Musical Precision

I thought I’d continue my series on what I’ve learned about writing from other media with a little song and dance.  I’m no musician, but I like to watch music being made.  Fingers moving like spiders over the fret board, hands rolling like the ocean over the ivories. Over the years I’ve seen a wide range of performances, both live and recorded.

I’ve noticed there is a sharp dividing line between the amateur and professional levels of performance.  It is possible to have a good performance and still not quite reach that level of great performance that the pros hit consistently.

A music teacher once explained to me that music works on the principle of creating expectations, which create tension in the listener, and then fulfilling them, which eases the tension and gives the listener a pleasurable relaxation.  If one were to play, for example, the first seven notes of a major scale, the listener knows exactly what the eighth note is supposed to be before it is played.  If you play them in rhythm, the listener also knows when the eighth note is supposed to be.

In the professional performance, the right note is always there, right when it is supposed to be, without hesitation. I’m not saying they never make mistakes – I have a recording of Pete Seegar, live in concert, saying, “Now I can’t remember the second verse,” but he says it without ever losing his place on the guitar and without losing the attention of his audience.

The last concert I was at had people dancing in the aisles. Most were hoppin’ and boppin’ and just havin’ fun as they should, but there was one lady I’d wager had professional dance training.  Her moves repeated exactly, starting and ending with the beat of the song every time, enacted without hesitation.

So if you’ve been following my blog at all, you know I’m going to apply this to writing.  The secret for musicians and dancers seems to be precision.  The right move, the right note, the right time.  And people wonder why writers spend so much time stressing over just the right word.

There are a lot of places for writers to get it right.  Keeping an interesting variation of long and short sentences.  Avoiding eye-glazing paragraphs that never end.  Little grace notes of metaphor and analogy.  Pacing that builds, leading to the inevitable climax the occurs at just ahead of the reader’s expectation.

There’s a rhythm, too.  In my last play, I wrote a line where one character hesitates before saying the name of another character (indicated, if you must know, by an ellipsis).  An actor asked me about the pause, whether it was connected to a previous scene where his character was corrected on the name.  I said no, it was more of a pause to marshal his argument.

What I didn’t say, what I couldn’t articulate with an actor there in my face, was that it was a pause for rhythm.  That it just plain sounded right.

And you know how professional performers do it, right?  How they get that level of precision, time after time?  How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, practice, practice.  It seems more ephemeral for writers somehow, but the more you do it, the more you know why you are placing this word here, that word there.

Here endeth the lesson.

Character Shorthand, or What I Learned Playing Video Games

In a novel, there are lots of ways to reveal information about a character.  The narrative can get inside a character’s head, show thoughts, emotions and reactions, and then switch to another point of view to show how others think of the character.  Movies have fewer tools – to truly get inside a character’s head requires a voice-0ver, which involves first-person narration, which is always more suspect than an omniscient narrative voice.

But movies have an additional tool: visuals. The written word can describe how a character looks, but a movie can present the visual down to the last detail and do it instantly.

So let’s narrow  it down further to one of the most constraining story-based media I can think of for presenting character, online video games.  Generally, each player creates a character to interact with other characters and the game environment.  There is no real backstory, the character can only take the standard actions allowed by the game, the tools for expressing emotion are awkward at best and interactive dialogue is frequently (although not inherently) limited to things like “Where are we going,” and “Hey! You got me killed!”

So what tools do you have to make your online character stand out? To make him or her a person and not just an icon? And, of course, can these tools be applied back to writing and other media?

There are three major things you have when creating a character for an online game.  First, there is usually some customizability in the character’s appearance.  Gender, apparent age, color, and, depending on the game, possibly species.  Second, there is usually some choice of occupation/role/abilities/archetype.  And finally, you get to name the character.

Is that enough?  Actually, it’s a lot. I’ve created a lot of these characters over the last few years (because I often find making ‘em as much fun as playing them) and I’ve found that the ones that I stick with are the ones where the three elements (appearance, role/archetype, and name) come together well so that you immediately get some feel for the character.

