Two blockbuster classic SF films based on an essential child-fantasy (rescue me from this oppressive life; or "Get Me Out Of Here" -- or "Beam Me Up, Scotty!") are worth comparing because they are the obverse of each other.
When you add in Harry Potter, it's even more interesting.
Last week we discussed Finding the Opening of a story.
http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/finding-story-opening-part-1-action-vs.html
Avatar and The Day The Earth Stood Still have the same opening, while Harry Potter has a different opening.
The "opening" moment of a story is when SOMETHING CHANGES.
In film, you "lay pipe" as Blake Snyder puts it in his Save The Cat! Series -- you orient the viewer within the life that is about to change, within the framework of the Hero's situation, or the society or civilization's situation.
In a novel you CHANGE SOMETHING, then orient the reader.
Each venue borrows the other venue's technique, just to keep people off balance and interested, but those are general rules.
If you're teaching yourself to write, first do 5 or 10 stories with one of those techniques, then another 5 or 10 with the other technique, master doing them, then interchanging them. After you've fully internalized them and succeeded in placing stories using these techniques and analyzed your reader feedback, then venture into inventing variations.
But to start off, study why each of these works reliably with wide-wide-WIDE audiences.
In Avatar, we meet Our Hero at the moment when he WAKES UP -- generally in text narrative storytelling that "Hero Wakes Up In Strange Place" is a recipe for failure to engage the reader.
But in film you have the two channels of communication with the viewer that you don't have in text. In film you have VISUALS that contain information (we're on a space ship and the hero is waking from cryostorage is all conveyed by visuals in a space of time that narrative can't achieve), and you have SOUND that can carry information as well as mood and build suspense.
With just words in front of a reader, you are much more limited. In fact, in screenwriting you are limited to words and a lot of white-space on the page to engage a producer's imagination. So in essence, a writer has the same problem in both media.
The question is, "What will interest the reader in this story?"
You have two parameters to fit your imagination into so that what you're thinking will be couched in interesting terms for a readership/viewership:
a) Where is the origin of the conflict that will be resolved at the end of this story?
b) What is it about this story that this readership/viewership will find FASCINATING?
In other words, the opening of the story has to presage, (technical term is FORESHADOW) the PUNCH you are going to deliver, but not deliver that punch at the opening.
If you open on a PUNCH (i.e. an action scene, army combat, explosions, destruction) then you have to keep PUNCHING with each punch coming harder, bigger, longer, more spectacular and with higher and higher and HIGHER stakes.
In classic theater, there is the adage "less is more" -- and so the quiet, slow, creeping opening which is much LESS than what you will deliver, is actually MORE effective.
So look at the story of AVATAR.
The story actually has two beginnings that many writers might be tempted to write out in detail:
1) When the twin brother dies and how that grief hits Our Hero
2) When Our Hero becomes paralyzed, and all the usual angst/grief/remorse/shock/anger etc that goes with the story of such a physical loss for a physical person.
Note in AVATAR the combat-grunt-corporal loses use of his legs, but the intellectual-trained-knowledge-oriented twin loses his life, leaving the physically oriented twin a means of regaining the use of his legs.
What a potent story, what deep textured drama, what karmic questions and tormenting ethical decisions?
A novelist who "has the idea" for this story would be tempted to dive right into the tale where the two brothers have their conflicts over being physical or being intellectual, then race headlong into the major tragedies that spin off into the horrendous decisions regarding the extremely expensive Avatar body.
The film maker, however, STARTS way after the end of the novel and barely mentions in a couple of lines of dialogue the situations that "must have been" ever so dramatic. Our Physical Hero barely mentions his Twin Brother The Genius, and we have no idea if there was resentment or strife between them!
So AVATAR the film starts where Our Hero who will hurl himself into an artificial body for the rest of his life (which decision is never debated with all the angst it deserves) first wakes up at his new job -- driving an Avatar body on an alien planet where he can't breathe the atmosphere as a human.
Think about that. AVATAR starts not where the Hero DIVES INTO A NEW LIFE but where he actually hits the water. The story doesn't start where he decides to take the job, or where he sets foot on the ship -- no, the story starts where he wakes up.
Note after "pipe is laid" -- the first scene is Our Hero running free in his new Avatar body. Think of the symbolism of that, and how we discussed icons on this blog.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/turning-action-into-romance.html -- see the two iconic images, the poster of Face/Off and the cover of Gini Koch's novel TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/constructing-opening-of-action-romance.html
Avatar as a film takes off on the fantasy that sucks the young into videogames and creates the yearning to enter that alternate reality and stay there. The very title of the film suggests gaming because plays choose an "avatar" (just as we do when creating a social network profile.)
So look again at a) and b) requirements for an opening.
a) conflict that will be resolved in AVATAR is "to walk or not to walk again." It exists in this OPENING scene only as the inoperative legs of the Hero, which situation is not explained until we've already become fascinated.
That conflict is not defined until Quaritch offers Our Hero (Jake Sully of the jarhead clan) the side-job of spying on his employers, the biologists studying the planet. The "pay" for this side-job for the military against the scientists is to get his human body's legs fixed and walk again. His background is military (jarhead) so he seemingly has no conflict about taking this side-job. The resolution is that our Hero does walk again, but in his Avatar body which he now inhabits permanently.
b) the conflict about Our Hero's legs is NOT what's fascinating to the target audience. This film baits in the audience by a glimpse of the vast POWER of a huge corporate structure exploring space, gaining ownership of a whole PLANET and the "right" to mine that planet for "unobtainium" -- the most valuable substance known. The real villains of the piece (as in real life) never appear on screen. A "corporation" doesn't have a face. You can't argue with it, you can only defeat it. That vast power is glimpsed manipulating "the little people" who have their own life-agendas (pure science; getting legs back; proving military dominance). Space exploration per se is not what's fascinating here. POWER in the hands of the venal, short-sighted humans who would destroy life to strip-mine for wealth is fascinating.
So the STORY OPENING for Avatar is where CORPORATE POWER resurrects LITTLE HERO to a NEW LIFE. The ENDING is "little guy wins." It's David vs. Goliath or Gulliver's Travels. There's nothing original in this film except the special effects technologies (which were new then.) Check out the writer/producer/director's career on imdb.com You don't start a film career with a script like this, nor will it work well to start a novelist's career.
Now look at THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.
The HERO is the plain, ordinary human woman with family, ordinary professor, ordinary but somewhat flaky minded dreamers on Earth.
The Story Opening of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is where THE UNKNOWN comes into the ORDINARY LIVES (space ship lands on White House Lawn). The ending sees "ordinary life" changed forever, and as in Avatar "Love Conquers All."
Notice how the ending of DAY is the story before the beginning of AVATAR? In DAY our Hero hurls herself into The Unknown, into the spaceship. DAY ends with the decision to seize the unknown, get on the ship. AVATAR begins with what happens after seizing the unknown, getting off the ship.
Ends and Beginnings have something in common. Study that. Stories are circular, or at least sine waves.
Life is full of cycles and epicycles which is why the study of Astrology is useful to writers regardless of whether you "believe" any of it.
One common error beginning writers make is to confuse the ending and the beginning of the story they are trying to tell. The Opening and the Closing points are not necessarily the same as the beginning and the end. Very often drama is better served by "closing" before the "ending" and letting the reader imagine their own ending.
So compare DAY with AVATAR again. In DAY, THE UNKNOWN comes into THE ORDINARY. In AVATAR the Story Opening is where ORDINARY LIVES come into THE UNKNOWN.
It is the same opening in obverse.
And this is the mainstay of the "formula" for the opening of any story -- where two contrasting elements meet and conflict, changing both in the end.
A story does not necessary OPEN at the BEGINNING of the story, and it isn't always necessary to recount or dramatize the beginning if you have a good opening.
Now consider HARRY POTTER -- go back to the first novel.
Harry is ORDINARY BOY living in oppressive but ordinary circumstances it seems. What's extraordinary about his home life is revealed as his history is peeled back, and most of the extraordinary part is in his distant family or deceased family, not the adults who are raising him or his intolerable cousin-in-residence whom we meet in Chapter One.
