Outlines and Writing Sequence

Oh my, I haven’t really blogged much in April, have I?  I’ve been busy. Remember the Script Frenzy challenge to write 100 pages of script in April? Despite taking four days off for Norwescon and catching a killer cold, I managed to complete a stage play.

It’s a first draft. Like all first drafts, it will require review and revision. But it’s done. At 79 pages.

It was an interesting writing experience. I wrote final scene first, because I knew how it had to end. Then I wrote the first scene, because certain things had to be established for the final scene to work. Then I wrote some stuff in the middle, in no particular order. Then I wrote the scene that came before the first scene and then the scene that came after the final scene.

A lot of writers start with outlines. Obviously, I’m not one of them. But I had created such a cluster that I had to impose order on it. So, rather than outline what I needed to write, I went back and outlined what I had already written (which, incidentally, told me what I still needed to write).

What I  learned from the exercise was that my story had three distinct problems arising from the order of the scenes.

The first was sequence.  Characters cannot act on information before they receive it and problems cannot be resolved before they occur. This was the most obvious problem.

A little more subtle was the issue of timing.  In one case, I had a character told she could not return to work until she had solved a certain problem. At the start of the very next scene, she returned to work with a clever solution. It was in the right sequence, but it happened too fast. It just doesn’t seem like much of a problem when the audience only experiences five minutes of real time before it gets resolved.

And finally, there was the problem of flow – how one scene proceeds into the next.  It’s easy to cut between scenes on the stage with a blackout or a curtain, but cutting from a pair of characters on one set to the same pair of characters on the same set may not flow as well as other transitions.

This is part of the fun of working in different formats. All of these lessons can apply to the construction of any type of story, but they were easy to see while I was writing for the stage.

A Clever Word Avoidance Strategy

Short blog because I’m already behind on Script Frenzy.  The title of my play has changed, by the way.  I kept looking at The Souls Academy and thinking “Souls” looked like it wanted to be possessive, when the original intent was for it to be plural.  The current working title, still subject to change, is The Apocalypse According to Saint Michelle of the Coffee Shop.

Today’s writing lesson is in how not to be trite.  Or maybe it’s about word choice.  I’m writing a play about religious themes, but I don’t want to talk directly about things like “the healing power of love" because frankly it will make the audience wince. 

So I am actively avoiding certain words.  For “love,” for example, I’m talking about understanding and kindness. It’s less ambiguous anyway.  And, like with the sonnets I discussed a few blogs back, it forces me to expand my vocabulary.

Another trick I’m using is hiding key words amongst words of lesser importance.  Forgiveness is a major theme of the play – more so than love, actually.  So I don’t want to beat the audience over the head with it, especially early on.  So instead of saying “you need to forgive him,” I say things like “forget him, forgive him, or whatever you need to move past him…” The concept is still in there, but it is far less obtrusive.

And yes, authors worry about stuff like this all the time. Believe it or not, it’s part of the fun.

Staging the Next April Project

It’s April 1st as i write this.  In addition to being April Fool’s Day, it’s the start of Script Frenzy, the script writing challenge from the wacky folks that brought you Nanowrimo.

I wasn’t going to do the Frenzy this year, but then I remembered an idea for the ending of a play that I’ve had in my head for several years.

I’m going to have to start with the ending and write backwards.  (Back…words?)  Wish me luck.

I’m also going to need to figure out where the play is set.  I have action and characters, but no backdrop.  This is important for stage plays – every change in location requires a set change, which requires the theater to spend time and money.

Many modern plays revel in set changes – the elaborate sets and fancy changes are part of the spectacle.  And also part of the ticket price.

And on the other end of the spectacle spectrum, there is bare stage.  Shakespeare is largely written for the bare stage – the actors come in and simply announce where they are and the audience goes with it.  My, the Forest of Arden is lovely this time of year.  (Amusingly, A Chorus Line, famous for its big musical production numbers, is also written for bare stage.)

So I’m going to start writing now.  My work is tentatively entitled The Souls Academy: A Blasphemy in Two Acts.  I don’t really know yet if it will really be two acts.

But I’m fairly certain about the blasphemy part.

Dialogue, or Talking about Talking

I gotta write more scripts.  I like the format.  When I first started writing on the bus, on my shiny new halfling-size laptop, the first thing I did was a short radio play.  Now, after struggling with the novel format, my blog is late this week because I’ve been happily writing a web-comic strip.

