I’ve been
asked about a dozen times lately to take part in “The Next Big Thing.” If you’re not familiar with it, it’s sort of
a self-promotional blog tour that a lot of authors are passing around. I passed on it because that’s not the kind of
thing I use this page for. Oh, sure,
I’ll mention it if I have a new release or maybe if something of mine goes on sale, but I don't want to go much further than that. This page is more about hints and instruction than
anything else.
And I suck at self-promotion.
But that’s all a bit besides the point. I didn’t want
to blather on about crossing that line this week. I wanted to talk about crossing lines.
Some people
think a genre story has to be pure. A horror story should be nothing but suspense and scares and gore. Every moment of a drama should be serious and
weighty. Comedies should be
non-stop laughs—there shouldn’t be a moment where something inherently funny
isn’t happening on the page or the screen..
The thing
is, those "pure" stories are all boring as hell.
The horror ones stop being scary.
The drama becomes melodrama. The
comedy becomes painful.
The reason
for this is a lack of variety. An idea
I’ve mentioned before is that the tension levels in a story should rise as the
story progresses. It’s great to begin my
story with the action dialed up to nine, but it doesn’t really leave me
anywhere to go. If my novel or screenplay
has everything dialed up to nine, what I’ve really got is a monotone story.
Likewise,
if every point on my story graph is the same point—say unspeakable
horror or maybe uber-cool action—then what I now have is a
homogenous script. Flipping pages is
like cutting into a block of cheese.
Every part is just like every other part. Case in point...
unspeakable
horror
Unspeakable
Horror
Unspeakable
Horror
UNSPEAKABLE
HORROR
UNSPEAKABLE
HORROR !!
Even when
I’m escalating things, getting the same point over and over and over again
becomes silly pretty quick.
Consider most of the good stories you’ve read or seen.
There’s a lot of comedy in Jaws.
Ernie Cline’s cyber-fantasy tale Ready Player One has some
moments of serious suspense. Raiders
of the Lost Ark has a wonderful love story in it. Dan Abnett’s sci-fi action novel Embedded
has a pretty enthusiastic sex scene. Ghostbusters
actually gets a bit scary at points. The
characters in the new Hobbit movie break out into song. Twice.
That being
said, I don’t think any of us would call Jaws a comedy, and Embedded is hardly a porno. Raiders has
that love story and a couple really good laughs, but I don’t think anyone in
their right mind would call it a romantic comedy. And The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
is definitely not a musical. We all
realize that little dips and swings into what would qualify as another genre
doesn’t invalidate a story.
If
anything, they usually strengthen it.
The secret
to all storytelling is characters, and the best characters are going to
act like real people. They’ll tell jokes
at the wrong time. Some of them will think
about love and sex when they should be paying attention in board meetings, and
others will fret about those board meetings at moments they should be
thinking about love and sex. A few of
them might even be stressed about scratching the paint on Dad’s car when they
should really be worried about the axe murderer lumbering up behind them.
One of the most dramatic moments in The
Empire Strikes Back is when they're about to test the carbon-freezing on
Han Solo. For all intents, he's walking
to his execution. He knows it, his
friends know it, we know it. Even if he
survives-- he's gone. Leia knows this
and finally admits her true feelings... and Han responds with a wiseass
comment. We all giggle and then there’s
a horrible blast of steam as Han’s turned into a piece of collectible wall art.
Y’see,
Timmy, if my stories and characters lack this kind of range they’re going to
come across as very flat and tedious. If
I can’t have a moment of laughter, a bit of flirting, or a non-sequitor
distracted thought, my characters are going to feel like puppets rather than
people. Much like a chef uses a few different flavors to bring out the main tastes of a meal, a writer wants to sprinkle in a few moments that step out of the genre to make the characters and the material much more powerful.
So don’t be
scared to stretch a toe over those lines now and then.
I know I
said I was going to talk about structure, but that’s kind of a huge set of post
so I think I might save it until the new year and take a bit of stress out of
my holidays. So next time, I’m probably just going to say something quick
about heroes.
Until then,
go write.
I'm halfway through 14 and had to find out who you are. This post is an exact reflection on my own thoughts about story. Coupled with the fact that you can actually write (I'm hoping you nail the ending on 14, I swear if you do you've got yourself a brand-new superfan) I'm sure I'm going to be hanging out here for awhile.
ReplyDeleteJake
14 is my favorite book of the year. I'm telling the world. I'm getting your other books ASAP and I'm really damned happy to have found you, sir.
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