But many kids feel oppressed and out of place at the threshold of adolescence. Part of the job of the YA category of fiction is to rationalize that formless fear/fascination of adulthood's confrontation with Identity.
This is a biological process common to all humanity. We all live with the conviction that who we really are is not who friends, family, employers etc think we are. Hence the gamer's Avatar, the avatar on your profile, and some people's cherishing the ability to post online anonymously -- or the utter fascination with Second Life as a game - can be seen as the adult extension of that state of mind.
So Harry Potter is growing up in a family that doesn't seem to him to "know" who he is, and he doesn't know who he is. Worse, he has no clue (he discovers) who his parents were.
Into his ordinary, dreary, intolerable life comes THE UNKNOWN -- the message carried by the Owl, sweeping him away to a boarding school where he can become a new person to himself.
But it's not THE UNKNOWN from outside that comes into his life -- as in DAY where a UFO lands, or in AVATAR where a human lands. With Harry the Unknown is inside him, unbeknownst to him. The Unknown doesn't come from outside, and he isn't lured, bribed or injected into the Unknown -- he discovers it inside himself, as we all do at adolescence. He doesn't get to leave his horrid life behind and emerge as a butterfly from a cocoon as in AVATAR. And he doesn't get rescued from mundanity by Love as in DAY. He meets himself in the legacy of his parents, a legacy in his genes but denied by those who raised him.
Compare all three openings, and notice the similarities among the obvious differences. When you've nailed that, you'll nail the opening of your own story, if not the beginning.
Think about how, with the years, Harry learns of all the baggage left him by his parents and matures into the young man who can handle it all.
But the STORY OPENING occurs long after the STORY BEGINNING (where his parents die).
Harry arrives at his new school and doesn't know he's starting a mad scramble to catch up with his life and learn the truth about what happened to his parents -- and prevent that from happening to him (and others).
Imagine what it would have been like for him to know what he was getting into before he first boarded the train (or spaceship, depending how you look at it) to his new school. He would have been tied in knots with dread and terror. He wouldn't have behaved as well, found his feet and begun to unfold into an adult able to handle Situations.
Imagine what AVATAR'S Hero would have done if he'd known he was going to end up stuck in an alien body when he first woke from cryosleep.
And what Earthwoman could really consider bonding to an Alien?
Uh, wait a minute.... isn't that what we imagine on this blog?
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Showing posts with label Save The Cat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Save The Cat. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Finding the Story Opening, Part 1, Action vs. Character
On Twitter I found a screenwriter to follow - new to twitter, veteran screenwriter:
This tweet was retweeted by @JustinWHedges
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@fieldink 12:35pm via Web
Action or Char to open ur scpt? No 1 answer. Depends on genre. Either character drives the action or action drives the character #writers
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Ooops! A long time ago someone asked me to do a blog entry on OPENINGS and I forgot until I saw that tweet.
Here's the twitter bio of @fieldink that made me follow him:
Screenwriter, Teacher, Lecturer, Author of Screenplay, The Screenwriter's Workbook, on faculty at USC's Prof Writing Program, Hall of Frame Inductee
He is on the sydfield.com website -- that's why he could explain "opening" in such a succinct way. You have to admire that, but I wonder how many of you understand what he's talking about well enough to go, "Aha!" and then just change the way you find how to open your stories?
I've written about crafting the opening of an Action Romance in this blog entry:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/constructing-opening-of-action-romance.html
But we need to examine this "find the opening scene" process more carefully because it is mostly done subconsciously. It's just that it usually takes years and lots of failures before the new writer trains the subconscious to formulate the opening correctly.
Take for example my novels MOLT BROTHER and its direct sequel CITY OF A MILLION LEGENDS. Here are the links to refresh memory:
https://www.amazon.com/Molt-Brother-Lifewave-Book-1-ebook/dp/B004AYCTBA/
https://www.amazon.com/City-Million-Legends-First-Lifewave-ebook/dp/B007KPLRUU/
Paper, ebook and audiobook versions of both books are available, but Amazon isn't linking them very well for City of a Million Legends.
The idea for those novels came to me (while waking up) as a SCENE, and at the time I thought it was the opening scene.
It's a powerful scene -- but what appeared in the final published book was very different.
What was the scene? The one where Arshel is in molt and Zref is standing outside the closed space ship cabin door where she is in anguished distress understanding what she's going through, what he should do, and what he should not do -- and then doing what he should not do because he must do it.
That's no opening scene, and it's not an ending scene either. To me there were layers of emotional and alien-emotional conflict criss-crossing the scene, and reams of esoteric karmic drama driving Zref's decision, but it was all there in one flash of a visual scene -- the door or air-lock portal, Zref's hand raised to the door, and a telepathic vibrancy shimmering in the air.
Notice the opening of MOLT BROTHER is a scene between Arshel and her parents -- and the parents never appear again.
Or do they?
Aren't her parents "there" inherently in every event that happens because of how the parents handle this scene where she declares herself bonded to a human -- and a male at that! The parents aren't entirely clear on which is worse, his gender or his species!
Scarred by that moment, trapped with no way to go home, no way out, no way back, Arshel plunges forward into life with Dennis Lakely and sticks it out longer than any of us would, until that moment when she's utterly bereft, trapped in that space ship cabin and all alone.
The second chapter opens on Zref and his bonded companion trying to lay plans for their future together, hustling tourists for cash to go to college together offworld.
Because of things that Dennis Lakely's parents do, Zref is left without that bond.
The reason he opens that door into Arshel's life is the same as the reason Arshel got trapped in that plight -- no way back, no way around, no way but forward.
The walls of the trap are largely emotional, but that emotion closes in from all sides because of (unrevealed until the second book) karmic connections, decisions and actions and results of long-ago lifetimes.
But when I "had the idea" all those emotions were tangled up and layered. Though the moment was vivid in my mind, and the drama apparent, it wasn't the story opening.
CITY OF A MILLION LEGENDS is the story I wanted to tell, and though it opens with a Kren baby hatching, it's real beginning is in that moment when Zref opens the door to Arshel's life and makes vows he isn't allowed to make.
If you've read the book, you understand how much "worldbuilding" went into creating that moment of choice for Zref.
How do you do that? How do you untangle a vivid, single-scene IDEA into a linear story-line that allows you to explain worldbuilding, whole cultures, interstellar civilization, interstellar archeology, without much exposition?
Many new writers would just start with Zref's hand on the door, then fill in 20 or more pages explaining (in exposition - years ago, this happened, then that tragedy, then he made this choice, and now he's committed to this course of action, but he wants to open this door because). It would be so boring! Yet it's high drama in the extreme.
That little tweet from an expert screenwriter tells you exactly how it's done.
If it's one genre - start with character. Romance, for example, is emotionally plotted but the emotion is driven by character.
If it's another genre - start with action. Science Fiction and most Fantasy is action driven plot, so you have to leap into the ACTION with an opening scene where people do things, and then later you find out who they are and why they did this crazy things.
But what genre is MOLT BROTHER?
On the back cover of the Berkeley mass market paperback of MOLT BROTHER there's a quote from C. J. Cherryh (whose Foreigner universe novels I rave about!)
"Jacqueline Lichtenberg has taken a new and interesting direction with this book, partly technological, partly alien cultures, in a very intriguing interrelation."
I had forgotten that quote was there.
It's quite clear -- this is one of the earliest Mixed Genre novels, more mixed than my later award winner, Dushau.
There's also a quote from Andre Norton on Molt Brother:
"Imaginative and outstanding. It captures the reader and won't let go."
THAT is what openings are supposed to do!
But how do you do that? What do you do with "an idea" that turns it into a "captures and won't let go" novel?
Ever seen a movie run backwards? Ever done a rewind on a recorder - harder to understand with a DVR that skips frames on backwards, but visualize it.
That's what you do.
You take your "idea" separate it into "layers" (his story; her story) and run it backwards in your head until you get to the "right" moment.
How do you identify or recognize the "right" moment that is a "beginning" moment?
Aha, that's easy and I've talked about it here before in posts on structure and theme.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/shifting-pov.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html
The general formula for beginning a story is to find the moment in time when the two elements, forces, or characters who will "conflict" to generate the plot first come together.