The radio play was especially fun because there was no stage action – the whole story had to be told in voice.  I like dialogue.  I hope I’m good with it.   And in scripts, dialogue is the primary way in which character is revealed.  And dialogue and action together pretty much make up the whole story.

In novels, the author can get inside the character’s head.  Thoughts, feelings, musings… all can be presented easily.  You’d think novel writing would therefore be easier – more tools for the author to build the tale. 

But there is something to be said for the challenge of working on a limited canvas. (Is a limited color palate a better analogy?)  It forces you to be deliberate, to make meaningful and powerful choices in order to get the best use out of the tools you’ve got.  Or, to continue the analogy, to use bold colors.

Even in the novel format, dialogue is a powerful tool.  I have noticed that good authors reveal new information in dialogue as well as in text.  Despite having access to a character’s thoughts, sometimes we don’t learn their conclusions until the character tells someone else.  More dramatic that way.

I think part of the appeal of dialogue is it’s how we learn about people in real life.  We judge others by what they say and do.  It’s all we’ve got, really.  So we learn from the time we’re children to decipher words and phrases, to listen for double meanings, to see when people’s words don’t add up, to decide who to believe.

Dialogue therefore commands our attention.  It’s our life.

Time Compression and Narration

I understand that a typical mistake made by amateur movie makers is showing too much establishing footage.  Filming a guy leaving his house, shutting his door, walking to his car, pulling out his keys, getting in his car, driving away, sitting in traffic, arriving at his destination.  Audiences only need to see that last bit – the arrival.  Maybe, if continuity is an issue, we can see him driving away from home.  But anything more is a waste of time and the viewers’ attention.

So I’m writing this supposedly short web comic script for my sister-in-law, and I’m still fighting the expanding page-count. I’m on page eight and I’ve finally gotten to the meat of the story.

One of the problems I had was having the main character arrive outside an apartment window while the next scene requires her to be inside.  The question is – do I need to show her climbing through the window?

I decided that entering the apartment was a necessary bit of continuity to avoid confusing the reader.  But it is an unfortunate necessity, using up page space and making my artist do more work.

The trick, it turns out, is making each panel do double duty.  So while the characters are doing uninteresting things like climbing through windows, I have them thinking (hopefully) interesting and revealing things.  Thank heaven for first person narration.

An interesting reversal actually occurs here – once I decide what information to reveal during these necessary transition panels, I have to make the panels large enough to contain the new data. 

It’s like the film maker above intentionally extending the driving sequence in order to make time for an important voice-over.  But that’s no longer a mistake – it’s an intentional control over the flow of time.  The movie takes time to think because the character does.

But none of this makes my script any shorter.

After what came before…

For today, a couple of unrelated thoughts based on my previous post.  If you need to, you can go back and read it. I’ll wait – the Internet is patient.

My first thought is that comic book format creates interesting challenges to pacing.  At the request of the person I am writing for, I’m trying to avoid too many words per panel.  I’m also trying to avoid too many panels per page.  Otherwise, you know, they get really small and cramped.

Unfortunately, the original plan also included not having too many pages of story as well.  And the way I’m working now, it takes five pages to move the story an inch.  I suppose economy of storytelling is an issue in any media.  Brevity, wit.  It’s a fun, but occasionally frustrating challenge.

My other thought was about the classification and demystification of magic that I ranted about in my previous post.  Particularly as it pertains to my work-not-so-much-in-progress, The Illusionist’s House. 

I’m thinking the solution may be to go ahead and let the people in the story try to classify magic.  Maybe even let them think they’ve succeeded.  And then have them be wrong.  Let them learn that some things defy pigeonholes.

The limits of what can be known is becoming a theme for the story anyway.

April in November, or, Continuity Editing

I think I’m almost done. Remember my D&D-style movie script that I wrote last April? The one for the 100-page Script Frenzy challenge?  After it was done, I decided it needed a little revision.

The original draft never had the moment where our heroes’ success was truly in doubt. Where, if I might borrow a phrase, the quest stood on a knife’s edge. So I went back and added one. No big, right?

But everything after that point in the plot was subtly shifted. I couldn’t just cut-n-paste the previous ending on wholesale. So, now I think I’m done, but I’ve shuffled so much stuff around that I need to do a continuity editing pass.

It’s an annoying step – mostly because it’s a technical, almost mechanical job, rather than an imaginative, creative one. What I need to do is review the draft and account for the progression of events. I’m looking for things like characters using their weapons two scenes after being disarmed.  And who has the McGuffin, which changes hands as McGuffins tend to do.

