control too much of the audience's expectations, it's like the Hitchcock example - you're showing the two guys talking, but not showing the bomb. In the book, Minette Walters showed us the bomb. That kiss was an assault. The filmmakers could have made it more brutal, or even removed the kiss from the equation altogether. (IMHO, that's what they should have done, but tropes are powerfully attractive.) The book was able to use it because they broke the trope so clearly, and the kiss fit with the fact that McCloughlan's downward spiral was partly sexual frustration. (But that's already expressed in other ways, so wasn't really necessary.)
I have a problem with a very similar trope in The Serial right now. It's not as dramatic. Frankly it's more subtle, because more related to situation than event. I'll talk about that tomorrow in How Tropes Trip You Up, Part 2.
Dead to Writes, a mystery for Kindle, by Cathy Wiley
"Is Baltimore's newest author also Baltimore's newest murderer?"
But it's the third post that relevant to the discussion of expectations and tropes. The clip in question had three scenes, and the third one was impossible to understand without context. I was going to skip that one, but my Alpha Reader had some interesting thoughts about how it looked out of context - she interpreted it very differently than I did - so I ended up posting about the discussion, which was about how genre expectations change the meaning of the scene. I'm not going to repeat that here. You can read it if you're interested. (This is something of a follow up to that post, and it is relevant to what I'm saying here. We'll wait.)
The scene in question involves the questioning of a radical feminist by a hostile policeman, and it ends with what my Alpha Reader called "the old forceful kiss routine."
The forceful kiss is a well established trope in romance in particular, but it leaks out into a lot of genres where there are romantic subplots. Two characters are fighting, but the fighting is really a cover for the passion they feel for each other, and the forceful kiss is the release of that building tension. It reveals the truth about the character's feelings.
Since that post, I got my hands on a copy of the region 2 video, and also read the book, so I know the context now. In the book, the scene happens rather differently. They are both seated, and he reaches out and grabs her by the throat, yanks her across the desk, and the kiss is described as being "as brutal" as the rest of the attack. She's left with bruises. The author doesn't dwell on the moment - it's as fast and brutal as the action. It's not romantic at all. It's assault and battery. And the woman reacts in the same cool, detached way as she does in the video. The implication is that the sergeant has just destroyed his career, and power in the relationship has just shifted squarely to her.
So, the Alpha Reader was right that the video version had manipulated the staging, but they didn't do it to set up a passionate moment. I suspect they did it because the real scene was 1) hard to stage and 2) it was probably too intense for TV, especially given that detective, Sgt McCloughlan, will turn out to be the protagonist. The scene was a turning point for him. He was utterly out of control, and now he starts behaving more professionally, and more respectfully, and he is more attentive to the case. He will also become openly attracted to her.
Which is unfortunate, because between that and the fact that the filmmakers pulled their punches on the assault, the kiss becomes ambiguous. And worse, the theme and his motivation - and hers - become very muddled.
The theme of this story is compassion. It's a nasty universe, but those who have compassion can be saved.
A little later she will render her own tough compassion onto him. (Tough enough that he tells her that "in your hands compassion is an offensive weapon.") If the kiss was not an unambiguous assault - if it was personal and had anything positive behind it - then her act is not really compassion. It's a reciprocation of prickly affection. And if he does not witness this real act of compassion - if she's just gone soft because she likes him back - then he has not met someone the like of which he's never met before, he's not impressed, and he doesn't change. He remains a floundering drunk who has lost faith that the universe has compassion at all.
So that's the way tropes can trip you up. They have power to change meaning in your story. And of course, you can lose control of the audience expectations. Like the Alpha Reader who groaned at how the story had suddenly gone artificial and shallow. If this makes you expect a sappy romance, then you'll turn it off. Sure, those who are lusting after Daniel Craig might think "oh, goody!" and keep watching, but odds are they will be dissatisfied with the way the woman reacts. Both groups will be annoyed at this woman who doesn't react - because they misinterpreted the motivations. The trope tells them this is a love story, not a life-threatening battle for power.
