Penultimate Truths About Fiction
How do you react to a lie? Angered? Outraged? Do you seek out justice or the truth?
Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick examines such a question, much like many of Dick's other stories.
The basic premise of the story (no spoilers) is that the majority of the world's population lives in underground bunkers after a nuclear war. The war is conducted on the surface by high level beaureacrats while the average Joe hunkers down in cramped quarters and lives a meek and meager lifestyle underground.
Except here comes the usual Dick twist; The war ended after two years, yet the population has been kept underground for fifteen years. This is of course, a carefully managed conspiracy by faking war-related broadcasts and news. But why would anyone want to pull such a conspiracy on the public living in bunkers? For power of course. To control the resources of land and manufacturing, while keeping the rest of the population in poverty below.
Most of the story revolves around two characters. One character lives below, and must travel to the surface to find a medical supply for his community. The other character lives above, and works in the agency responsible for creating false war news and propaganda.
I've told you virtually nothing about the story's actual plot, in case you want to read it. The reason I bring all this up, is because I found it interesting how a convoluted conspiracy affects the characters--or more importantly, how it doesn't.
My issue with the storytelling is purely a character problem. Several of the characters who exist on the surface and help to perpetuate the conspiracy do not actually believe in the motives or goals of the conspiracy itself. They have no 'buy-in' to the conspiracy. Yet, these very same characters act day-in, day-out, without giving their role in the conspiracy much thought. To me this doesn't seem very realistic.
The question for me which shatters the illusion, or shatters my suspension of disbelief is this; "Why wouldn't they just walk away? Or worse, work to undermine the conspiracy?"
Indeed, one of the central characters helps to do this, but he seems to do it in complete paranoia, and without much scruples as to why and how he should care to begin with. In other words, he defies the conspiracy in a less-than intentional way. This makes him less of a hero, and more of a bystander who simply tries not to hurt the tankers as much as his peers do.
The same is true for the character who must travel to the surface. Once he discovers that the war is over, and has been over for a while, he does not seem greatly distressed by this news. Dick's explanation seems to be, this 'tanker,' as the bunker-dwellers are called, has become so accustomed to life in squalor underground, that he doesn't know what to think when he finds out about the reality of life on the surface.
I don't buy it. Because Dick later explains that the conspiracy could not be exposed to all the tankers at once, as it would 'shock' them and cause a revolution. Of course it would! And I believe it would with the main characters as well.
Keep in mind, the characters did not grow up from childhood in these surroundings. The entire framework of the premise takes place over 15 years. Unless the characters are all fifteen years old, there is no way they would go about their routine so mindlessly when it comes to something as important as freedom, and a conspiracy to infringe upon it.
None of the characters seem to take a hard emotional stand, or fight for anything they believe in. This not only makes the story less believable, it denies the reader an identification with a hero. It hurts both the logic of the conspiracy, and the characterizations.
It is an excellent example where the author could have asked himself,
"What would I do in this situation?" Unfortunately, it doesn't seem Dick asked such a question. If you read it, you might agree that a character affected by conspiracy is a penultimate truth.
Criticizing the Critic
On the heels of yesterday's post, we're in for a bit of fun today. I thought I'd pick apart a nasty review of The DaVinci Code. People have been way, WAY too happy to rag on Dan Brown lately. I'm not sure why people are so insecure, or feel he needs to be taken down 25 notches. My guess is it has something to do with jealousy, or bitterness over the attention that novel has received. It's like watching a bunch of catty bitches comment on the unpopular girl's sudden popularity.
Without further ado, I present you a
stinky mound of bitterness by Anthony Lane.
"I must say that, though I have recited the Nicene Creed throughout my adult life, I never realized that it was originally formulated in the middle of a Beastie Boys concert."
How witty! A popular culture reference in regards to a scene which bears no resemblance to the reference.
"He works for Opus Dei, the Catholic organization so intensely secretive that its American headquarters are tucked away in a seventeen-story building on Lexington Avenue."
Would he prefer Area 51? What exactly constitutes an intensely secretive location? And what might be a better organization given the theme of the novel? Oh, but providing solutions is not the role of the critic. How dare I suggest such a constructive role for any kind of critic, much less this one.