Last week we mentioned Marion Zimmer Bradely's novel CATCH TRAP -- which opens with the first memory of one of the main characters -- the circus tent being burned. But that's not happening in current time. Nevertheless it works, because the novel not only starts with an emotion-laden action denoting the setting (tent-circus), but one of the themes, (an industry changing as a result of the impact of technology - a science fiction theme guaranteed to captivate any SF reader).
That moment then unravels into the life story of the artistic vocation of this character as a circus performer.
Her first novel, SWORD OF ALDONES (later rewritten and retitled, but I love the first version best) starts with a thought, "We were outstripping the night." I think that's the best opening line of any novel I've ever read -- ever!!!
By comparing the opening line of each of Bradley's novels to the end-line, you can learn everything there is to know about structure.
Sometimes an idea comes to you from the ending, or any random place -- sometimes the idea appears as a scene which does not and can not belong in the novel at all!
Every character's life consists of a variety of intertwined conflicts that don't all run to resolution during their lifetime. Any set of characters probably deals with a set of conflicts that are maybe the factorial of the number of characters in the set -- multiply a lot to get the number.
As you know from my posts on Astrology just for writers, every life has cyclical affairs running like the planets -- a very complicated clock. Every character has a conflict denoted by such a planetary cycle.
The highest drama events are denoted by Pluto -- Sexuality rather than love, car wrecks, being wounded in war, a transition Event that establishes a New Normal.
Pluto, however, does not denote "sudden" events (that's Uranus). You can always see a Pluto event coming -- but you never (almost never-ever) do! You can see it in retrospect, but never in prospect.
An example would be drunk driving. Watching a character who chronically drives drunk, you can easily expect they will get into a wreck at some point. The character, though, even if they've wrecked a car or two, can never - ever - see that they are going to be an amputee or paralyzed or on trial for manslaughter and become a three-month wonder to the media.
Heart attacks are another kind of Pluto-event -- any onlooker can see this character's eating and exercising habits are leading to no good, but the character is shocked-surprised-offended by the event of a heart attack -- "Why me?"
So, if your story is about a person whose chronic habits are going to produce a dramatic, life-changing Event -- you have to decide if your story lies before or after the Event.
Is this a story about misbehavior (such as bullying?) that eventually produces a comeuppance (such as losing a job and ending up in jail framed for embezzlement?).
Is this story designed to deliver a whopping sense of justification to the reader?
Or is this a story about rehabilitation, having learned a hard lesson by the Event, now a life is being rebuilt, and maybe teaching others who are making that mistake to pull back from it? Such as a drug addict or alcoholic teaching 12-step?
Once you know what the story is about -- by analyzing what kind of pay-load the story delivers at "the end" (how you want the reader to feel about herself and the characters at the end) -- then you can "frame" the story by nailing the beginning.
Remember the structural beats of a novel -- usually 4-act rather than the powerful 3-act structure of a screenplay.
The usual length novel (75,000 to 100,000 words) is divided by climaxes into 4 parts or "acts."
A) Beginning
B) 1/4 point
C) Middle
D) 3/4 point
END and/or denoument.
The quarter-points have their own specific formulas. "Pacing" is just another term for putting the quarter point Events at the quarter-point page-number.
When checking a book for reviewability, (as an editor checks a manuscript for publishability) the first thing I look at is the Beginning, Middle, and End by page-count.
If the Events delineated at those points are connected in a developmental Arc that makes sense, I'll read the book. If not, not. If I get hooked on the Beginning and when I get to the middle, the Event on that page is not a "Middle" Event -- I might check the End event, page a little to find what goes in the Middle and if it's not anywhere near where it should be, I won't bother finishing.
Most writers think of that as a flaw. It isn't because a book that has its pacing "off" by too much will not deliver to the readers the emotional payload they paid good money for.
This is why finding the right beginning Event is so crucial. Once the Beginning is determined, the Middle and End are absolutely known. You can't fudge it. It is what it is. Readers who read a lot of books (the very people most likely to pay for your book) are used to finding what they pay for right where it should be.
You wouldn't sell them a dress with the seams only basted, would you?
So don't sell them a novel with the Events in the wrong places.
You avoid that by choosing the opening point.
But the thing is, when you start writing a story, you really don't actually know the ending! Or if you do, you probably don't know the Middle or Beginning precisely.
Just because the end-product has to be paced "just-so" does not mean the process of producing the first draft will be that clean or orderly.
Nevertheless, outlining --- writing down the beginning, quarter, middle, 3/4, end Events -- is necessary. You have to take a guess, and try for it.
Sometimes characters insist on finding their own karmic solutions - however temporary - and you just have to go along for the ride.
In that case, you change the outline to match and test it to make sure the Events conform to reader's expectations (with surprises, of course). If you don't keep that outline updated, you very likely will have to rewrite and you may need to junk everything you've written and start over.
To avoid putting more hours in than you can get money out, you keep the outline updated, and make sure the Events fall at the right story-points.
Events are on the plot line, emotional peaks and valleys delineate the story going on inside the character, the internal conflict.
You want to get the story and the plot to END in the same Event, as discussed last week.
Where the peaks and valleys occur (by page count) and where the plot Events happen (by page count) depends, as @fieldink said, depends on genre.
If you're heading for a happy ending (an up ending) then the Middle is a DISASTER (a valley, a Pluto-driven Event) such as a maiming car wreck, so the End becomes asking the physical therapist to marry and getting a yes.
That car-wreck scenario tells you that your opening scene is in a bar or at a party where the character who will wreck the car first gets hooked on booze or drugs or whatever behavior will impair judgement. Most likely the Opening would involve an association with an inappropriate character -- maybe someone who then gets killed doing whatever they introduced the main character to.
It doesn't have to be booze or drugs -- it might be the first encounter with car racing, and just plain enjoying speed and winning until the adrenalin of it becomes the drug.
If it's a Romance, of course you start with character, displaying in show-don't-tell the character trait that makes that character the perfect mate for the Physical Therapist who enters later.
Or your character might be headed for a car-wreck that ends him up in court where he meets the Lawyer (prosecutor?) he falls in love with -- and eventually proposes to.
You find the opening of your story by plucking apart the threads of the character's life until you can see one whole cycle of Ups and Downs leading to the ending that delivers the punch the genre readers are looking for.
In my case, it's always the Relationships (not always sexual!). I always look for a character whose life is malfunctioning in some regard (sometimes several regards). My personal life-philosophy shows me how the real world functions on Relationships, and how human psychological health (and thus sane life-choices) depends on functional Relationships.
My mission as a writer is to bring that character's life up to a functional level that feels, at least to the character, as Happy.
One very common mistake beginning writers make is to start their story too late -- when the character is already Happy, or when the character already knows that they are miserable.
The Happily Ever After ending works best when the story starts with the character unaware of the real problem deep inside. The story opens with the character making a decision and/or taking an action (accepting a date; accepting a particular college entry letter; quitting a job; getting fired and getting drunk over it), so that everything else that happens during the novel is a direct consequence of that opening action.
I call that plot technique "the because-line" -- because the main character did this, that happens, to which the main character responds by doing that, which causes this to happen, to which the main character responds etc, right to The End.
That's why, given impeccable story-logic, any beginning contains within it a very specific ending.
After you've chosen the beginning, you don't get to choose just any old ending that you think would be neat. The ending is determined by the beginning.
Or the beginning is determined by the ending you've chosen.
Beginning and Ending make the Middle obvious and irrevocable.
There are many genres, and all kinds of Literary forms that don't use this structure. If you don't like it, don't try to write it.
Here's what to do.
Take a pile of your 10 most beloved novels, the ones you've read so often you can chant the lines in the shower. Spread out ten sheets of paper, take a pen and at the top of each sheet write the TITLE and opening Event (in your own words; describe that Event that kicks off the story and plot).
Look at the page number of the end of the last chapter or epilog, divide by two, and look at that page plus or minus 5 pages, and write down one sentence describing what happens at that point in the novel.
Look at the end Event - not the epilog, but the climax Event, and write that down.
Study the set of sheets -- you may need to rephrase a few times to bring the elements buried in symbolism up to consciousness.
If you can see a consistent beginning/middle/end pattern, that's the sort of book you should set out to write because it's what you most love to read.