Let me give you some classic movie and TV examples.  Indiana Jones, adventuring archeologist, with his dusty leathers, hat, and whip.  Note the odd name, reminiscent of the pulp heroes of old.  How about James T. Kirk, starship captain, in his Starfleet uniform?  He shares with Indiana Jones the combination of a common name (James, Jones) and and unusual name (Indiana, Kirk).  And Kirk is such a short, sharp syllable. It’s a very strong name.  And there’s Luke Skywalker, who, despite being a farm boy, insists on wearing white.

And I don’t see any reason not to name and describe characters in writing with the same degree of care. For a literary example, consider Miles Vorkosigan, created by Lois McMaster Bujold. He's got a great name (and on his planet, names beginning with Vor are significant,) a great visual and role (he's a dwarf soldier/aristocrat) and he wears a wide degree of uniforms, all chosen carefully for the occasion. There's a lot to him, even before you get inside his head.

Working Backwards

In the last three installments, I played around with building a story out of various pieces – a setting here, a conflict there, couple of characters – with the intention of showing how none of the individual pieces were enough to be story by themselves.

Today I’d like to take another approach.  If the point of art is to express something, to make your audience feel, then why not start at the point? In stories this is usually done through conflicts, through the risks the characters take and the decisions they face.

There are some concepts (regardless of how they are presented – scenes, images, conflicts, etc.) that we can expect most people to respond to strongly. Children in peril, for example. There are other concepts that, human individuality being what it is, that different people will respond to differently.  Say a cold glass of iced tea. It’s great if the weather is hot and you happen to like tea.

You want to include concepts in your narrative that people will respond to. But it most stories aren’t all children in peril, all the time. But the less universal the interest point, the more you have to build around it.  If you want to focus on that glass of ice tea, for example, you should probably also provide the hot day (a setting element) and someone who could really use a cup of tea (a character element) and possibly even some additional background.

What we are doing here is starting with an interest point and then working backwards to insert the elements that help sell that interest to the reader. All stories are contrivance and all stories contain conflict but it is never good for your conflict to feel contrived to the reader.

So if you have a really good, interesting conflict, perhaps somewhere in between my child is in danger! and I could sure use some iced tea, the next step is to construct the narrative elements that lead naturally to that conflict so that it doesn’t feel like it’s just been dropped into the story like a falling piano in a cartoon.

Sure, there are events in life that feel that sudden to the people they impact, but remember that your characters are only one element of your story.  A bomb going off can be every bit as stunning as it should be to your protagonist, even if your readers saw the bomb planted by the antagonist several pages ago. And better still if we’ve spent enough time with the villain to believe he or she really would resort to explosives.

All of this is really a way of saying you can work backwards, if you like. Start with a scene you’d like to have and then consider everything that is required to make the scene work, building the elements from the needs of the story instead of drawing the story from the elements.

I have a tendency to work in both directions. But as I have said before and will no doubt say again, every author is different, so play around with the tools and find what works for you. No one cares what tools you use to fix the sink – they care if the sink works.

The Unwritten Stuff

It is a truism that writers tend to develop more information about their characters and setting than actually appears in the story.  And, it is said, this process improves the story, even though the missing data is never visible to the audience. That’s the mystery part – the characters and settings become more rich, consistent, and real, even though we don’t see everything they are consistent with. (And yes, I know I just ended a sentence with a preposition. I do that. I also start sentences with conjunctions.)

For my part, I hate working out detailed backstory. I prefer a more generalized origin story that can be summed up in a few sentences. That’s because I like leeway. I know that, as an author, I am not required to stick to the notes that my reader will never see, but I like the feeling of flexibility. I guess, really, I like not having the decision made until I know what the story demands.

Once a decision is made, it feels concrete, even though nothing is set in stone until the story is finished and the final edits are done. And even then you have to be ready for a publisher or an agent to request changes.

If I decide my character has green skin, by way of a simple, ordinary, down-to-earth example, then I tend to think of my character as, well, green. The character is subject to Kermit the Frog jokes and has an excuse not to eat broccoli. Of course I can re-write the character blue, and I will if the story demands, but it is harder than you would think, because in my head, green is the color.

I also find that detailed facts are often less interesting to me than personality. So when I do need a backstory, I don’t generally work out details like Bob enlisted as soon as he turned 18.  Instead, I tend to think what would Bob say if someone asked about when he enlisted. “Soon as I could,” maybe, or “When I was young and idealistic,” or, “If I’d know they’d move me out of Nowheresville, I’d have lied about my age and joined up sooner.” I learn more about my characters that way.