"The task of the Bishop and his hit man is to thwart the unveiling of what Teabing modestly calls “the greatest secret in modern history,” so powerful that, “if revealed, it would devastate the very foundations of Christianity.” Later, realizing that this sounds a little meek and mild, he stretches it to “the greatest coverup in human history.” As a rule, you should beware of any movie in which characters utter lines of dialogue whose proper place is on the advertising poster."
It's called good marketing. Try it sometime! Is the critic saying that the idea itself lacks controversy? It should be obvious that a story like The DaVinci code makes use of overstatement. Leave understatement for art-house. And I thought the general complaint about marketing in the big evil world is that it's too often cheap and tacked-on. So here The DaVinci Code actually uses content FROM the novel/movie for its marketing and advertising. I think that shows a bit of integrity, don't you? Instead of what we're used to--a cheap and inauthentic message tacked on after the fact. That sir, is exactly the problem with most marketing and why marketing in general gets a bad name. What The DaVinci Code has done in the marketing department should be applauded, and if anything the bitterness evident through the review and lit world only proves that.
"Should we mind that forty million readers—or, to use the technical term, “lemmings”—have followed one another over the cliff of this long and laughable text? I am aware of the argument that, if a tale has enough grip, one can for a while forget, if not forgive, the crumbling coarseness of the style; otherwise, why would I still read “The Day of the Jackal” once a year? With “The Da Vinci Code,” there can be no such excuse. Even as you clear away the rubble of the prose, what shows through is the folly of the central conceit, and, worse still, the pride that the author seems to take in his theological presumption."
Ah, so now any mass fans of a novel are 'lemmings' and The DaVinci Code, a pop novel, is being evaluated as a theological work. I think a certain writer for the New Yorker woke up one day and got confused about which genre he was reviewing. But let him continue...
"How timid—how undefended in their powers of reason—must people be in order to yield to such preening?"
First, does constructing your sentences like Shakespearean English make you sound smart? Second, somebody please pick up the Clue Phone and hand it to Mr. Lane. THE DAVINCI CODE IS FICTION.
And here we get to the most telling part of his review;
Despite repeated attempts, I have never managed to crawl past page 100. As I sat down to watch “The Da Vinci Code,” therefore, I was in the lonely, if enviable, position of not actually knowing what happens.
So, the critic couldn't hack 100 pages of a fluffy popcorn novel. That tells me two things:
- He doesn't have the patience to read or sit through very much fiction. If he can't make it through The DaVinci Code, I have my doubts he could make it through anything meatier. Why is he a critic, then?
- If he couldn't hack 100 pages of the novel, how far do you think he's going to get into the movie before Mr. Cranky Pants turns on? He clearly went into it with a cynical attitude. I don't know about you, but I've never enjoyed a film when I approach it with that kind of pretense. And that is exactly what Mr. Lane is being--pretentious.
"Howard’s film is that it is far too dense and talkative to function efficiently as a thriller, while also being too credulous and childish to bear more than a second’s scrutiny as an exploration of religious history or spiritual strife."
Well, at least we finally got our money's worth from the critic. Yes, perhaps The DaVinci Code is too dense and talkative to function efficiently as a thriller. However, isn't this the problem in adapting any novel to the screen?
As for an exploration of religious history or spiritual strife... again, it's a work of fiction--NOT a theological thesis. I wish critics like Anthony Lane could get that one correct. You don't see anyone raising the theological inaccuracies towards Raiders of the Lost Ark, do you?
The critic is making claims here that DaVinci Code functions poorly as an exploration of religious history and spiritual strife. Like Mr. Lane's review on the whole, that kind of nitpick is irrelevant.
What we end up with at the end of his 'critique' is a smoldering stew of bitter cynicism, and not many fine points of contention over The DaVinci Code as a work of storytelling. I thought the point of a review was to find out whether a book or film was worth enduring? What I got instead, was a sense that Lane is a cynical person who can't sit through 100 pages of a pop novel or twenty minutes of a pop film.
Not exactly an enlightened 'critique' -- do you think?
I thought reviews were meant to provide indication of weakness or strength of the work, rather than a soapbox of hatred towards blockbuster successes!
As A Writer, Do You Care About The Reader?