It could be that your favorite literature doesn't have this structure. Some very fine classics don't, but they are much harder to learn and to duplicate.
There is a type called "stream of consciousness" - and many new writers think that means they can just write down what they are thinking and it'll be a story. It doesn't work that way. There is a very real, very precise skeletal structure behind these apparently formless writings.
The more formless a piece seems to be, the more heavily it relies on that internal structure for its effectiveness -- like poetry! And its correspondingly hard to duplicate.
One way to learn "stream of consciousness" structure is to practice and internalize the Beginning/Middle/End structure.
The "formless" fictional genres are usually composed of several different structures intertwined, and the only way I know of to learn to do that is to master each of the structures separately -- learn to chew gum and walk by first walking, then chewing gum, then combining.
So again, you always find the Beginning by looking at the Ending -- and the Ending, as @fieldink said depends on the genre.
The best place to learn modern genre structure is in the screenwriting books by Blake Snyder, SAVE THE CAT! series. These are now out in e-book, too, which is handy.
Here is Blake Snyder's Amazon page with all the formats of all the books, including 2016 releases
https://www.amazon.com/Blake-Snyder/e/B00LWI2JXA/
Here's the Book Description from STRIKES BACK:
Blake Snyder, author of Save the Cat!® and Save the Cat!® Goes to the Movies, is back with the book countless readers and students have clamored for. Inspired by questions from his workshops, lectures, and emails, Blake listened and provides new tips, tactics, and techniques to solve your writing problems and create stories that resonate:
The 7 warning signs you might have a great idea or not
2 sure-fire templates for can t-miss loglines
The difference between structure and formula
The Transformation Machine that allows you to track your hero s growth step-by-step
The 5 questions to keep your story s spine straight
The 5-Point Finale to finish any story
The Save the Cat!® Greenlight Checklist that gets to the heart of every development issue
The right way to hear notes, deal with problematic producers, and dive into the rewrite with the right attitude
Why and when an agent will appear
How to discover the potential for greatness in any story
How to avoid panic, doubt, and self-recrimination... and what it takes to succeed and dare to achieve your dreams
Get ready to face trouble like a pro... and strike back!
All of this is just another way of explaining what everyone who is selling fiction knows. You just have to find the one explanation that hits you right.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
This tweet was retweeted by @JustinWHedges
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@fieldink 12:35pm via Web
Action or Char to open ur scpt? No 1 answer. Depends on genre. Either character drives the action or action drives the character #writers
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Ooops! A long time ago someone asked me to do a blog entry on OPENINGS and I forgot until I saw that tweet.
Here's the twitter bio of @fieldink that made me follow him:
Screenwriter, Teacher, Lecturer, Author of Screenplay, The Screenwriter's Workbook, on faculty at USC's Prof Writing Program, Hall of Frame Inductee
He is on the sydfield.com website -- that's why he could explain "opening" in such a succinct way. You have to admire that, but I wonder how many of you understand what he's talking about well enough to go, "Aha!" and then just change the way you find how to open your stories?
I've written about crafting the opening of an Action Romance in this blog entry:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/constructing-opening-of-action-romance.html
But we need to examine this "find the opening scene" process more carefully because it is mostly done subconsciously. It's just that it usually takes years and lots of failures before the new writer trains the subconscious to formulate the opening correctly.
Take for example my novels MOLT BROTHER and its direct sequel CITY OF A MILLION LEGENDS. Here are the links to refresh memory:
https://www.amazon.com/Molt-Brother-Lifewave-Book-1-ebook/dp/B004AYCTBA/
https://www.amazon.com/City-Million-Legends-First-Lifewave-ebook/dp/B007KPLRUU/
Paper, ebook and audiobook versions of both books are available, but Amazon isn't linking them very well for City of a Million Legends.
The idea for those novels came to me (while waking up) as a SCENE, and at the time I thought it was the opening scene.
It's a powerful scene -- but what appeared in the final published book was very different.
What was the scene? The one where Arshel is in molt and Zref is standing outside the closed space ship cabin door where she is in anguished distress understanding what she's going through, what he should do, and what he should not do -- and then doing what he should not do because he must do it.
That's no opening scene, and it's not an ending scene either. To me there were layers of emotional and alien-emotional conflict criss-crossing the scene, and reams of esoteric karmic drama driving Zref's decision, but it was all there in one flash of a visual scene -- the door or air-lock portal, Zref's hand raised to the door, and a telepathic vibrancy shimmering in the air.
Notice the opening of MOLT BROTHER is a scene between Arshel and her parents -- and the parents never appear again.
Or do they?
Aren't her parents "there" inherently in every event that happens because of how the parents handle this scene where she declares herself bonded to a human -- and a male at that! The parents aren't entirely clear on which is worse, his gender or his species!
Scarred by that moment, trapped with no way to go home, no way out, no way back, Arshel plunges forward into life with Dennis Lakely and sticks it out longer than any of us would, until that moment when she's utterly bereft, trapped in that space ship cabin and all alone.
The second chapter opens on Zref and his bonded companion trying to lay plans for their future together, hustling tourists for cash to go to college together offworld.
Because of things that Dennis Lakely's parents do, Zref is left without that bond.
The reason he opens that door into Arshel's life is the same as the reason Arshel got trapped in that plight -- no way back, no way around, no way but forward.
The walls of the trap are largely emotional, but that emotion closes in from all sides because of (unrevealed until the second book) karmic connections, decisions and actions and results of long-ago lifetimes.
But when I "had the idea" all those emotions were tangled up and layered. Though the moment was vivid in my mind, and the drama apparent, it wasn't the story opening.
CITY OF A MILLION LEGENDS is the story I wanted to tell, and though it opens with a Kren baby hatching, it's real beginning is in that moment when Zref opens the door to Arshel's life and makes vows he isn't allowed to make.
If you've read the book, you understand how much "worldbuilding" went into creating that moment of choice for Zref.
How do you do that? How do you untangle a vivid, single-scene IDEA into a linear story-line that allows you to explain worldbuilding, whole cultures, interstellar civilization, interstellar archeology, without much exposition?
Many new writers would just start with Zref's hand on the door, then fill in 20 or more pages explaining (in exposition - years ago, this happened, then that tragedy, then he made this choice, and now he's committed to this course of action, but he wants to open this door because). It would be so boring! Yet it's high drama in the extreme.
That little tweet from an expert screenwriter tells you exactly how it's done.
If it's one genre - start with character. Romance, for example, is emotionally plotted but the emotion is driven by character.
If it's another genre - start with action. Science Fiction and most Fantasy is action driven plot, so you have to leap into the ACTION with an opening scene where people do things, and then later you find out who they are and why they did this crazy things.
But what genre is MOLT BROTHER?
On the back cover of the Berkeley mass market paperback of MOLT BROTHER there's a quote from C. J. Cherryh (whose Foreigner universe novels I rave about!)
"Jacqueline Lichtenberg has taken a new and interesting direction with this book, partly technological, partly alien cultures, in a very intriguing interrelation."
I had forgotten that quote was there.
It's quite clear -- this is one of the earliest Mixed Genre novels, more mixed than my later award winner, Dushau.
There's also a quote from Andre Norton on Molt Brother:
"Imaginative and outstanding. It captures the reader and won't let go."
THAT is what openings are supposed to do!
But how do you do that? What do you do with "an idea" that turns it into a "captures and won't let go" novel?
Ever seen a movie run backwards? Ever done a rewind on a recorder - harder to understand with a DVR that skips frames on backwards, but visualize it.
That's what you do.
You take your "idea" separate it into "layers" (his story; her story) and run it backwards in your head until you get to the "right" moment.
How do you identify or recognize the "right" moment that is a "beginning" moment?
Aha, that's easy and I've talked about it here before in posts on structure and theme.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/shifting-pov.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html
The general formula for beginning a story is to find the moment in time when the two elements, forces, or characters who will "conflict" to generate the plot first come together.
Last week we mentioned Marion Zimmer Bradely's novel CATCH TRAP -- which opens with the first memory of one of the main characters -- the circus tent being burned. But that's not happening in current time. Nevertheless it works, because the novel not only starts with an emotion-laden action denoting the setting (tent-circus), but one of the themes, (an industry changing as a result of the impact of technology - a science fiction theme guaranteed to captivate any SF reader).