So here’s another secret of writing, which I hope inspires you as much as it does me. Sometime in writing, like in any craft, there is annoying busy work that needs to be done. I guess the secret is to want the finished product enough.

The Scary Thing about Scriptwriting

The scary thing about script writing is this:  The work has to stand up to actors. 

And you know how actors are.  They’ll do things to your words.  They’ll take them places you’re not sure they are ready to go.  And your words, like ungrateful children, will happily go along for the ride.

Seriously, you have to be able to give the script away and watch others interpret your words.  Their interpretations will not be based on your intentions or on how the words sounded in your head.  What’s on the paper has to be good enough, on its own.

Of course, this is also the glorious thing about scriptwriting.  Because if the words are good, actors and directors will add a layer of their own to them, adding nuances that make the work even better.  Give the same words to two different actors and get two different values.  At least two.

In a way, I suppose it is true for novels and stories as well.  The meaning and the value of the work does not end with the author’s intentions, or even with the author’s words.  The reader brings something to the table as well.  But it’s really visible with scripts.

And really fun.

Practice makes…

It occurs to me that just about every book I’ve ever read about the craft of writing invariably includes the advice, “Write. Just write. Just do it.” It’s a matter of discipline. Good intentions don’t write stories. Writers write stories.

I feel a little bit of the hypocrite here because I’m struggling with the final revisions of my April project script and more often then not I’m not doing my struggling at the keyboard.

But the advice is still good for another reason beyond getting the work done. Practice works. When learning a physical skill, the repetitive motions you make when you practice actually help the brain make the connections needed to perform those motions faster and more consistently.

I believe that practicing writing makes writing better, too. When you start catching the same mistakes and stop making them. When you decide to experiment with  italics. When you realize that you’ve developed a unique voice for your lead character.

And those are just the quantifiable bits. The cool stuff about writing is that you sometime produce stuff you didn’t even know you had in you. The act of writing spurs creativity, stimulates ideas.

I once wrote a play where one of the characters expressed an idea I’ve had for some time. A deep, thoughtful, insightful idea about the human condition. And then, in the very next line, the other character onstage called the idea crap and started a counter argument.

I didn’t expect that. Here I am with my grand idea, and suddenly I’m writing the opposition paper against it. It was great. Hopefully, it made the play better, too.

So if you want to be a writer, write.  Write for discipline, for getting stuff done. Write for practice, to develop your skills. Write to inspire yourself, to discover the hidden depths of your own ideas. Just write.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go off and start taking my own advice.

Worked on a Movie…

Today is Wednesday. I normally post on Tuesdays. Sorry ‘bout the delay, but I spent the last two days working on a film set.

Not as glamorous as it sounds, I’m afraid. I was an extra on a small (probably less than 20 minute) historical piece of the kind they show in museum displays. It was about the Klondike Gold Rush. It’s likely I will either be lost on the cutting room floor or be visible only as third hat on the left.

But it was an interesting experience.

The extras were given general instruction and left to build their own stage business. I was amused to note how much went on that could not be credited to the show’s writers.

The visuals – how the scenes were constructed, the camera angles used, the timing, were all created on the spot. More than once I was asked to stand in a certain location just so I would block something modern from the view of the camera.

I know there was a script and there were principal characters and a story. They just were not in evidence on the days that I was there.

I think writing for film must be like throwing a pebble into a pond but only watching where the ripples reach the shoreline. There script has to be there first, the ideas and the characters and the plot – but the writer must expect a certain distance between the his or her work and the finished product. We see only ripples, not the stone.

The Moment of Doom

So I’m rewriting my April Project D&D movie script (see any of my posts from April for more info). Now as I noted before, I’m rewriting to establish stakes for the hero’s quest, to make his success or failure more meaningful to the audience.

Only, now that I’m rewriting, I’ve hit another snag. I am questioning now whether I need a moment where things go really bad, where the hero fails and the quest seems impossible.

It’s not that there are no conflicts. But the pattern is something like: monster attacks, heroes find a way to beat monster, heroes move on to next monster. Rather like the source material, actually. And I have some personality conflicts along the way as well, just to add a little spice.

But the heroes are never captured, hope is never lost, the fellowship of the core team is never truly tested. And I’m afraid the quest will seem too easy without such a moment, too unsatisfyingly simple.

I’ve not followed any of the movie formulae – this isn’t meant to be the classic three-act pattern or the Hero’s Journey – but now I find I’m questioning whether I am missing a fairly classic element. What I’m looking for here is the Descent into the Underworld.