The art vs. entertainment debate has
fired up again over at Melly's place. I've clearly got both feet in the entertainment camp, and I'll tell you why.
As a storyteller, I only care about the reader's experience. And this is the fundamental difference between art and entertainment. Art is not necessarily concerned with the audience's experience. Art is art. It need not justify itself to anyone or anything. It is something that sits on a pedestal, behind a glass case, or a painted line on the exhibit floor that says "Do not cross."
My problem with the label of art is that it protects the artist. If millions of people hate your work, you can easily write off their opinions with,
"But it's art!" You needn't change a thing or improve yourself, except to whatever degree suits your fancy or tickles your ego.
I'm more than happy to send my work out into the world without the bulletproof vest label of 'art.' I will be happy to let readers shoot my work to pieces. Nothing is sacred, my story least of all. If it is a good story, it will be able to protect itself by its own inherent virtues. It needn't hide behind a label which calls it sacred.
Entertainment cares about the reader--because the reader ultimately decides whether entertainment is 'entertaining.' But who defines art?
The artists.
Art only cares that the artist gets to express themselves. Entertainment only cares whether the reader has a satisfying experience.
The job of an entertainer is to entertain. The job of an artist is to... what? Create something.
There is no prescription for the thing that is created. The end result doesn't have to meet any particular standard, except those prescribed by the form. And those are not rules, merely guidelines. So really, anything goes.
Entertainment ultimately has to be entertaining. It's a simple metric. If it's entertaining, then it succeeds. If it's not, then it fails.
But how can you judge whether art succeeds or fails? You can't. It's entirely subjective. I choose not to hide behind subjectives.
Either my novel will be entertaining, or it won't. If it's not, then I failed.
Ultimately what determines whether or not my work is entertaining is how much thought I've given to the reader's experience.
Can the same always be said for art?
In other words, entertainment has the customer or reader at the center of importance. Art has the artist at the center of importance.
Why does the creator have to be the center of importance? Shouldn't the audience be the center of importance?
Art doesn't necessarily care for the reader. Entertainment does--because the entire foundation of entertainment is dependent on whether or not the customer had a good time.
I care about the reader and I want them to have a good time. This is more important than all the art or artistry in the universe.
Writers, Kill Your Darlings and Achieve Artistic Integrity
Oh the love of pet ideas... is the source of pain for so many frustrated 'artists.' I find it amazing that you can argue with other creative people about ideas that simply don't fit within the themes of their project, or that you can argue about just plain bad or nonsensical ideas, period.
Why do creative people embrace silly things? It's the love of pet ideas. It's a hardcore obsession with darlings.
We'd all be better off as writers, readers, media-consumers, etc... if you just please, please, please KILL YOUR DARLINGS.
Just do it. You either have to make it work within the context of your project, or you have to throw it away or save it for later. But you have to make a decision. Your work will be worse off if you don't, and your work will be better off if you do.
Cast subjectivity aside for a moment. That idea that's just languishing in your novel, not really going anywhere? Get tough. Get selective. Get mean with yourself.
And then I won't have to argue with you about why your project isn't primed for success. If you don't skewer your own ideas, your audience will. Or I will. Maybe I should an editor?
One thing I don't understand is why being self-critical, editing yourself, adopting structure, or killing your darlings, are considered compromises of artistic integrity.
You want your work to improve, right? Adaptation is good. A lack of adaptation is... literally, maladaptive. For some reason creative people associate unchanging, die-hard attitudes about their work with artistic integrity. I'm not sure why.
To me that's the stodgy way of the dinosaurs. It's also inviting mediocrity. I don't see how artistic integrity can be keeping everything the same, forever. I don't see how artistic integrity is defined in that kind of conservative, protective way.
The willingness to hold your work up to the flame is artistic integrity.
The willingness to understand the difference between the wants of your ego and the need of your story is artistic integrity.
We all love to color outside the lines of the coloring book. We allow those kinds of indulgences for children. As adults and professionals, there is nobody waiting to congratulate us for the horrible screw-ups and mediocrity. Nobody will shower us with praise and kisses for creating a blob and calling it art. The real world is willing to love you, but it's a conditional love. Nobody cares that you had fun coloring outside the lines. The world demands a thesis, a point--they want something that provides meaning or interpretation to their lives.