That moment then unravels into the life story of the artistic vocation of this character as a circus performer.
Her first novel, SWORD OF ALDONES (later rewritten and retitled, but I love the first version best) starts with a thought, "We were outstripping the night." I think that's the best opening line of any novel I've ever read -- ever!!!
By comparing the opening line of each of Bradley's novels to the end-line, you can learn everything there is to know about structure.
Sometimes an idea comes to you from the ending, or any random place -- sometimes the idea appears as a scene which does not and can not belong in the novel at all!
Every character's life consists of a variety of intertwined conflicts that don't all run to resolution during their lifetime. Any set of characters probably deals with a set of conflicts that are maybe the factorial of the number of characters in the set -- multiply a lot to get the number.
As you know from my posts on Astrology just for writers, every life has cyclical affairs running like the planets -- a very complicated clock. Every character has a conflict denoted by such a planetary cycle.
The highest drama events are denoted by Pluto -- Sexuality rather than love, car wrecks, being wounded in war, a transition Event that establishes a New Normal.
Pluto, however, does not denote "sudden" events (that's Uranus). You can always see a Pluto event coming -- but you never (almost never-ever) do! You can see it in retrospect, but never in prospect.
An example would be drunk driving. Watching a character who chronically drives drunk, you can easily expect they will get into a wreck at some point. The character, though, even if they've wrecked a car or two, can never - ever - see that they are going to be an amputee or paralyzed or on trial for manslaughter and become a three-month wonder to the media.
Heart attacks are another kind of Pluto-event -- any onlooker can see this character's eating and exercising habits are leading to no good, but the character is shocked-surprised-offended by the event of a heart attack -- "Why me?"
So, if your story is about a person whose chronic habits are going to produce a dramatic, life-changing Event -- you have to decide if your story lies before or after the Event.
Is this a story about misbehavior (such as bullying?) that eventually produces a comeuppance (such as losing a job and ending up in jail framed for embezzlement?).
Is this story designed to deliver a whopping sense of justification to the reader?
Or is this a story about rehabilitation, having learned a hard lesson by the Event, now a life is being rebuilt, and maybe teaching others who are making that mistake to pull back from it? Such as a drug addict or alcoholic teaching 12-step?
Once you know what the story is about -- by analyzing what kind of pay-load the story delivers at "the end" (how you want the reader to feel about herself and the characters at the end) -- then you can "frame" the story by nailing the beginning.
Remember the structural beats of a novel -- usually 4-act rather than the powerful 3-act structure of a screenplay.
The usual length novel (75,000 to 100,000 words) is divided by climaxes into 4 parts or "acts."
A) Beginning
B) 1/4 point
C) Middle
D) 3/4 point
END and/or denoument.
The quarter-points have their own specific formulas. "Pacing" is just another term for putting the quarter point Events at the quarter-point page-number.
When checking a book for reviewability, (as an editor checks a manuscript for publishability) the first thing I look at is the Beginning, Middle, and End by page-count.
If the Events delineated at those points are connected in a developmental Arc that makes sense, I'll read the book. If not, not. If I get hooked on the Beginning and when I get to the middle, the Event on that page is not a "Middle" Event -- I might check the End event, page a little to find what goes in the Middle and if it's not anywhere near where it should be, I won't bother finishing.
Most writers think of that as a flaw. It isn't because a book that has its pacing "off" by too much will not deliver to the readers the emotional payload they paid good money for.
This is why finding the right beginning Event is so crucial. Once the Beginning is determined, the Middle and End are absolutely known. You can't fudge it. It is what it is. Readers who read a lot of books (the very people most likely to pay for your book) are used to finding what they pay for right where it should be.
You wouldn't sell them a dress with the seams only basted, would you?
So don't sell them a novel with the Events in the wrong places.
You avoid that by choosing the opening point.
But the thing is, when you start writing a story, you really don't actually know the ending! Or if you do, you probably don't know the Middle or Beginning precisely.
Just because the end-product has to be paced "just-so" does not mean the process of producing the first draft will be that clean or orderly.
Nevertheless, outlining --- writing down the beginning, quarter, middle, 3/4, end Events -- is necessary. You have to take a guess, and try for it.
Sometimes characters insist on finding their own karmic solutions - however temporary - and you just have to go along for the ride.
In that case, you change the outline to match and test it to make sure the Events conform to reader's expectations (with surprises, of course). If you don't keep that outline updated, you very likely will have to rewrite and you may need to junk everything you've written and start over.
To avoid putting more hours in than you can get money out, you keep the outline updated, and make sure the Events fall at the right story-points.
Events are on the plot line, emotional peaks and valleys delineate the story going on inside the character, the internal conflict.
You want to get the story and the plot to END in the same Event, as discussed last week.
Where the peaks and valleys occur (by page count) and where the plot Events happen (by page count) depends, as @fieldink said, depends on genre.
If you're heading for a happy ending (an up ending) then the Middle is a DISASTER (a valley, a Pluto-driven Event) such as a maiming car wreck, so the End becomes asking the physical therapist to marry and getting a yes.
That car-wreck scenario tells you that your opening scene is in a bar or at a party where the character who will wreck the car first gets hooked on booze or drugs or whatever behavior will impair judgement. Most likely the Opening would involve an association with an inappropriate character -- maybe someone who then gets killed doing whatever they introduced the main character to.
It doesn't have to be booze or drugs -- it might be the first encounter with car racing, and just plain enjoying speed and winning until the adrenalin of it becomes the drug.
If it's a Romance, of course you start with character, displaying in show-don't-tell the character trait that makes that character the perfect mate for the Physical Therapist who enters later.
Or your character might be headed for a car-wreck that ends him up in court where he meets the Lawyer (prosecutor?) he falls in love with -- and eventually proposes to.
You find the opening of your story by plucking apart the threads of the character's life until you can see one whole cycle of Ups and Downs leading to the ending that delivers the punch the genre readers are looking for.
In my case, it's always the Relationships (not always sexual!). I always look for a character whose life is malfunctioning in some regard (sometimes several regards). My personal life-philosophy shows me how the real world functions on Relationships, and how human psychological health (and thus sane life-choices) depends on functional Relationships.
My mission as a writer is to bring that character's life up to a functional level that feels, at least to the character, as Happy.
One very common mistake beginning writers make is to start their story too late -- when the character is already Happy, or when the character already knows that they are miserable.
The Happily Ever After ending works best when the story starts with the character unaware of the real problem deep inside. The story opens with the character making a decision and/or taking an action (accepting a date; accepting a particular college entry letter; quitting a job; getting fired and getting drunk over it), so that everything else that happens during the novel is a direct consequence of that opening action.
I call that plot technique "the because-line" -- because the main character did this, that happens, to which the main character responds by doing that, which causes this to happen, to which the main character responds etc, right to The End.
That's why, given impeccable story-logic, any beginning contains within it a very specific ending.
After you've chosen the beginning, you don't get to choose just any old ending that you think would be neat. The ending is determined by the beginning.
Or the beginning is determined by the ending you've chosen.
Beginning and Ending make the Middle obvious and irrevocable.
There are many genres, and all kinds of Literary forms that don't use this structure. If you don't like it, don't try to write it.
Here's what to do.
Take a pile of your 10 most beloved novels, the ones you've read so often you can chant the lines in the shower. Spread out ten sheets of paper, take a pen and at the top of each sheet write the TITLE and opening Event (in your own words; describe that Event that kicks off the story and plot).
Look at the page number of the end of the last chapter or epilog, divide by two, and look at that page plus or minus 5 pages, and write down one sentence describing what happens at that point in the novel.
Look at the end Event - not the epilog, but the climax Event, and write that down.
Study the set of sheets -- you may need to rephrase a few times to bring the elements buried in symbolism up to consciousness.
If you can see a consistent beginning/middle/end pattern, that's the sort of book you should set out to write because it's what you most love to read.
It could be that your favorite literature doesn't have this structure. Some very fine classics don't, but they are much harder to learn and to duplicate.
There is a type called "stream of consciousness" - and many new writers think that means they can just write down what they are thinking and it'll be a story. It doesn't work that way. There is a very real, very precise skeletal structure behind these apparently formless writings.