Anyway, that’s what works for me. Some writers used detailed outlines. Some write organically, looking to see what happens next. I think there is some benefit to having a road map, but maybe it should be a new-fangled electronic one that moves the landmarks as new data is entered.

Perspective Matters

A fictitious character walks up to you and says, “The other day I saw two birds in flight, one below the other.  The further from me they flew, the closer together they came, until at last, in the distance, they merged into a single bird.”

How would you respond? My first thought is “You’re farsighted.  You should get glasses.”  But I’m not you and that is very important. 

How would people from other times and places have responded?  Perhaps “You are seeing double.  You should drink less ale.”  Or, “Your vision is  a terrible omen.  You should be burned at the stake.”  Or, “You have seen the bird’s spirit flying beside it.  You should study under the tribal shaman.”

The point that I am so subtly bludgeoning here is that everyone’s answer is based on their knowledge, their culture, their perspective.  This is particularly important for fictitious people, who carry the burden of illustrating their world to their readers.

The culture and perspective of the characters impacts not only how they see the world, but the choices they make and the words they use.  And it is not just something that authors need to consider in terms of character.  It can inform even the word choices and language of the work.

I am told that the use of the word “focus” to mean concentration – focusing on a problem, focusing one’s energies – is derived from the science of optics and is therefore a fairly modern term.  So a Stone Age sorcerer would not focus his magics.

Now, you may be saying, that’s a bit nit-picky.  And you are right, it is.  There is a counter argument that states to be read and understood, the work needs to be in the language of the modern reader.  After all, to be truly authentic, any piece set far enough in the past should be linguistically incomprehensible to all but the most dedicated scholars.  And honestly, you want to sell to a wider readership than that.

But the counter argument should not be used as an excuse to avoid any research or effort in fully depicting the perspective (and the world) of the character.  It’s more of a balancing act.  Accessible language and the portrayal of a foreign or fantastical perspective are not mutually exclusive.  It comes down to making writing choices – will this word choice support my story without confusing my reader?

Hey, I’m sorry, but no one ever said writing was going to be easy.  But oddly enough, it can sometimes be a whole lot of fun.

Points of Interest

The hero of your story has just arrived at a remote village.  The village serves some plot function – maybe it is a place for the hero to rest and recover, or learn something, or maybe it needs to be defended against hordes of killer penguins.

But aside from its plot function, it’s really just a village.

How to we make it something more?  The key here is providing points of interest to our audience.  Something to make the place real, to make the people of the village come alive.

First, there are the minor details that add up.  Does the village have interesting street names? Does it grow crops, raise horses, sell the best  household waste disposal robots in fifty parsecs?  Then there are the living details – maybe there’s a funeral going on when our hero arrives.  Or a romance going on between the farmer’s son and the blacksmith’s daughter.

What does any of this have to do with the advancement of the plot?  Absolutely nothing.  Which means there is a danger of spending too much time and attention on it.  But without something, the village is boring.

And authors never want to be boring.

Besides, some side detail may grow into something important.  These happy moments happen in writing.  It’s part of the creative process.  The blacksmith’s daughter may remind our hero of something important.  Or maybe the best household waste disposal robots in fifty parsecs are just what we need to deal with those pesky penguins.

At the Alpha and Omega

One of the things I’ve learned performing as a live storyteller is to always have strong first and last lines.  The first line says, hey there, pay attention, this is something worth listening to.  The last line gives a final impression and signals the close of the piece.

It’s true in writing, as well.  Of course, novelists can afford to think in terms of strong first paragraphs, but the principle is the same.  And frankly, a strong first sentence is still even better. Picture your reader in a bookstore, trying to decide if this is something worth reading.  The sooner the hook catches them, the better.

So what’s a good opening? There is no definitive answer. I would suggest that is should promise something more. Whether it introduces an interesting situation, a character, or even a tone of voice, it should suggest that things only get more interesting from here.

As an aside, the I think the most daring thing I ever sent to a publisher was the first line of my second novel: “Welcome to my great unpublished manuscript.” I mean, think of it from the point of view of the publisher.  Fortunately, it was not an unsolicited submission.

