Writing Lessons From Inception

Inception is an outstanding movie. In a time where we get nothing but films about a group of similar people shooting/killing/blowing up a group of similar bad guys it is very nice to see something a little different. This is an excellent and suspenseful action thriller that is both smart and moving. The visuals are awesome and the plot moves with just enough complication to keep you interested the whole way through.

It's a fascinating aspect of the plot that is the focus of this writing lesson. The technology that gets the characters into each others' dreams is never explained other than by one line of dialogue: "The military developed this so soldiers could train realistically and not actually hurt themselves." That's the extent of the technobabble. What I love about it is that the technology really is irrelevant when you think about it. The characters believe in it. They use it and it works and it follows a few rules and that's it. That's a smart way to write the script because it saves you all kinds of time and effort to come up with something plausible. While you might think that is important, I would submit that you are just opening yourself up to trouble when someone starts to pick apart your system. Much easier to just remain mum and let the rest of the story work in your favor.

Anyhow, go see Inception. You'll thank me for it later.

Writing Lessons From Sting

Saw Sting at the White River Amphitheatre last night. As predicted, it was cold and rainy but we were seated under cover so all was well. The orchestra was a great touch and the musical highlights were "Mad About You" and "Desert Rose."

But there were also a couple of tidbits that apply to writers. Sting said there were two types of love stories. I Love You/You Love Me, which is boring and goes nowhere, and I Love You/You Love Someone Else. It's the second one that's the most interesting and has the deepest dramatic goldmines to plunder.

Later on, he talked about how he writes songs. He's been doing it for decades and still calls it a 'mysterious process.' His tendency over the past ten to twenty years has been to arrange the music first and then let that music suggest mood and character. Fiction writers do the same kind of thing when we come up with the framework of scenarios and settings and then wait for a story and hero to fill the spaces. The interesting thing he said was not to be afraid of what comes along and demands to be written, even if it's a story about things that make us uncomfortable.

Good advice, and it's worked well for him so it's something to consider.

Writing Lessons From Miserability

While 'miserability' might not be a word, I've re-learned a writing lesson during the crafting of my current dragon story. The first encounter with the dragon went relatively well for the heroes and, after some ominous foreshadowing, they went about their business towards the middle of the story. After a couple of stabs at setting up the middle, I realized my problem was that everything was all sunshine and lollipops for them, with nothing really driving the action to the climax. Even though it meant I had to chuck a major idea that would have been part of the middle, I had to ramp up the tension by changing the end of the previous scene and making their situation a little (and by 'little' I mean 'lot') more difficult. With my characters suitably miserable, the middle is cracking along with some drive and drama. Sucks to be them. But after all, that's what they get paid for.

Writing Lessons From Errant Kitchen Knives

The other day I had a run in with the wrong end of a chef's knife. It started to slip out of my hand and like an idiot I whipped my other hand up to grab it. The resulting slash across the side of one of my fingers (which strangely ended up in a cool looking Z shape) bled more than any other cut I can remember. I mean, blood was literally pouring out of it in a steady stream. It took all day of clamping down on it with a dish towel before the bleeding slowed enough to put a regular Band-Aid on it. So that made me think about all the grievous wounds I regularly apply to characters I write about. While I try to be a bit more realistic in my injuries and try to stay away from John McClane style bloodshed, I still write about people who get banged up a great deal. Now I think I may have to tone it down even further and get more mileage out of the real ramifications of open wounds that just keep bleeding and reopening.

Writing Lessons by Design

Here's something I realized over the weekend. (No, it's not that Rock Band 2 is equally inane and addicting.) Sometimes I'll listen to these interior design radio shows when driving around on a Saturday. I just noticed that the way they typically talk about color and texture and other design elements can be very helpful in our writing. Not just by noting the words they choose to use but by paying attention to how they think about design. It's all part of the creative process and the more interdisciplinary input you can pull in, the better. Listen to a few shows and see if you don't agree.

Writing Lessons From the Soulless

This afternoon I read an interesting submission to Rage of the Behemoth. I recommended rejection because, in short, the story lacked soul. This is an odd thing to try and capture but you know it when it's not there. The words were all correct and they formed proper sentences which were strung together in perfectly grammatical paragraphs but the overall effect was... blah. Blah is not what you're shooting for in fiction (unless you're writing chick lit) and it especially has no place in heroic fantasy. I read the whole story and kept wondering when something was going to happen in a way that made me say 'wow.' Wow is what you're shooting for in heroic fantasy. In my comments to the editor I said the story was 'correct, but not good.' It was a strange thing that I don't think I've really seen like this before. Usually if a story lacks excitement and emotional connection with the characters there is almost always several other things wrong with it as well. This story had correct structure and proper pacing with an interesting setting and plot... but no soul.

