Peeves on a Leash

It startles me that, in this modern and enlightened age, I have read professionally published novels with Deus ex Machina endings. I mean, there are still editors, right?

I once heard an author at a convention say that one of the big things that gets people into trying to write professionally, for whatever medium, is when they look at something and say “I could do better than that!”

Generally, I suspect they find that writing well is harder than it looks. But at least they know which mistakes they are not going to make.

So what are your pet peeves when it comes to storytelling? What tropes drive you nuts? Me, I’m getting awfully tired of the idiot listening to loud music through headphones who fails to hear the carnage and screaming from right behind him. We’ve all seen that movie, right?

And I don’t like it when a character makes a promise and the reader knows instantly that the story will be set up to make him or her break the promise.

And the Deus ex, of course. Any contrivance so old it’s name dates back to classical antiquity should be probably be avoided.

But it’s all personal taste, isn’t it? There are some tropes that I’ve seen as often as the idiot in headphones and they still work for me every time. 

Crafting a story is  an art based on choices, on making decision after decision after decision. And consciously or not, the tricks you’ve seen before are in your head, part of your storytelling arsenal.

Use them wisely.

Irons in the Fire

How much stuff do you work on at once? When I’m deep in a project, like the play script I wrote in April, that commands most of my focus. Deadlines also help – the challenge was to finish the play before the end of the month.

Now, two months later, I’m a little out of focus. A little fuzzy around the edges. Here is what is currently going on – I have an idea for a very short theater piece for an Society for Creative Anachronism event coming up in the fall, I have a new novel idea I’m working on based on a creative challenge from my wife, and I have an unfinished web comic script for my sister-in-law. Not to mention the other usual bits of creativity and weirdness that typically occupy my mind.

I don’t know that human creativity is necessarily a limited pool. Spending it here doesn’t mean you will have none left to spend there.  But let’s be real – your time is a limited pool.  And actually working on a project takes time. So, how many irons can you have in the fire at once? For me, things get done when they are given  priority.

So, based on my previous experiences with my own brain, this is what I predict will happen: The play script will jump up in priority after I figure out when it is due – i.e., what is the date of the event and how much lead time before that will be required to mount the production? The play is short and will probably be finished in a comparatively short time.

The novel suffers from the opposite problem. It isn’t short and I don’t expect to finish it soon. I predict the novel to be worked on in intermittent bursts of creativity as cooler versions of scenes present themselves, causing me to re-think and rewrite the little bit I’ve already done.  I hope to eventually achieve a kind of critical mass, where ideas lead to ideas and a the old snowball-rolling-downhill effect occurs.  There is a certain point, if I can reach it, where successfully completing the work becomes exciting on its own.

Not sure about the web comic script – I suspect there will be some outside demand from that quarter coming down the line.

Authors tend to bitch about deadlines, but they have a certain value. Its the things that I need to get done that I do get done. So here’s a bit of writing advice to round out this otherwise overly personal blog entry – if you are having trouble getting motivated to finish your story, try promising it to someone else. Set a realistic, achievable deadline and tell someone about it. Find a way to make it a priority.

Now I just need to take my own advice.

The Two Deaths of Andrew Dolbeck

There are two types of character death in fiction. (No, actually there are probably thousands. But there is a division of two that I would like to discuss. And while we are being parenthetical, today’s writing lesson can apply to more than death – feel free to substitute any dramatic plot event.) Let us call them the story-driven death and the reality emulating death.

The story-driven death suits the story. No surprise there. The deadly event occurs at just the right point in the plot, it fits the themes of the work, it advances the progression of the surviving characters.

There are many classic examples – the person who has done wrong, seeking redemption, dies saving the lives of others. Or, for a twist, the pure and good hero dies saving the person who has done wrong, adding value to their redemption quest. And let us not forget the mentor figure who dies in the middle of the classic Hero’s Journey. Or the passing of the sword from one generation to the next. In horror movies, the character that invents or unleashes the evil force is typically on the to-be-killed list.

You’ve seen these stories before – you know the drill.  And that’s part of the problem. Story-driven deaths can be effective and moving, but they can also be predictable.