There is no unconditional love. The world only knows a shrewd, tough love. The way a lionness bites her cubs, or carries them rough by the scruff of the neck. There is very little gentleness out there in the jungle or the savannah. So why do the people of our advanced cultures expect it when unleashing their 'art' upon the world? There is no free pass. There is no hiding behind the label of art. There is no hiding behind subjectivity, or relativity. People will judge your work, at some point. If you've written a draft, it might as well be you. Be the first, not the last.
You have to earn it. Your novel has to earn it. There is no artistic integrity in refusing to change.
Kill your darlings. Kill your darlings
now.
Different Modes of Thought for Solving Story Problems
Are you stuck? Try these:
| build up eliminate work forward work backward associate generalize compare focus purge verbalize visualize hypothesize define |
dissect symbolize simulate manipulate transform adapt substitute combine separate vary repeat multiply invert |
transpose unify distort rotate flatten squeeze stretch abstract translate expand reduce understate exaggerate |
That's a long list of solutions to try when your story is stuck! Courtesy of
Hey Whipple, Squeeze This by Luke Sullivan, who got that list courtesy of
Conceptual Blockbusting by James Adams.
Do You Clip News?
Do you have a news clip file? I do. It's actually the basis for a lot of my fictional world. Some of the storys are, anyway. I save stuff about science or tech happenings, as well as some political mumbo jumbo.
As far as politics, I love to save the stuff that gets my blood broiling. Why? It's great for working out awful logical extensions. You know, a politican proposes something awful and the sheepish masses blindly go along with it. And then I ask, "What if everyone feels or thinks this is the right thing to do?" It's an extension of "What if everybody acted that way?" Well, you'd have a pretty messed up world. Worse, a world where nobody even realizes it's messed up.
It's also fun to project that stuff into the future. You know, dumb ideas get proposed. Then they fail... and the first reaction is, "Well, maybe we didn't spend enough money on it?" So they go back and do Version 2.0 of Crap, and well... everybody is shocked and surprised because lo and behold it's Crap 2.0.
I love that kind of stuff. It's like a big banner floating over planet Earth that says
"Everyone here is crazy. Stay away."Thoughtful observations on the ordinary maketh the writer. Because really that's our job. Take the ordinary things that happen in our world all the time, and spice them up. Murder is ordinary. Politics are ordinary. Stupidity is ordinary. Announcements of amazing new 'discoveries' are, sadly, ordinary too.
It's our job to pull those things out of the info-glut, the noise, and make sense out of them. To make them interesting, or funny. Or to simply turn things upside-down.
A writer is part satirist, part scientist. Part philosopher too, no?
The other kind of news I like to clip is just Odd News. News of the Weird. Why? Because it reminds you to turn off your internal editor. The author's Judge & Jury. I have one news story I saved, about a pig crashing through a family's patio into their house, and attacking the family members who lived there. They people involved were actually injured. But it's the kind of story nobody would ever believe if you made it up as fiction. Or at least, that's what every writer's internal voice says.
"So then the pig crashed through the sliding glass door, shattering it. And it attacked Jane and Bob while they were taking a nap in the bedroom. They were wounded by the pig. The pig kept them trapped in their bedroom for several hours before they could get out and call the police."
If you put that in a story, nobody would believe it. It would in many ways defy credibility. Or people would simply think your story was a comedy, a farce. But these things happen in real life all the time. Odd things. The world is strange. Putting a hint of the strange in your work is one way to make it that much more memorable, or in a convoluted sort of way, seem realistic.
Same is true for the political or sci-fi type news. People often find that kind of stuff too fantastical. It's fantasy. Unreal. Made up. Truth is stranger than fiction, much of the time--so if you want to avoid creating a dull story just look for the odd news.
Do you save news stories for inspiration?
A little less talk...
...and a lot more action.
I've got a lot of stuff to get off my chest here, and not sure where to begin. I guess I'll start with the worst bit.
Right on the heels of my post about my wife and I expecting... we went to the first sonogram where it was discovered there was no heartbeat. So um, yeah. I'm not going to be a Dad afterall. In addition to the emotional sucker punch, the 'kicking while I'm down' is that I feel like even more of a dork for getting so amped and telling everyone about it. I'm going to cringe when people ask me about the progress, so you could say this is a bit of therapy for me to just come out and lay the situation straight.