Writing Lessons From Making an Ass Out of U and Me

I had an interesting thought/revelation this morning. At least, I thought it was interesting but since I don't pay attention to my own Writing Lessons, I've probably covered it before. I wrote a story where I had a lot of emotional attachment to the characters but very little of that came across on the page. I actually thought I had improved upon the first version but it was still lacking. I realized that I was expecting the reader to fill in a lot of background details out of their own imagination. This is something I do all the time when reading. If I'm proved wrong later on, no problem, I just adjust and carry on. In a sense, I'm re-writing the story as I go. Therefore, in my own writing, I just ASSUME that everyone does that. So why do I need to provide more than the barest details when readers will fill in the rest? Well, because not everyone reads like I do.

[This post took way too long to write primarily because I kept encouraging Son Number Three to set up his Teletubbies and club them with a stuffed animal while I provided the sound track. Again, again!]

Writing Lessons From Skipping the Middle

I was having a real problem with a middle scene in That Roman Story Set Entirely in Greece. Basically, I just flat out didn't know what I wanted it to say. It was one of the scenes that describes the 'why' of the other scenes. All this stuff is happening and the reader is being taken along for the ride but I always want some kind of revelatory scene in which the characters come to a sense of completion with the story. You know, the 'why.' Anyway, the scene was refusing to shape itself and I wrote a couple of weak attempts but wasn't happy with them. Then I decided to skip it and write the last scene. That's when it gelled. That's when I figured out what the middle needed to say. So when you're stuck with a scene that just isn't working, skip it and write the next scenes. Something will bubble up and answer the questions you couldn't answer before.

Writing Lessons From Christmas Cookies

In our house we have a tradition this time of year. My wife spends hours baking frosted sugar cookies and I spend hours trying to avoid helping her so that I can eat them later with the appropriate feeling of consequence-free pleasure. After getting caught in the kitchen on other Sunday afternoon business I was coerced into sifting together some flour, baking powder, and salt. Then I figured out that the deck needed sweeping. While I'm busy doing this marginally important task, Daughter Number One comes out and asks, "Are you trying to avoid helping Mom with the cookies?" I of course try misdirection and state, "No, I just have other things to do right now." She sees clearly through this with The Sight that only a six year old has. "OK, so you're trying to avoid helping Mom with the cookies." Then she turns back into he kitchen.

If you are getting lazy and uninspired in your writing, your characters will be obviously not doing what they should be doing. Readers will note this. Remember that fiction is not like real life and your characters have to stay on task. They can eat someone else's cookies, but they have to make it a little more dramatic than coming in from the deck with a defensive 'What?' look on their face.

Writing Lessons About Potential Readers

My wife and I rented the movie Next last night. It is very good by the way, especially if you're a fan of Nicolas Cage. What struck me as interesting was the way we tend to watch movies. I sit down and remove all distractions. I watch the opening credits and let myself get into the feeling and the flow of the movie. I pay attention in order to soak in everything that the film maker was trying to present. My wife, on the other hand, messes about with some mail on the coffee table, clicks over to a couple of things on her laptop, gets up and walks into the kitchen for something to drink, you know, does everything except pay attention. This has been standard procedure for almost twenty years now.

It struck me that there are people who read like this as well. While some will read with careful attention to your words, others will traipse through your prose like an unmedicated bipolar patient. Long, complicated sentences that are designed to evoke emotions from the depths of one's soul are probably lost on them. (My wife, however, is still more emotionally attuned than I am, so maybe this lesson just falls flat in her regard.) I suppose the thing to remember is that what you set up in Chapter 1 may have been glossed over and forgotten by the time we get to Chapter 10 so don't assume that your readers are following you. I'd advise sticking in a reminder or two along the way. Kind of like stopping the movie after an hour and saying, "No, he only sees two minutes into his own future."