The more formless a piece seems to be, the more heavily it relies on that internal structure for its effectiveness -- like poetry! And its correspondingly hard to duplicate.
One way to learn "stream of consciousness" structure is to practice and internalize the Beginning/Middle/End structure.
The "formless" fictional genres are usually composed of several different structures intertwined, and the only way I know of to learn to do that is to master each of the structures separately -- learn to chew gum and walk by first walking, then chewing gum, then combining.
So again, you always find the Beginning by looking at the Ending -- and the Ending, as @fieldink said depends on the genre.
The best place to learn modern genre structure is in the screenwriting books by Blake Snyder, SAVE THE CAT! series. These are now out in e-book, too, which is handy.
Here is Blake Snyder's Amazon page with all the formats of all the books, including 2016 releases
https://www.amazon.com/Blake-Snyder/e/B00LWI2JXA/
Here's the Book Description from STRIKES BACK:
Blake Snyder, author of Save the Cat!® and Save the Cat!® Goes to the Movies, is back with the book countless readers and students have clamored for. Inspired by questions from his workshops, lectures, and emails, Blake listened and provides new tips, tactics, and techniques to solve your writing problems and create stories that resonate:
The 7 warning signs you might have a great idea or not
2 sure-fire templates for can t-miss loglines
The difference between structure and formula
The Transformation Machine that allows you to track your hero s growth step-by-step
The 5 questions to keep your story s spine straight
The 5-Point Finale to finish any story
The Save the Cat!® Greenlight Checklist that gets to the heart of every development issue
The right way to hear notes, deal with problematic producers, and dive into the rewrite with the right attitude
Why and when an agent will appear
How to discover the potential for greatness in any story
How to avoid panic, doubt, and self-recrimination... and what it takes to succeed and dare to achieve your dreams
Get ready to face trouble like a pro... and strike back!
All of this is just another way of explaining what everyone who is selling fiction knows. You just have to find the one explanation that hits you right.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Pausing For You To Catch Up With Me Part IV
The last 3 Tuesdays, I've left you lists of 9 or 10 posts to read during the week. The first two lists were on Tarot, the Suits of Swords and Pentacles. Last week the list included 9 posts on how writers can use Astrology (without overtly mentioning it!).
All of these lists are about posts that open the topic of how to craft a Magic Realism genre story and make it realistic without the cliche ridden tools of modern Fantasy's version of "magic." PNR writers really need to absorb the import of these posts.
This week you can relax. There's only 6 to this series.
And these 6 posts grow out of two works on the craft of screenwriting by Blake Snyder (May He Rest In Peace). See blakesnyder.com for more on him and by him.
His first two books are titled SAVE THE CAT! and SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES and they took Hollywood by storm.
These two interwoven works show you what a Beat Sheet is, and how to use it to craft a story whether it's a screenplay or a novel. They touch on why you should use a beat sheet, and give you the particular beat sheet Blake discovered by reverse engineering the biggest box-office hits.
When I read his books, I had recently taken a course in Kaballah (one of my all-time favorite topics!) and when I told Blake about the connection I saw, he was enthusiastically accepting of my view.
His discovery of this underlying skeleton behind the biggest hit movies is actually the real secret behind the best selling novels of our genre.
The reason his Beat Sheet works for film, TV, and novels indicates the reason these formats are on a converging path. And that same reason defines "Magic Realism" and why it works as a story genre.
You'd think, considering all my posts on this blog on Web 2.0 and Social networking, I'd say it was technology forcing the media of the fiction delivery system to converge.
But if you've read the posts in my Lists of Posts, you can see how it might be interpreted differently.
It is entirely possible, from the magical view of the universe, that technology exists to facilitate the convergence of these storytelling formats. Film, TV, Webisodes, books, e-books, animated, illustrated. To us readers, it is the story that's important, and the medium is just the vehicle to convey the story to us. We create vehicles suited to conveying the story we want. Do you think?
My 6 part discussion of Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet is posted as part of my professional Review column, ReReadable Books. Each part recommends several novels that illustrate the points made.
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2007/
Compare the dates to the dates on the posts in the Lists of posts from Tuesdays March 16, 23, and 30th on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com
On the left side of the page you can find a link to a list of all my columns archived on simegen.com since 1993.
Most of the later Review column entries are much shorter than my usual entries on this blog. So these 6 review columns taken together are probably no more than 2 blog entries worth of discussion. There's a good chance you've already read most of the books discussed, so you should have no trouble following the points I make.
If not, have fun finding interesting books to read!
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com (current titles)
http://www.simegen.com/jl/ (full index)
All of these lists are about posts that open the topic of how to craft a Magic Realism genre story and make it realistic without the cliche ridden tools of modern Fantasy's version of "magic." PNR writers really need to absorb the import of these posts.
This week you can relax. There's only 6 to this series.
And these 6 posts grow out of two works on the craft of screenwriting by Blake Snyder (May He Rest In Peace). See blakesnyder.com for more on him and by him.
His first two books are titled SAVE THE CAT! and SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES and they took Hollywood by storm.
These two interwoven works show you what a Beat Sheet is, and how to use it to craft a story whether it's a screenplay or a novel. They touch on why you should use a beat sheet, and give you the particular beat sheet Blake discovered by reverse engineering the biggest box-office hits.
When I read his books, I had recently taken a course in Kaballah (one of my all-time favorite topics!) and when I told Blake about the connection I saw, he was enthusiastically accepting of my view.
His discovery of this underlying skeleton behind the biggest hit movies is actually the real secret behind the best selling novels of our genre.
The reason his Beat Sheet works for film, TV, and novels indicates the reason these formats are on a converging path. And that same reason defines "Magic Realism" and why it works as a story genre.
You'd think, considering all my posts on this blog on Web 2.0 and Social networking, I'd say it was technology forcing the media of the fiction delivery system to converge.
But if you've read the posts in my Lists of Posts, you can see how it might be interpreted differently.
It is entirely possible, from the magical view of the universe, that technology exists to facilitate the convergence of these storytelling formats. Film, TV, Webisodes, books, e-books, animated, illustrated. To us readers, it is the story that's important, and the medium is just the vehicle to convey the story to us. We create vehicles suited to conveying the story we want. Do you think?
My 6 part discussion of Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet is posted as part of my professional Review column, ReReadable Books. Each part recommends several novels that illustrate the points made.
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2007/
Compare the dates to the dates on the posts in the Lists of posts from Tuesdays March 16, 23, and 30th on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com
On the left side of the page you can find a link to a list of all my columns archived on simegen.com since 1993.
Most of the later Review column entries are much shorter than my usual entries on this blog. So these 6 review columns taken together are probably no more than 2 blog entries worth of discussion. There's a good chance you've already read most of the books discussed, so you should have no trouble following the points I make.
If not, have fun finding interesting books to read!
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com (current titles)
http://www.simegen.com/jl/ (full index)
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Collateral Repairs
You've heard of collateral damage. Now let's consider collateral repairs.
The phrase "collateral repair" has been used in other ways, but I want to propose a writer's jargon application of the term which dovetails with Blake Snyder's explanation of screenplay structure.
Collateral repairing would be some sort of healing, fixing, anti-damage side-effect that an action might have as an unexpected consequence or side-effect, not the goal of the action.
When you are focused on goal-directed behavior (like a hero in a story solving a problem), you move through the world on automatic pilot, doing everything else without thinking, by habit, by knee-jerk reflex.
That means that most of what you do when acting in a goal directed fashion reveals your essential character, who you really are rather than who you want the world to think you are.
Your actions reveal who you actually are because they aren't deliberate, well thought out, not intended to have specific long term consequences in your life or any one's.
Your actions in pursuit of a goal with long term consequences may head you into trouble, into a learning and growing experience, a "story." But your negligent, habitual actions show (without telling) what lessons of life you think you've already mastered.
Writers can use this widespread human trait in sketching a character in conjunction with the Window Character Linnea Sinclair told us about in her post at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/windows-to-soul.html
where she reported on Writer's Boot Camp with Todd Stone.