So if you let a trope control too much of the audience's expectations, it's like the Hitchcock example - you're showing the two guys talking, but not showing the bomb. In the book, Minette Walters showed us the bomb. That kiss was an assault. The filmmakers could have made it more brutal, or even removed the kiss from the equation altogether. (IMHO, that's what they should have done, but tropes are powerfully attractive.) The book was able to use it because they broke the trope so clearly, and the kiss fit with the fact that McCloughlan's downward spiral was partly sexual frustration. (But that's already expressed in other ways, so wasn't really necessary.)
I have a problem with a very similar trope in The Serial right now. It's not as dramatic. Frankly it's more subtle, because more related to situation than event. I'll talk about that tomorrow in How Tropes Trip You Up, Part 2.
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Dead to Writes, a mystery for Kindle, by Cathy Wiley
"Is Baltimore's newest author also Baltimore's newest murderer?"
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Failure is Not Optional
(I've come across a number of discouraged writers lately, so I decided to interrupt my series on expectations and tropes with a post I wrote a few days ago.)
Everyone at our Thanksgiving dinner was "of a certain age" as the French say. We sat there, a bunch of old curmudgeons and inevitably the conversation turned to the subject of kids today.
You know: "Kids today have it so easy! They never had to walk to school in a blizzard up their waist, up hill both ways. And if you got lost you'd just have to slaughter your taun-taun and climb inside to stay warm. Because nobody'd rescue you. Just the wolves who come to eat you! Snow days, schmo-days! Kids today have it easy."
Except we weren't talking about kids. We were talking about grown ups. Our peers even. Kids today don't have it easy. They have it harder than kids have had it in ages, but they seem a whole lot less prepared. And their parents seem a whole lot less prepared too.
The thing we talked about most were our peers, though. I see so many writers these days who have a love-hate relationship with success.
One the one hand they seem to have a muted idea of the difference between themselves and the established pros. They know that star writers are talented, they know they work hard, but they can't really identify what it is that the pros do and they don't. They seem to think it's all some kind of magic. "Harlan Ellison was born with talent. I hope I have some talent too. Finger's crossed!"
I'm not saying these writers don't work hard. They do. They're dedicated to learning their craft, but they also seem to have their eyes closed while they work, as if they they don't want to know the secret. It's as if they're afraid of the truth. Maybe they're not so talented, but if they keep their eyes shut, they'll never know if they failed.
This, you would think, would at least allow them to develop naturally as a writer - to write with existential energy. To just sit down and do it. But alas, that's not how it seems to work.
The very same writers also seem to second guess themselves all the time. They get blocked, they get tied up in endless rewrites. They devote themselves to critique groups where they can get outside opinions of their work.
They're afraid to trust their judgment.
And they're right, because they've had their eyes closed so tightly to keep from seeing their own weaknesses, that they never developed good judgment anyway. And as a result they hide their born talent under a barrel, and they never reach their potential.
The path to success, and mastery, and enlightenment goes through one thing:
Failure.
You have to fail. You can't avoid it. That's how you learn. That's how you gain the judgment and the sure skills that allow you to write like a virtuoso. Throw yourself into it, embrace it, let it be the direct experience of life.
Dean Wesley Smith just wrote a post on a similar subject "Dare To Be Bad!" and I suggest you go read it. I particularly like the part where he says he defeated his fear of failure by submitting his work to editors before taking it to his critique group. The group would tear it apart - and they would be right about the flaws - but he'd end up getting acceptances on some of them anyway.
Now, some of you may say "ah, but that just proves he's talented, because nobody accepts my work." Yeah, they won't accept your work if you don't submit it. And if you waste all your time rewriting, you won't write enough stories to get published. So read Dean's post, and then read all the comments too. (There's a lot more info in the comments - especially in his reaction to the people who say they throw away stories they write after they finish them. Dean submits such stories anyway, and then sits down and writes the story over. He's had a lot of success doing that.)
Seriously, read this post and the comments. I'll repeat the link: Dare To Be Bad! http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=2494
Everyone at our Thanksgiving dinner was "of a certain age" as the French say. We sat there, a bunch of old curmudgeons and inevitably the conversation turned to the subject of kids today.