Tell 100 people about something great happening in your life. Now go back and tell that same 100 people that the great thing isn't going to happen afterall. I think we've followed up with maybe 10 of the most important people, and, well... I'm already emotionally exhausted. Which leads to...
The blog has been quiet lately. I've made a post every day for the better part of a year, which is something. But I'm not sure how much longer that will last. I'm exhausted. Intellectually and emotionally. Especially after the lost pregnancy and all the excitement I had built over that.
I'm tired of talking about my novel. I just want to finish it. I've been reading a decent advertising book called
Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. Books about the art of advertising are great because they have so much in common with any other kind of creativity. One thing the author mentioned is... when you first start creating ads, your impulse is to 'roam the halls' so to speak, and talk up your ideas with everyone you know.
I have that syndrome pretty bad. I talk a really good game but one of my hard lessons in life is that I talk more than I walk. I don't like that. In general, it's a bad quality to have. Maybe it's a quality all writers have--we like to talk. But a little more action would be nice.
Without going too deep into my family history... I had a grandfather who was a big storyteller. He had a gift for gab, and was a bit of an eccentric. His big failing in life was that he never accomplished much of anything, and left a broken family in the wake of his 'adventures' - most of which consisted in doing a lot of talking to people all over the world, but not a lot of acting or doing.
There is such a thing as a negative role model to learn from. I admire his passion and eccentricity to a degree, but I wouldn't ever want to become him. I don't want to be the Boy Cried Wolf or the big talker. I value action more than words, as a principle, and I feel it violates my own principles to talk more than act. Actions speak louder than words. These things become the epitomy of wisdom in our culture for good reason.
So with my tail between my legs, I'm crawling into my dark little cave to get some writing done. But as much as I'd like to keep my mouth shut in many ways I just can't--this post is proof. So don't worry, I'll be here. Just less than before, and with a little more honest novel-writing work to talk about. Or that's the plan anyway.
Less talk. More action.
While I'm at it, I should thank you all for reading this, and being regular readers. I don't know if I've said it, and it's a bit touchy-feely, but thanks you guys. It's great to have a community of writers and bloggers like we do. Community is a great thing, and I love reading posts of my fellow text-slingers. Here's to many more years of text-slinging, both online and off!
Books Are Inexpensive Communication?
Got $10 million to create a cutting edge video game? No? Well then...
Got millions of dollars to create a Hollywood blockbuster movie? No? Then...
I refer to something author Steven Johnson
said on his blog.
"So yes, books are not the dominant cultural form they were in the 19th-century, and yes, some of these new forms have amazing complexity to them that we'd do well to understand and appreciate. But books still matter in this culture, and if you're trying to change the way people think about a complicated issue, the advice is the same as it was two hundred years ago: write a book."
The cheapest way to put some ideas out there is to write a book. The only creation cost is time.
This is actually one of the big reasons I decided to write something. What about you?
Story Growth & Happenings
I'm almost to the point where I'm happy with what I'm doing on my novel. It's been a long struggle, and hasn't gotten much easier but I'm a lot more confident and satisfied with the results now since I started
studying scene arrangements and
growing my story. The new version of the novel won't look very much like that first draft I did back in November, and trust me--that's a good thing.
If I didn't like the drafting process before, I especially don't like it now. But now I've got the best reason I could possibly have; I'm succeeding by my own different method. I think I also mentioned how I've been going
one scene at a time, and whipping each scene in shape.
When it comes time for the next novel, I should have the process well-ironed out. Starting fresh, I think I will take everything that I have--all the elements I'm sure of, my starting points, and do a nice template scene arrangement with the elements I know. Why is this helpful? Because then you just connect the dots and fill in the gaps. And if you understand that the scene arrangement follows a certain structure, then you already know the
type of content you need to provide. The rest is just creativity and a little work. A single-sentence synopsis for each scene would be enough--enough to give you an idea of where you're headed.
It feels much more rewarding to start with small pieces and build from there. Now the only question is if I can finish this up by November. I've got two deadlines in November. One is I'm going to start NaNoWriMo again. But I'm not sure I'll finish it, because my second deadline for November is the 28th--my wife's due date for our first child.