The cleanest example of Collateral Repairs that I can think of is a scene in a Superman movie where Clark Kent is going to work at the Daily Planet, walks down the street amid a series of slapstick comedy mishaps and deals with them using his powers subtly while pretending to be the clueless clutzy reporter.
Now, true, in that scene, Clark knows he's helping people, and deliberately hiding his powers. He knows he's on Earth to help people. But his "goal" is to get to work, to remain in character as Clark. All his actions as he walks down the street are just aside from his progress toward his goal, and in some cases endanger achieving that goal. The people he helps are not part of the main plot.
So we see the Hero beneath the outward seeming. Clark Kent can't just waltz by humans, ignoring what's happening to them, and he can't just ignore the results of his own casual actions. My point is that Clark sees a problem that isn't his own and that isn't on his agenda today, and he reaches out to help. He doesn't ponder, deliberate, calculate, or negotiate a reward - he just DOES what comes naturally to him. And thus we get to know the real Clark Kent, maybe better than he knows himself.
Blake Snyder (http://www.blakesnyder.com ) calls the technique of characterizing by collateral repairs SAVE THE CAT! You can find links and explanations on Snyder's website.
The opening pages of a script set up the characters and the problem, the overall situation. Snyder calls that "laying pipe" -- laying the channel through which the reader will be drawn into the story.
The most essential element in sucking a reader into a story is the characters.
So Blake says the character you want sympathy for has to "save the cat" -- do an act which may be irrelevant (or even counter-productive) to the plot, but that displays the inner nature of the character. The particular trait displayed has to be relevant to the climax of the story and has some thematic link to the B story.
Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden character is a solid case in point.
I was sent a review copy of a RoC trade paperback which Amazon is promoting titled MEAN STREETS. It's an anthology of 4 novellas about currently famous action characters.
The lead story, "The Warrior" is by one of my favorite authors, Jim Butcher, and extends the story of his TV Series/ Novel private eye character Harry Dresden, Wizard.
In 2007, I reviewed Butcher's Dresden novels in my book review column, and did one column where I interviewed Butcher in person.
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2007/rrbooks2007info.html
Butcher's Harry Dresden novels are long, complex, multi-threaded plots where Harry Dresden has three or more life-threatening cases or affairs in progress at once, and usually emerges beaten, bedraggled, bloody and alive. Harry doesn't exult over his vanquished enemies.
So it must have been a real writing challenge for Butcher to produce a novella sized Dresden story with one plot thread and one single point to make. After the discipline of working with the Harry Dresden TV series (on Sci Fi channel but now on DVD (I have the DVDs and have really enjoyed them)
Butcher probably had a better idea of how to write a complete Dresden story at novella length. "The Warrior" succeeds marvelously at this length and is very like a TV episode. I recommend you read that novella before reading my analysis. There are some spoilers in this discussion because the COLLATERAL REPAIRS part comes at the end of this Dresden story.
See my blog post on spoilers -- it is my stance that no really good story can be spoiled by knowing in advance what happens or what some other reader thought happened.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/03/prologues-and-spoilers.html
"The Warrior" is almost entirely and purely a characterization exercise. It's all about Dresden's sense of proportion and his personal values. No two readers will interpret it alike. And it's an instant classic that can't be spoiled. But if you like, page down to END SPOILER and continue reading.
----------BEGIN SPOILER-----------------
The story opens as Dresden makes a mistake. He's been sent photos that seem to be a threat against Michael, the retired wielder of a Holy Sword. Currently, Dresden has custody of two of these Holy Swords, but not the authority to wield them. Dresden wants to protect his unarmed friend, Michael, and takes Michael's old sword to him, showing him the pictures someone sent him. A stalker is after Michael's family and friends.
Michael refuses the Sword.
Dresden moves through the city investigating who the stalker might be, trying to Private Eye the problem away, and as he does so, he does a few little things he barely notices doing -- he's just moving through the city concentrating on the real threat, the stalker.
Michael's daughter is kidnapped by the stalker and the ransom is both Swords.
Now these Swords are an Honor, a Holy Calling, each belonging to an Archangel (the real kind) and a fabulous amount of magical power is inside each Sword. They are unique. They are special. And they have the power to protect the innocent, maybe save the world. They must not fall into the "wrong" hands. Dresden is their guardian. He takes that seriously.
Dresden doesn't even think about it for two seconds. He'll give the kidnapper the swords to get the girl back. He has no ego-investment in being in possession of both of these Swords, but he respects and believes in their power.
At the exchange, a fight breaks out. Dresden and Michael win, but Dresden has to remind Michael not to hit the kidnapper too hard.
The last scene is where the meaning of this story, and its commentary on Dresden's character, come clear. Dresden has once again conquered a serious enemy tackling the enemy head-on, though this time a mere mortal human being who isn't even a Wizard. He's sitting in the balcony of a cathedral waiting for Michael and others to finish patching up the kidnapper when the Archangel Gabriel appears sitting next to him.
Dresden barely blinks at that. He lives in a world where such beings are natural. The Archangel Gabriel talks idiomatic English and points out to Dresden that even though he does not wield one of the Swords, he is nevertheless a Warrior fighting successfully for the Light. Then Gabriel enumerates the results of Dresden's easy, unthinking peripheral actions along the way through the story.
What Dresden thought he was doing, what he thought the problem was (stalker; kidnapper after the Swords) was not the most important thing Dresden did that day. The side-effects, the collateral repairs in the world that Dresden made by his apparently trivial knee-jerk responses to situations actually did far more to bring goodness into the world than his titanic conflicts with the magical Forces of Evil.
-------------END SPOILER---------------
Dresden, no matter how he thinks of himself, is The Warrior.
And you and I learn a lesson from Dresden. Everything we do, but most especially the things we do without thinking about them, -- the negligent, the peripheral, the habitual, -- all those little deeds are the ones that count in Collateral Repair of the world.
I read "The Warrior" after I found a message on the EPIC List from Morgan Mandel who had posted a blog about 8 reasons to comment on blogs. And in Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! and Harry Dresden's Sword problem, I found a reason Morgan doesn't have on her list (though her list seems to be growing).
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com/2009/01/seven-reasons-to-comment-on-blog.html
Her reasons to post comments on blogs pivot around the benefits that might accrue to the commenter.
Commenting on blogs for such reasons as she mentions would be the kind of "Goal Directed Behavior" you'd find in a Hero undergoing a story where he/she was about to learn something the hard way.
But commenting on blogs is usually (at least for me) a peripheral activity, a by-the-way done as a reflexive response on a subject I know something about -- sort of like Clark Kent blundering down the street or Harry Dresden acting from his heart, just because he can. And I think it's that way for a lot of people (political diatribes excepted).
Blogs are not central to most people's life goals, yet we who read blogs get something out of it, something intangible but worth the time. When a certain sort of person reads a blog entry and gets something out of it that's worth the reading time, he/she will drop a comment on that blog just to thank the blogger. Or a comment on a comment.
After reading Angel Gabriel's explanation to Dresden, I suspect that commenting on a blog comes into the category of being The Warrior.
Maybe only one person other than the blogger will read the comment, but the effect that comment might have on that one person could be enormously out of proportion to the effort it takes to write the comment. Your comment might save or redirect a life.
Often the comment becomes longer because in thinking how to say thank you, the commenter will put some effort into verbalizing a response that shows they read the blog entry and understood it. As a result, the commenter also gains a deeper understanding of himself and the issue -- as well as providing a "Scotty, you earned your pay for the month!" to the blogger.
I do think the main reason to comment on blogs (or to blog) is that somebody you've never met might read your comment, benefit from it without even knowing who you are. Thus you have a chance to repair the world in the most powerful way.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com
The phrase "collateral repair" has been used in other ways, but I want to propose a writer's jargon application of the term which dovetails with Blake Snyder's explanation of screenplay structure.
Collateral repairing would be some sort of healing, fixing, anti-damage side-effect that an action might have as an unexpected consequence or side-effect, not the goal of the action.
When you are focused on goal-directed behavior (like a hero in a story solving a problem), you move through the world on automatic pilot, doing everything else without thinking, by habit, by knee-jerk reflex.
That means that most of what you do when acting in a goal directed fashion reveals your essential character, who you really are rather than who you want the world to think you are.