You know: "Kids today have it so easy! They never had to walk to school in a blizzard up their waist, up hill both ways. And if you got lost you'd just have to slaughter your taun-taun and climb inside to stay warm. Because nobody'd rescue you. Just the wolves who come to eat you! Snow days, schmo-days! Kids today have it easy."
Except we weren't talking about kids. We were talking about grown ups. Our peers even. Kids today don't have it easy. They have it harder than kids have had it in ages, but they seem a whole lot less prepared. And their parents seem a whole lot less prepared too.
The thing we talked about most were our peers, though. I see so many writers these days who have a love-hate relationship with success.
One the one hand they seem to have a muted idea of the difference between themselves and the established pros. They know that star writers are talented, they know they work hard, but they can't really identify what it is that the pros do and they don't. They seem to think it's all some kind of magic. "Harlan Ellison was born with talent. I hope I have some talent too. Finger's crossed!"
I'm not saying these writers don't work hard. They do. They're dedicated to learning their craft, but they also seem to have their eyes closed while they work, as if they they don't want to know the secret. It's as if they're afraid of the truth. Maybe they're not so talented, but if they keep their eyes shut, they'll never know if they failed.
This, you would think, would at least allow them to develop naturally as a writer - to write with existential energy. To just sit down and do it. But alas, that's not how it seems to work.
The very same writers also seem to second guess themselves all the time. They get blocked, they get tied up in endless rewrites. They devote themselves to critique groups where they can get outside opinions of their work.
They're afraid to trust their judgment.
And they're right, because they've had their eyes closed so tightly to keep from seeing their own weaknesses, that they never developed good judgment anyway. And as a result they hide their born talent under a barrel, and they never reach their potential.
The path to success, and mastery, and enlightenment goes through one thing:
Failure.
You have to fail. You can't avoid it. That's how you learn. That's how you gain the judgment and the sure skills that allow you to write like a virtuoso. Throw yourself into it, embrace it, let it be the direct experience of life.
Dean Wesley Smith just wrote a post on a similar subject "Dare To Be Bad!" and I suggest you go read it. I particularly like the part where he says he defeated his fear of failure by submitting his work to editors before taking it to his critique group. The group would tear it apart - and they would be right about the flaws - but he'd end up getting acceptances on some of them anyway.
Now, some of you may say "ah, but that just proves he's talented, because nobody accepts my work." Yeah, they won't accept your work if you don't submit it. And if you waste all your time rewriting, you won't write enough stories to get published. So read Dean's post, and then read all the comments too. (There's a lot more info in the comments - especially in his reaction to the people who say they throw away stories they write after they finish them. Dean submits such stories anyway, and then sits down and writes the story over. He's had a lot of success doing that.)
Seriously, read this post and the comments. I'll repeat the link: Dare To Be Bad! http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=2494
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Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Turning Expectation into Anticipation
Alfred Hitchcock gives us this example of how suspense works:
If you have two guys in a room talking about a baseball and then a bomb goes off, there is no suspense and no tension, just surprise. If you show the audience the bomb, then they have something to anticipate, and then the tension ramps up high. Especially if the two guys don't know the bomb is there.
Anticipation is the thing that makes a reader turn the page - and anticipation is based on what the audience expects.
Expectation, though, is a two-edged sword. In Hitch's first example, where the audience doesn't know there's a bomb until it goes off, the audience expects that the two guys will continue chatting, and there is no tension, so they get bored.
But the cool thing is that you can use both edges of that sword to your advantage. Dear Hitch didn't mention this in his example, but he did it all the time: If you establish two guys sitting around and talking about baseball, and let it go on just long enough for the audience to start to expect boredom, you can give the audience a real jolt if you then reveal the bomb. The tension will crank up twice as high. (At least if you don't actually bore them, but just threaten to.)
Why?
When you raised the expectation of boredom and then surprised them with an interesting change, you made a promise. You put your hand over your heart and you pledged that you were the kind of writer who would never let them get bored. So now they are anticipating two things. They anticipate the danger from the bomb, and they anticipate surprises from you.
Anticipation makes you turn the page.