I've got a lot to do, and not much time to do it!
UPDATE: Therese over at Writer Unboxed has a neat post on
Swaddling Your Manuscript. I don't know if I'm swaddling it, but I'll sure be swaddling something else soon enough!
Intellectual Property Roots
Intellectual properties often evolve over time, sometimes they diverge drastically from their roots. This can be a problem when the creators or I.P. holders decide they've gotten too far away from their base and decided to "go back to basics."
There is no better example of this than the new
James Bond.
I've read a lot of comments that Daniel Craig looks like a thug, and that James Bond doesn't look like a thug.
That's because the I.P. has wildly diverged from the original over the last forty years. Especially in the last twenty years, James Bond has become a pretty-boy. He's been shlocked up almost 1980s Miami Vice style. It was a poor direction to take, as it has misbranded the I.P. for an entire generation of fans.
Ian Fleming originally created James Bond as a secret service contemporary to Dashiell Hammett's and Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled detectives. The original James Bond is not a pretty-boy. He never was. Sorry Pierce Brosnan.
If he looks too thuggish for your tastes, remember the source.
Frankly a new, darker reboot of the I.P. is pretty exciting to me. They have a lot of opportunities to do something cool, much like what Christopher Nolan did with Batman Begins. Reboot the I.P. with a darker, more serious incarnation of a character.
Besides, both Batman and James Bond are more anti-heroes than heroes. They're supposed to be off-the-cuff and dark. Both have roots in the early-to-mid 1900s, inspired by a hard-boiled dirty world recovering from two world wars, and in America, The Great Depression.
In this poster, Daniel Craig is looking very Humphrey Bogart. That's straight to the source of the I.P. Heroes with a little grit & tarnish. Yummy, I'll take it.
Star Wars is another example. People don't want a newer version where Greedo shoots first. Han Solo is a cunning character who sometimes displays questionable morals. He is a shadow or shapeshifter archetype when contrasted to Luke Skywalker. A Star Wars where Han shoots first is true to character and the I.P. Politically correct touch-ups later on will never be appreciated, regardless of the good intentions or reasoning behind them.
That is why Twentieth Century Fox and Lucasfilm recently announced they are releasing an
untouched Star Wars in it's original form. Returning to roots is a great customer service move, and can even be a brilliant
marketing strategy that brings in new revenue. This is years of long-awaited acknowledgement. Lucasfilm is saying to fans & customers, "Yes, we know Han shot first."
Sometimes to make your customers happy all you have to do is acknowledge their concerns.
The lesson here is to be careful how far your intellectual property evolves from its roots or base. You may have trouble going back to basics later on, because the fans will evolve away from the base alongside you and may be hostile to a restart. Or the fans will hate all divergence from the original material, and quietly pray for the return of your sanity.
Visualization & Growing a Story
If you're stumped or have writers' block, the reason is probably due to one of two things:
- You're not visualizing what you need to write.
- You can't see the big picture.
VisualizationI've been playing this great computer game called Oblivion. It's a huge open world, with many towns, and characters walking around. We're not far from that whole dated viritual reality thing people have been talking about for years and years. It's pretty much here now, albeit in limited form.
If I can live in a virtual world, and travel miles and miles across countryside, talking to fictional characters and being a part of fictional events, it's here.
Now aside from this being a great distraction from actually getting any writing done, it has helped me to think about my story a little better. And no that's not just a rationalization for my gaming goof-offs.
You see, as I play through the world I'm paying attention to the towns, the people, how they are laid out and established, and how the entire thing seems real and credible. That's a compliment considering many of the people look the same, talk the same, and most of the houses and buildings look the same.
It's all procedurally generated using the minimum assets they could get away with. Many characters share the same voices, artwork, etc. Stuff just gets re-used. This lends a homogenized generic quality to the world. It doesn't feel that deep or unique. Yet, the experience on the whole
is still convincing.There is something to be said about world-building process of writing fiction from looking at a game like Oblivion.
Not everything has to be unique. Not everything has to be custom-tailored.You don't need to have a unique name and life story for the guy who lives five blocks away from your hero. It wouldn't hurt, but it's not necessary. What is necessary, is that you do give some level of thought to these kind of details.