So I guess I’ve got a bit more rewriting to do before we can all have that script-reading party.

Back in the Saddle Again

I am seriously rewriting the second half of my script. While I successfully reached both my 100 page goal and the end of my story within April, I have found a significant problem in my story.

The quest has no stakes.

I’ve set up that my hero, Jon Warder, is going on what may well be a fool’s quest as a point of honor, because there is nothing else he can do for the people for whom he feels responsible. I like that. It’s nifty.

But if he should fail in his quest? Nothing changes.  And if he should succeed? Well, he does succeed, of course, and it turns out to be very important, but at the time he takes the quest, we don’t know why it’s important. For most of the movie, it looks like if he succeeds, nothing changes.

So why should the audience care if he fails?

When laying out plots, nothing changes is the kiss of death.

I have two options. I can invest the viewer more in Jon’s honor, showing that he takes some great, personal, internal loss if he fails. Or I can establish real, physical consequences to the quest. They already exist, I just have to find a way to share them with the audience sooner.

Ideally, I should do both of these things.

The problem is that I did a good job tying the story together. One scene logically follows the next. There is pacing and flow. So I’m going to have to break it before I can fix it.

That’s the way it goes sometimes.

How it Ends

It’s April 29. For those of you in the audience that have not been following along at home, here’s the story: I signed up for the Script Frenzy challenge (www.scriptfrenzy.org) to write a 100 page script in the month of April.

I took as my topic a fantasy screenplay with the intent of writing a better Dungeons and Dragons style movie than the actual D&D movie that hit the theaters. I like attainable goals.

Yesterday, I finished the script. I ran the formatting utility that set it into standard screenplay format. It was exactly 99 pages.

Now if the story is good and tight and complete at  99 pages, then that would be the place to stop. But I know this is only a first draft.

So I went back over it, thinking about what I could do better. One of the things that was weak was the character development arc for my lead. He started out strong and skilled and honorable. I didn’t want a story in which he got worse. That left the question about how he was going to change or improve. Who goes on a quest in order to stay exactly the same?

Now the major thing that happens over the course of the movie is that our team of heroes is assembled. When I wrote the end, I had them laughing and joking together, being friends.

I looked back at the very start of my script, which I wrote on April 2.  I had established my hero, Jon Warder, and his home village, but I hadn’t paid much attention to whether he had any real friends there.

So I went back, 25 days later, and rewrote the opening to show a distance between Jon and the farmers under his care. To show that he didn’t really have friends.

Then I rewrote the ending to make the final scene with the laughing and joking a little stronger.

And now Jon at least has something he didn’t have before his quest started. It sounds backwards and contrived when I explain it this way, but remember, the audience only sees it in the correct order, with the problem before the solution.

The result?

101 pages.

My First Fight

One question I’m struggling with is: What to leave in, what to leave out?

When I wrote plays for the stage, I had the advantage of having acted on a stage. I’ve never been in a movie. For stage plays, I know that if I describe a door I don’t have to assign it a position on the stage. And if I want a character to move to the door, I simply write Bob moves to the door. There will be a director and a set designer who will decide that if the door is upstage left. They can note Bob crosses up left or even B. x UL.

In a movie, I presume, the director and set designer are supplemented with a legion of support staff – cinematographers, location scouts, fight choreographers, stunt coordinators, and so forth.

I know it is easily possible to go overboard with description and detail. And really, if this were a real movie, shouldn’t the art departments, directors, cinematographers, and actors, each bring their own take on the work? But I also know from stage scripts: If it is important to the writer, he better write it down, ‘cause nobody else is going to add it for him.

My first fight scene in the script is a paragraph stating simply who is fighting, that they are competent fighters, and who wins.

My second fight scene, written just shy of half a month later, is full of description. Who uses what weapon, odd things that happen in the fight, sequence and timing...  I wanted the second fight to have a different tone – it’s actually lighter and more comical, less lethal and serious. But the script doesn’t say “this is a comic scene.” It just describes the experienced fighters making fools of the incompetent ones.

So which is right, for a movie script? I really don’t know. I know there is a difference between a screenplay, which I think is what I’m writing, and a shooting script, which has camera angle notes and scene breakdowns.

I suspect I may go back and revise the first fight scene, to see if I can find ways to demonstrate that my fighters are competent, explain why they win. Because if I don’t, I’m essentially leaving it up to someone else to do that work for me.

And because the second fight scene is a lot more fun to read.