There is a third edge to this sword, however. Hitchcock adds a warning to that story. He says that once you show the audience that bomb, you must never let it go off! He did that in some of his early films and his audiences hated him for it.
The promise you make in surprising the audience, you see, isn't really about surprise and thrills. You took control when you did that. Now you're responsible. You rescued them from boredom by showing them the bomb, now they expect you to rescue them from the horrible consequences of the bomb. The more you indicate that you won't, the more they expect you to do it.
This is somewhat related to the fourth edge of the sword of expectation (it's a very edgy sword) - that of satisfaction.The audience likes to be right. Even if you surprise and shock and thrill them, they get satisfaction when, in the end, the know they were right to trust you, and that they were right about the world of the story, and what they learned about it.
So yes, you have to surprise them, but you also have to satisfy them.
This is why, in Hollywood, producers ask for something that is "exactly like that blockbuster, only different." They aren't being venal when they want something exactly like the latest big hit. They aren't asking for a cookie-cutter copy. They're asking for something that can be anticipated. They want the audience to know what they're getting.... and then be pleasantly surprised, so they want to see it again and buy the DVD.
Proper use of archetypes and tropes and formulas are a great way to create the expectation you can use to create anticipation. And archetypes in particular promise satisfaction to the audience - they know what they're getting into. But they are also powerful tools, and if you don't watch out, they'll take control of the expectations right out of your hands.
Next time I have a couple of examples of How Tropes Can Trip You Up.
If you have two guys in a room talking about a baseball and then a bomb goes off, there is no suspense and no tension, just surprise. If you show the audience the bomb, then they have something to anticipate, and then the tension ramps up high. Especially if the two guys don't know the bomb is there.
Anticipation is the thing that makes a reader turn the page - and anticipation is based on what the audience expects.
Expectation, though, is a two-edged sword. In Hitch's first example, where the audience doesn't know there's a bomb until it goes off, the audience expects that the two guys will continue chatting, and there is no tension, so they get bored.
But the cool thing is that you can use both edges of that sword to your advantage. Dear Hitch didn't mention this in his example, but he did it all the time: If you establish two guys sitting around and talking about baseball, and let it go on just long enough for the audience to start to expect boredom, you can give the audience a real jolt if you then reveal the bomb. The tension will crank up twice as high. (At least if you don't actually bore them, but just threaten to.)
Why?
When you raised the expectation of boredom and then surprised them with an interesting change, you made a promise. You put your hand over your heart and you pledged that you were the kind of writer who would never let them get bored. So now they are anticipating two things. They anticipate the danger from the bomb, and they anticipate surprises from you.
Anticipation makes you turn the page.
There is a third edge to this sword, however. Hitchcock adds a warning to that story. He says that once you show the audience that bomb, you must never let it go off! He did that in some of his early films and his audiences hated him for it.
The promise you make in surprising the audience, you see, isn't really about surprise and thrills. You took control when you did that. Now you're responsible. You rescued them from boredom by showing them the bomb, now they expect you to rescue them from the horrible consequences of the bomb. The more you indicate that you won't, the more they expect you to do it.
This is somewhat related to the fourth edge of the sword of expectation (it's a very edgy sword) - that of satisfaction.The audience likes to be right. Even if you surprise and shock and thrill them, they get satisfaction when, in the end, the know they were right to trust you, and that they were right about the world of the story, and what they learned about it.
So yes, you have to surprise them, but you also have to satisfy them.
This is why, in Hollywood, producers ask for something that is "exactly like that blockbuster, only different." They aren't being venal when they want something exactly like the latest big hit. They aren't asking for a cookie-cutter copy. They're asking for something that can be anticipated. They want the audience to know what they're getting.... and then be pleasantly surprised, so they want to see it again and buy the DVD.
Proper use of archetypes and tropes and formulas are a great way to create the expectation you can use to create anticipation. And archetypes in particular promise satisfaction to the audience - they know what they're getting into. But they are also powerful tools, and if you don't watch out, they'll take control of the expectations right out of your hands.
Next time I have a couple of examples of How Tropes Can Trip You Up.
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