Endings are another kettle of fish. I like my ending to leave a lasting impression. Once again, it goes back to my live performance experience. People don’t remember all the words of the story, only the gist of it. But they are likely to remember the end, and the feelings it created. It would be interesting to study just the first and last lines of books – I suspect that not all authors share my approach.

To break in my new netbook, I wrote a short radio play for two voices entitled The Case of the Girl who Lost Everything. It, like this blog, was written entirely on the bus going to and from work.  The first line is, “They say there are a million stories in the naked city, so stop me if you’ve heard this one.”

And it ends, like this blog, with the line, “I stayed at the ruin that was her house, gazing longingly up at the stars.”

Details, details...

Today’s question: How soon do you reveal character details? When, in your novel or story, does your character get described?

To answer that question, I’d like to consider another. What does an undescribed character look like? Do we as readers just assume the character is some standard, generic person? Do we assume they are like us, our age, our skin color? Do we leave a blank space for them, holding off picturing them fully until we get the necessary data?

Certain traits should be revealed early, I think. It is significant, for example, if the character is a child. The world treats children differently and their capabilities are different. And, as a general rule, you don’t want to surprise the reader by revealing critical information about the character too late in the game.

Unless, of course, that is precisely what you intend to do. A particularly subversive example is Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. At home among his people, the title character Ged is just another person. It is only three chapters into the book, when he travels to the Isle of Roke, that the narrative happens to mention that Ged had the red-brown skin of “most folk of the Archipelago.”

You have to remember that the book was written in 1968. Starting off with the revelation that most of the characters had brown skin could well have, at that time, made it a book about brown-skinned characters. But it’s not. It’s a book about wizards. It wouldn’t really change anything if they were green.

Which brings up another point -- what is necessary data about a character and what is not? Skin color is very relevant if you are writing a story about the Watts Riots, but might not be important in a futuristic or fantasy setting. A character’s gender is usually revealed the first time a pronoun is used for them, but I’ve seen books where the author has cleverly avoided pronouns all together to conceal this information. The character’s age usually impacts their place in society, but which is important -- the societal status, or the age?

As usual, bringing the questions up for consideration is more interesting then finding any one perfect answer. After all, the answers change with the needs of the story.

Smoking Gun - or, More Details

The last post was about how the voice of the author gives details significance to the reader. (The post is still there if you don't believe me. Go ahead and look. I'll wait.) So this time I would like to add that the details of the world can, and often should, be significant to the characters. Consider the difference between being in a park and being in the park where the protagonist had her first kiss.

As people, we often respond to what others think and feel. If a detail in the environment makes the character think and feel, we are more likely to respond to the character.

This technique allows the author to imbue meaning into objects that will be used later in the story. Instead of just showing Chekov's gun on the mantelpiece, make it memorable. Daddy used to take me hunting with that gun. I've always hated having that thing in the house.

There is more power, more resonance if you will, to hitting someone over the head with a frying pan if the character being hit has been established as an obnoxious chef who cares more about his equipment than the people around him. Sure, you could hit the guy with a baseball bat, but it wouldn't be as good.

Nothing is Irrelevant

There is an axiom in theater, attributed to the Russian playwright Chekov, that goes something like this: If a gun is visible onstage in Act One, it should be fired by the end of the play. And if a gun is to be fired during the play, it should be visible onstage in Act One.

In theater, or really any kind of fiction, the day-to-day details of life are chosen for the audience. Strolling down the street, minding your own business, you may notice several irrelevant details: a tree, a drugstore, a small boy with an ice cream cone. In fiction, however, it's more like the author is walking beside you, pointing things out. "Look," the author says, "see that tree? And the drugstore? And over there, there's a boy with an ice cream cone."

This gives the details of the story a certain weight. They have been selected from all the possible details that could have been provided. If the details are not important, than the author becomes a bore and the reader stops listening.

This doesn't mean there can't be stage dressing -- details may exist only to set the time, place, or mood. Boy with ice cream is significantly different from boy huddled close under the shelter of his mother's umbrella.

But any detail that stands out, that appears odd or fraught with additional significance, must be resolved. A gun, for example, or perhaps a child eating ice cream on a cold rainy day --must have a pay off or the reader will wonder why they were there.