Writing Lessons From Chopping Things Off

This morning I made a decision that greatly improved The Battle of Raven Kill. I chopped off the first four pages. Like an executioner's axe already bloody from a busy punch list, I carved away the pages of setup and description that I had previously thought necessary. Why? Because they were slowing down the story and kept bringing up more questions than they answered. Many people feel that they must explain things to their readers early on in the story or else the reader won't 'get it.' What I found when I tried to do this was that I wasn't making things clearer, I was making them murkier. Questions like 'who are these people?' and 'what is their relationship to the main character?' kept coming up. Every time I tried to work on that section I found I needed to expand things when I knew I wanted to contract them. The solution was beginning to become apparent and this morning I just did it. Reading through the reworked opening showed me that everything I was trying to set up could be done in one paragraph. It is simply much better this way.

Added bonus: I saved the writing to another file and now I have Deleted Scenes that I can add to the DVD.

WOTS and the Long Dark

It's been a long weekend and the sun has set. Kids have been fed. Saved episodes of The Daily Show have been watched. Here's the rundown on the last two classes of the day, The Way of Story and Crafting the Short Story.

The Way of Story had two very good points. Conflict is crucial to a story and there are three levels: external, interpersonal, and inner. Next was another take on story structure: Problem, Desire, Opponent, Plan, Final Battle, Self Revelation, New Life. These are all good things to internalize as a writer so that they come out naturally without having to laboriously slave away to include them.

Crafting the Short Story turned out to be more of a motivational session that covered a lot of the same ground I've seen before. So it was good but not dazzling.

Over all the classes and workshops were good and the weekend was worth the hundred bucks or so. Right now it's a lot to take in so I will try to absorb it all by going over my notes next week. As for now, it's time for lights out and go back to work in the morning.

WOTS Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

OK, in a rush to catch up, here's the skinny on Sunday morning. The two workshops were Who's Zooming Whom by Garth Stein, and Dr. Frankenstein's Character Lab by Craig English.

Garth is a fantastic speaker and was very engaging. His background is in documentary film making and screenwriting. I've found that anyone with a background in the visual arts is a great person to teach writing. They point out how your reader will be visualizing what you write and 'running the movie' through their head. Forget about that at your peril. He also led the class through dramatic structure which is very specific and defined in screenwriting. It is a tremendous help to fiction.

The character lab was primarily about personality types. Craig went through some of the differences between men and women; which we've always known were huge but now science is proving it through research in brain chemistry. Of course, when you put up a white board and encourage the audience to throw out male and female characteristics for a list, you are just asking for trouble. In a good natured way, he got it. His take on personalities was all about attachment theory which is good stuff but way too in depth for this post.

Lunch at Petosa's deli was so-so.

WOTS Saturday Afternoon

I was unable to post anything about yesterday afternoon because I had to run home and host a wine tasting party with several friends. (Of course, the most expensive wine was fairly middling.)

The two sessions I attended were Technology and Being Unforgettable. The technology class was primarily centered around blogging and establishing a web presence for the purpose of marketing your work. There were some good ideas and I'm going to use some of them but the really interesting part of the class was a couple of people who had no idea what a blog was, what internet forums were, or even how to spell www. Most of us were somewhere around my skill/knowledge level and a few were obviously experts in 'web platforms.' This made for a difficult time for the presenter, Scot Herrick, as he tried to keep things worthwhile and interesting for us all.

The next workshop was taught by Laura Whitcomb. She had five techniques, like distilling dialog down to the very essence and creating interesting characters by giving them baggage, for making your manuscript stand out amongst all the others. Her central premise was that if you have an interesting beginning, and really hook the ending into that beginning, you can create a sense of closure and completeness that will leave an agent thinking it was a great read and forgive you any mistakes in the middle. Clever advice and well worth working towards.

WOTS Morning Sessions

The class on anti-heroes was outstanding. It was an excellent summation of what I've kind of known about anti-heroes but never put down in words. The presenter, Jessica Page Morrell, has done her homework and captured the character well. We all know about the rascally rogue or charming criminal who is your stereotypical anti hero but she also catalogs several other categories as well. To me, they seem to fall into two types, aforementioned rogues like Han Solo and the everyman/loser like Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman. Morrell has some great advice about writing in general that will surely be summarized here in the near future but this lunch break isn't as long as it first looked. More to come later this evening.

The class on mystery writing was forgettable.

Writing Lessons From Dune

As I seem to do often, I've started reading two books at once. I found a nice looking hardback copy of Dune by Frank Herbert on the special rack at Borders. I sat there and read it for a while and then decided to buy it. I first read the book when I was a kid and I remembered thinking it was incredibly boring. I skipped through huge chunks of text trying to find the battle scenes. That's a lot like how I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Since Tolkien grew on me with age I figured I'd try Herbert again as well.