Your actions reveal who you actually are because they aren't deliberate, well thought out, not intended to have specific long term consequences in your life or any one's.
Your actions in pursuit of a goal with long term consequences may head you into trouble, into a learning and growing experience, a "story." But your negligent, habitual actions show (without telling) what lessons of life you think you've already mastered.
Writers can use this widespread human trait in sketching a character in conjunction with the Window Character Linnea Sinclair told us about in her post at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/windows-to-soul.html
where she reported on Writer's Boot Camp with Todd Stone.
The cleanest example of Collateral Repairs that I can think of is a scene in a Superman movie where Clark Kent is going to work at the Daily Planet, walks down the street amid a series of slapstick comedy mishaps and deals with them using his powers subtly while pretending to be the clueless clutzy reporter.
Now, true, in that scene, Clark knows he's helping people, and deliberately hiding his powers. He knows he's on Earth to help people. But his "goal" is to get to work, to remain in character as Clark. All his actions as he walks down the street are just aside from his progress toward his goal, and in some cases endanger achieving that goal. The people he helps are not part of the main plot.
So we see the Hero beneath the outward seeming. Clark Kent can't just waltz by humans, ignoring what's happening to them, and he can't just ignore the results of his own casual actions. My point is that Clark sees a problem that isn't his own and that isn't on his agenda today, and he reaches out to help. He doesn't ponder, deliberate, calculate, or negotiate a reward - he just DOES what comes naturally to him. And thus we get to know the real Clark Kent, maybe better than he knows himself.
Blake Snyder (http://www.blakesnyder.com ) calls the technique of characterizing by collateral repairs SAVE THE CAT! You can find links and explanations on Snyder's website.
The opening pages of a script set up the characters and the problem, the overall situation. Snyder calls that "laying pipe" -- laying the channel through which the reader will be drawn into the story.
The most essential element in sucking a reader into a story is the characters.
So Blake says the character you want sympathy for has to "save the cat" -- do an act which may be irrelevant (or even counter-productive) to the plot, but that displays the inner nature of the character. The particular trait displayed has to be relevant to the climax of the story and has some thematic link to the B story.
Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden character is a solid case in point.
I was sent a review copy of a RoC trade paperback which Amazon is promoting titled MEAN STREETS. It's an anthology of 4 novellas about currently famous action characters.
The lead story, "The Warrior" is by one of my favorite authors, Jim Butcher, and extends the story of his TV Series/ Novel private eye character Harry Dresden, Wizard.
In 2007, I reviewed Butcher's Dresden novels in my book review column, and did one column where I interviewed Butcher in person.
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2007/rrbooks2007info.html
Butcher's Harry Dresden novels are long, complex, multi-threaded plots where Harry Dresden has three or more life-threatening cases or affairs in progress at once, and usually emerges beaten, bedraggled, bloody and alive. Harry doesn't exult over his vanquished enemies.
So it must have been a real writing challenge for Butcher to produce a novella sized Dresden story with one plot thread and one single point to make. After the discipline of working with the Harry Dresden TV series (on Sci Fi channel but now on DVD (I have the DVDs and have really enjoyed them)
Butcher probably had a better idea of how to write a complete Dresden story at novella length. "The Warrior" succeeds marvelously at this length and is very like a TV episode. I recommend you read that novella before reading my analysis. There are some spoilers in this discussion because the COLLATERAL REPAIRS part comes at the end of this Dresden story.
See my blog post on spoilers -- it is my stance that no really good story can be spoiled by knowing in advance what happens or what some other reader thought happened.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/03/prologues-and-spoilers.html
"The Warrior" is almost entirely and purely a characterization exercise. It's all about Dresden's sense of proportion and his personal values. No two readers will interpret it alike. And it's an instant classic that can't be spoiled. But if you like, page down to END SPOILER and continue reading.
----------BEGIN SPOILER-----------------
The story opens as Dresden makes a mistake. He's been sent photos that seem to be a threat against Michael, the retired wielder of a Holy Sword. Currently, Dresden has custody of two of these Holy Swords, but not the authority to wield them. Dresden wants to protect his unarmed friend, Michael, and takes Michael's old sword to him, showing him the pictures someone sent him. A stalker is after Michael's family and friends.
Michael refuses the Sword.
Dresden moves through the city investigating who the stalker might be, trying to Private Eye the problem away, and as he does so, he does a few little things he barely notices doing -- he's just moving through the city concentrating on the real threat, the stalker.
Michael's daughter is kidnapped by the stalker and the ransom is both Swords.
Now these Swords are an Honor, a Holy Calling, each belonging to an Archangel (the real kind) and a fabulous amount of magical power is inside each Sword. They are unique. They are special. And they have the power to protect the innocent, maybe save the world. They must not fall into the "wrong" hands. Dresden is their guardian. He takes that seriously.
Dresden doesn't even think about it for two seconds. He'll give the kidnapper the swords to get the girl back. He has no ego-investment in being in possession of both of these Swords, but he respects and believes in their power.
At the exchange, a fight breaks out. Dresden and Michael win, but Dresden has to remind Michael not to hit the kidnapper too hard.
The last scene is where the meaning of this story, and its commentary on Dresden's character, come clear. Dresden has once again conquered a serious enemy tackling the enemy head-on, though this time a mere mortal human being who isn't even a Wizard. He's sitting in the balcony of a cathedral waiting for Michael and others to finish patching up the kidnapper when the Archangel Gabriel appears sitting next to him.
Dresden barely blinks at that. He lives in a world where such beings are natural. The Archangel Gabriel talks idiomatic English and points out to Dresden that even though he does not wield one of the Swords, he is nevertheless a Warrior fighting successfully for the Light. Then Gabriel enumerates the results of Dresden's easy, unthinking peripheral actions along the way through the story.
What Dresden thought he was doing, what he thought the problem was (stalker; kidnapper after the Swords) was not the most important thing Dresden did that day. The side-effects, the collateral repairs in the world that Dresden made by his apparently trivial knee-jerk responses to situations actually did far more to bring goodness into the world than his titanic conflicts with the magical Forces of Evil.
-------------END SPOILER---------------
Dresden, no matter how he thinks of himself, is The Warrior.
And you and I learn a lesson from Dresden. Everything we do, but most especially the things we do without thinking about them, -- the negligent, the peripheral, the habitual, -- all those little deeds are the ones that count in Collateral Repair of the world.
I read "The Warrior" after I found a message on the EPIC List from Morgan Mandel who had posted a blog about 8 reasons to comment on blogs. And in Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! and Harry Dresden's Sword problem, I found a reason Morgan doesn't have on her list (though her list seems to be growing).
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com/2009/01/seven-reasons-to-comment-on-blog.html
Her reasons to post comments on blogs pivot around the benefits that might accrue to the commenter.
Commenting on blogs for such reasons as she mentions would be the kind of "Goal Directed Behavior" you'd find in a Hero undergoing a story where he/she was about to learn something the hard way.
But commenting on blogs is usually (at least for me) a peripheral activity, a by-the-way done as a reflexive response on a subject I know something about -- sort of like Clark Kent blundering down the street or Harry Dresden acting from his heart, just because he can. And I think it's that way for a lot of people (political diatribes excepted).
Blogs are not central to most people's life goals, yet we who read blogs get something out of it, something intangible but worth the time. When a certain sort of person reads a blog entry and gets something out of it that's worth the reading time, he/she will drop a comment on that blog just to thank the blogger. Or a comment on a comment.
After reading Angel Gabriel's explanation to Dresden, I suspect that commenting on a blog comes into the category of being The Warrior.
Maybe only one person other than the blogger will read the comment, but the effect that comment might have on that one person could be enormously out of proportion to the effort it takes to write the comment. Your comment might save or redirect a life.
Often the comment becomes longer because in thinking how to say thank you, the commenter will put some effort into verbalizing a response that shows they read the blog entry and understood it. As a result, the commenter also gains a deeper understanding of himself and the issue -- as well as providing a "Scotty, you earned your pay for the month!" to the blogger.
I do think the main reason to comment on blogs (or to blog) is that somebody you've never met might read your comment, benefit from it without even knowing who you are. Thus you have a chance to repair the world in the most powerful way.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com
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