I personally favor action genres, with cops and detectives and space pilots and characters who, for no reason, wear bright spandex costumes while fighting crime. These characters operate in dangerous worlds. In such worlds, death should strike unexpectedly. It should not be predictable.

Which brings us to the reality emulating death. The argument here is simple: people die. In real life, no one dies to suit the plot. Death occurs on its own time. 

There are benefits to having this kind of death in your story. In most fiction, a certain degree of willing suspension of disbelief is required. Having people dodge bullets all day without consequence doesn’t exactly make that suspension any easier.

The reality emulating death also makes a statement about hazardous environments. In war people die. People die unfairly and unexpectedly in space, in unsanitary conditions, and in the bad part of town.

And once a well loved character dies unexpectedly, outside what we believe to be the rhythm and structure of the plot, all bets are off. No one is safe. Anything can happen.  And that’s a fun place for the author to have the reader.

On the other hand, we don’t always want our fictions to be as haphazard and meaningless as our real lives. Character deaths that do not sync with the story may seem arbitrary and forced. Or, depending on the story, too harsh.

Of course, every reader will have a different opinion. In the end, as always, you need to weigh carefully what suits your story.

Because your readers certainly will.

The Meaning of It All

The first advice writers are often given is: just do it. Write. Get the words down on paper or the electronic media of your choice. Good advice, but it leads directly to the more difficult questions, like what do I want to write?

In my time I’ve written poetry, research papers, novels, non-fiction, stage plays, and even, Heaven forgive me, a small amount of advertising copy. And for all of these things, there are techniques and structures available that have stood the test of time.

My personal preference, in whatever format, is to tell a story. And if you go back and look at some of my earliest posts on this blog, you’ll see I’ve given a lot of thought to the elements of story – characters, plot, resolution, stuff like that. But lately I’ve had another concern:

Do I actually have anything to say?

That is, do I , as the artist, have anything to convey about life, society, or the human condition? It’s not required, of course. I’m an unashamed escapist with a preference for action, adventure, and the occasional mindless explosion.

And it’s not that I think my works are devoid of artistic merit. I’ve examined themes of sexual identity, power and responsibility, and the concerns of mortality, just to name a few.

But I never start with the message. I’m a language guy – I tend to start with the tone and feel of the piece. With how I want the words to sound. And I start with story. With the likeable characters and the conflict and plot.

I don’t have an axe to grind. I don’t have an agenda.

And sometimes I can’t help thinking that maybe my works would be stronger if I did.

Or maybe not. Maybe it is better to expect readers to want to be entertained (and maybe take home a little message with their fun) than to expect readers to want a message disguised as their entertainment.

But still, at the end of the day, I hope my works will somehow stand up as art.

Getting Tense

A writing friend asked me the other day about whether she should continue to write her novel in the present tense. Since I put a bit of thought into my answer, I’m going to recycle it here for the benefit of my readers.

First, let me start by acknowledging that the past tense is the standard default setting. I suspect it dates back to oral tradition – stories recount events that have already occurred, so we tell them in the past tense. It sounds natural to the ear, where the present tense may stand out and be distracting.

It is also not necessary to use the present tense to convey urgency or immediacy. Many can’t-put-‘em-down page turners have been written in the past tense.

This doesn’t mean the present tense is inherently wrong. But like any tool in the writer’s kit, it should be used to build a better story. Is there a reason for the present tense? My third novel has two running timelines, one past and one current, so I use both the present and past tenses to keep them clear to the reader.

Another trick might be to use the present tense for dream sequences or for when the narrative is told from the perspective of an animal, a space alien, or some other notably unusual point of view.

Nothing is wrong if it makes the story better, but there is a balancing act.  Any deviation, any trick, any clever bit of writing, needs to be judged carefully, weighing the benefit it brings to the work against any confusion or distraction it may bring the reader.

I have read more than one well-written, professionally published novel written entirely in second person narration, which just goes to show that weird stuff can be done and done well.

So my advice on using the present tense is: Know why you are using it and check occasionally to be sure it’s really working for you.

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.