The book is very good and there are a few lessons to be drawn from it:

1. Herbert shifts POV to several different characters within the same scene. I think it works fairly well and it is leading me to lighten up on the strict point of view rules I've grown accustomed to.

2. The chapter headings have quotes from future history books written about the period about to be covered. Some would say this lessens the impact of the various plot twists but I think it's really cool. You know what's about to happen and you're anxious to find out how.

3. Herbert uses extensive direct thoughts in italics. You just don't see that very often anymore but I think it helps effectively unveil the character.

I'm sure there are other lessons as well but none I could find by page 65.

Writing Lessons From a Rainy Sunday

Sunday produces other things in this house except watching Peyton Manning embarrass the 'Defense of the Week.' This morning I woke up early enough to go running in the rain and write a bit more of my current novel attempt. I had a scene in mind and it had gotten to the point where I felt I could write it. The scene involves a new character that I want to add to the story, a bad guy that will be the main character's foil, and I had envisioned an extended conversation with a goodly amount of detail. What happened was something different. This lesson goes along the lines of previous ones where I point out that you should say what you need to say and then shut up. I got to the halfway point of the planned conversation and realized that it was an excellent stopping point. (I was also running out of time before the kids woke up.) The rest of what was said could remain unsaid. This creates more suspense as the reader tries to figure out what might happen next. I know how the scene went but the reader doesn't have to until later.

So next time you're writing, try cutting a scene in half and see what you're left with. It might work for you as well.

Writing Lessons From Classified Briefings

What I'm doing here in Hawai'i is running the Sustainment cell of MARFORPAC's Crisis Action Team that is participating in a KTO exercise.

(Definition time:
Sustainment= Everything that goes into maintaining a military force engaged in combat operations.
MARFORPAC= Short version on Marine Forces Pacific, the headquarters of all of the Marine Corps forces in the Pacific ocean area.
Crisis Action Team= A room full of Marines that track a bunch of information fed up to us from subordinate units.
KTO= Korean Theatre of Operations, basically the Korean penninsula and all areas around it.)

My main job is to gather up all the important info and provide the commanding general with a briefing regarding our cell. I try to be brief. Some people do not try to be brief. This is annoying.

My writing lesson from this is to say what you need to say and then stop writing. You really run the risk of causing your audience to lose interest, shuffle through the other papers on the desk, and start checking their watches. As a writer you are looking for different reactions than that.

Writing Lessons From Grave Peril

Grave Peril fulfilled the promise its beginning made by ending in exemplary fashion. Butcher pulled off an incredibly clever and unforeseen ending that wrapped up the storyline and saved the day neat as you please. That's the focus of the writing lesson for today, or perhaps it is just a writing question whose answer will sound like a writing lesson and I'm good with that, too.

The question is this: How smart do you have to be to be a writer? All of us have read a book and thought, Any idiot could have written that. Perhaps we were correct. Perhaps an idiot did write it. The really clever, really smart and fascinating plot twists are what we all like to discover when we read. We hope that the author is smarter than us because we sure can't figure out how to get the hero out of this mess. This maxim would suggest that you have to be pretty intelligent to be a successful writer. Unless you write chick lit. Don't get me started.

So the actual lesson part of this post is: Agent 86

Writing Lessons From Failed Writing

Here's a bit of a lesson that I posted elsewhere so I'll plagiarize myself and repeat it here. It describes the failure of my novel attempt a few years ago when the thing fell apart after about 100K words.

The novel I nearly finished while in New Orleans was doomed from the start by serious structural flaws in the plot. A plot must be thought out and must survive a series of questions that mostly start with 'why.' Why must that be that way? Why do the characters do that? Why would the villain do that and not just shoot them? Why is anybody bothering to do anything at all?

I had an implausible premise from the beginning and didn't realize it until too late. The further I got along the more difficult it became. I couldn't think of any solid reason that could recover it. Also, I had the hero separate from the rest of the pack and head back to get revenge on the villain. Soon after that I lost the structure I needed and couldn't recover.

Stories are presented in three acts with the hero going through four phases: orphan, wanderer, warrior, and martyr. He or she goes from reactive to proactive at the midpoint of the story. The timing and spacing of these phases need to be hit at the right times because that's what readers expect after years of training with other books as well as movies. You miss these marks at your peril and I missed them terribly. Combine that with the implausible plot and the thing fell apart, becoming nothing more than a series of scenes with no arc and no compelling reason to root for the hero.

That, by the way, is a textbook way to kill your novel.

And learn something all at the same time.