What kind of neighborhood does the hero live in?
If the hero has a certain outlook on life, does that match where they live? For example, if the person is homeless or lives in a dump, wouldn't they be upset or unhappy? If they're not, why not?
Do they have some magical ray of hope in their lives that keeps them going?
You can raise a lot of interesting character and drama questions just by thinking about the surroundings of the characters. And to think about the locations or surroundings, you've got to have a visual. At very least, a rough picture in your head of what the place and people look like.
Where does the hero work? How far is that from their house? Do they have a commute? What kinds of things do they encounter on the commute? Anything interesting worth writing about, or just passive narrative?
When you can't see the big picture.A story is just a bunch of connected parts. Sometimes when we're overwhelmed by the process of writing a novel or piece as a whole, the solution is to simply break it down into smaller bits. If you're having trouble with a chapter, stop writing a chapter and start writing a scene. If you're having trouble with a scene, stop writing it as a scene and start by writing a few lines of an encounter or conversation. No matter what the problem, you can break it down into smaller pieces.
There is a reverse problem too though. It's one I've been encountering lately. I've been so focused lately on individual scenes that I can't see the whole story anymore. I've lost sight of the big picture. My solution for this is to stop and take stock of what you have. Take a look at everything you have, then compare that to all the things you'd like to do. Make a huge list of things you already have, and things you'd like to do. This is your Stock. It's your Asset List.
My problem is I often obsess over the holes and empty parts of my story. The problem is, you can't solve the problem by focusing on nothingness. Staring at a hole, and worrying about a hole isn't productive. You're literally staring at the void and your mind goes blank. It's best not to fixate on the void at all.
A better way would be to focus on what you DO have. Think about the positive-space of your story, not the negative-space.
You've probably heard the advice, use your strengths, don't try to fix weaknesses. We should all strive to improve ourselves, but especially for writers there are times when you can get too absorbed in trying to correct things that have nothing to do with your overall story.
Don't obsess over things that are wrong at the creation stage. While drafting, it's often advised to "turn off the critic," and this is true not just while drafting but while problem-solving holes in your story as well.
You can't solve a problem by thinking about how bad the problem is, or only paying attention to the problem itself. You need to look at what you've done right. Run with your strengths. Take your strengths as far as they will stretch. Often times you'd be suprised how quickly this solves problems and fills holes.
This is also a visualization process. It's learning to think about what you have as positive space, and what you don't have as negative space. Like sculpture, or carving.
If you were making a sculpture of a person's face, and you wanted it to be a very specific kind of face, you'd run into some of the same kinds of problems that writers do. You might carve out a nose exactly how you want it.
But what if you don't know what kind of eyes you want the sculpture to have?
You'd probably leave that blank or unshaped, uncarved. Staring at the unshaped material isn't going to give you an idea for cool eyes to put on the sculpture. You can stare at it all day long, and still draw a blank. The reason is because by specifically staring at nothing... a lack of shape, a void... you're failing to use your visualization powers.
Instead, look at the nose or mouth you've already carved out. Think about how those parts work really well together. What kind of eyes would match the kind of nose and mouth you've already completed?
Writing works the exact same way as the sculpture analogy. Take stock of what you have. If you've got a really strong character or two, but are missing another key character... or you have a generic character that isn't up to snuff, think about the strong characters you already have and what would make a nice complement or contrast to them.
Work with what you have, not with what you don't have. You can't use your imagination when it's rooted in the void, or rooted in nothing. Staring at a blank page will only inspire staring at a blank page. It will only inspire blankness, because you're fueling yourself with zero, nothing.
Feed off the things you've already created. It's an organic process, just like a tree grows, or a human baby. The trunk grows from the roots, the banches grow from the trunk. You don't have branches floating in space waiting for inspiration to decide what kind of foundation the branches will have. Babies don't develop as arms waiting for a shoulder or a body. Things grow as a logical or evolved extension from the things that already exist.
Grow your story. Start with what you already have, and grow from there. It's a great way to kill writers' block and avoid punishing yourself.
Vanishing Audiences: Why Your Story Needs A Hook
Was reading an
interesting article by Lynda Obst which bemoans the loss of audience, and how Hollywood just can't seem to figure it out.
"Historically, when we want to clean up, we spend zillions and gear the products to teen boys—the most easily distracted audience. Not only are they the ones with the most choices on Friday night, but they also know within a second of our holding a preview anywhere in the world whether a movie stinks or not. These guys cannot be fooled by marketing anymore. The harder we hype them, the harder we fall. By the Net and by BlackBerry transmission, word of mouth rules."
The problem, as I see it is that few people inside or outside of Hollywood understand marketing and creation as the same thing. It's the same problem in video games, and in every other medium. The best people to market a product are its creators, but the creators often have zero interest in marketing. As the creator, you know what makes your product sing, why it is cool, and why anyone else would care about it. Hopefully the answer isn't
"Because I made it and I rock!" or
"It's cool, just because I said so." You especially shouldn't say,
"I spent a lot of time and effort creating it, so other people should enjoy it."Nobody cares about you or how much effort you put in. They want to know how your story benefits them. Is it entertaining? Is it interesting? Will it help them pass the time? Will it inspire them? We're all surrounded by TV, movies, games, and books since we were children. We don't care if someone thinks their creation is the best thing since sliced bread. We don't buy the hype.
But creators or publishers often expect us as the audience to buy the hype. It seems the marketing behind a lot of movies, games, and books is that lame. Or any media for that matter. It's the same problem we had in the band I was in at age fifteen. We didn't know why we were cool, or how to even begin explaining that to other people.
And that gets to the crux of the problem. You can't just tell somebody how cool you think your poduct is... it has to be cool in some genuine way. I'm not talking about quality of the product either. That's a given. Of course general quality has to be there. Here's an example;
Saw or Final Destination isn't going to win art awards, but people will talk about them because they're scary, gorey, have a lot of tension, conflict, twists, and surprises.
In his book
Everything Bad for You is Good For You, Steven Johnson talks about the evolution of various mediums. Storylines, whether they be TV, film, or novel plots are becoming increasingly complex. And the audience has evolved alongside such complexity, craving more and more complexity.
In Obst's article, she mentions how Hollywood was surprised by the success of Flight Plan. There should be no surprise. It features a twisty-plotted
"What's going on?" question throughout the movie. And all the marketing materials for the movie were a cue-in on that hook. The trailer had it. The posters had it. The audience knows there's a story there--the premise alone leaves people wanting to find out what happens. The same principle behind the series 24.
So it's a matter of your
story having a story. Your story needs lead-in, a headline that pulls people into the story itself. Forget artistic integrity for a second. If you work hard and are worth half of what you think you're worth, then you've got integrity and that's the end of that subject. Moving on, ok?
We're talking about a hook. An attention-grabber. People aren't going to wait til they get to the movie theater, buy their tickets, refreshements, and then finally sit down in their theater seat before they find out what your story is about. Their butts need to be compelled to the theater seat
way, way earlier. They need to say to all their friends,
"I want to see that movie for X feature. X element looks really interesting!" Engage them with a source shot of buzz, and they will go on creating buzz for you.
Likewise people aren't going to drive out to the Barnes & Noble, or order your book online, wait to get the book back home, start reading, and
only then find out what your story is about.
If you give them that much lead time, you've already failed.
You need a reason beyond just artistic merit to get there. Plain old artistry won't get butts in the theater seats. Plain old artistry won't get people to buy your book. There has to be the lure. It's just like fishing. You don't need the fanciest, flashiest lure to catch a fish. It doesn't have to be the most expensive. But it needs to get the fish's attention.
Casting your line without a lure or hook is begging to come home empty handed.That's where Hollywood execs, video game developers, and the aspiring novelist often fall short.
The question
"Why?" is responsible for more intrigue than creative people want to admit. Likewise the question
"Why do I care?" is responsible for more apathy than creative people want to admit.
Is there a 'Why' in your work?
Ask,
"Why would anyone care about my story?" Most writers are afraid to ask or answer that question. It's too scary a question to be asked or answered.
You might think that the jaded audience will ask that question. They won't. They won't even afford you that luxury. People don't ask questions about things they don't know or care about.
Awareness has to exist first, and after the first few seconds of awareness--that's where you've got to have an answer. It takes a sharp hook to cut through the apathy.
What's your lure or hook?
