This week’s
blog title is from a future Asylum movie for SyFy. It’s not in development or anything, as far
as I know, but I’m pretty sure just by writing that online I’ve caused it to
happen. It’s the internet butterfly effect.
And
speaking of that geeky reference to a geeky reference...
What that
title really comes from is a note from a friend of mine, the editor at a
sci-fi/ science site called Giant Freakin Robot (check it out—it’s fun and
educational). He was explaining what
kind of movies and television shows the site covered. To paraphrase, if the zombies have
biochemical or viral origins, GFR will cover them, but not if they’re raised by
voodoo spells or curses.
Over the
past few years, a lot of genres have really blended together. In books and movies, it’s not uncommon to see
strong action, drama, or even comedy threads mixing in with sci-fi, fantasy, or
horror. Nowadays it’s just as common for
protagonists to fight the undead as it is to run from them, and in doing so
writers and readers have created dozens of subgenres.
Personally,
as I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of this. I think any story that stays too much in one
vein tends to get dry pretty quick.
There’s almost always some humor in every situation, even incredibly
dark ones. It’s not uncommon for men and
women to have inappropriate thoughts at really inopportune times (or to act on them). Hey, I grew up on Doctor
Who, so in my mind it makes perfect sense for religion-obsessed barbarian
tribes to be descended from intergalactic survey teams or for aliens to be
controlling the Loch Ness Monster.
Now, sad
but true, there aren’t a lot of firm rules on mixing these things. Every story is different, so the way my
story blends horror and comedy is going to be different from the way your
story blends them. Ten of us can use the
same basic plot, but we’re each going to end up with our own unique story. My characters won’t react the
same way as yours, hers will make different decisions than his.
As such it’s hard for anyone to say which
amount is right or wrong without having all the context. To use one of my frequent cooking analogies,
it’s kind of like if I asked “is this too much sugar?” It’s an impossible question to answer without
knowing what I’m cooking, what are the recipe standards, what are my
preferences, and what are the preferences of the people who are going to be
eating it. My own skill level in the
kitchen matters, too, on whether I should be trying a fried Alaska, death by
chocolate, or maybe just a bowl of Captain Crunch.
However...
all that being said...
I think
when these mixed genre stories go bad, a lot of folks tend to look at the small
issues and ignore the big ones. Something isn’t bad because it mixed androids
and artificial intelligence with Arthurian legends, or because it introduced a
lot of comedy into the Cthulhu mythos.
Those are just the easiest targets, so they get the criticism first.
What I’ve
come to realize is that most bad genre stuff tends to be bad for the same three
reasons. Granted, there’s always going
to be someone who tries to write a sexy mutant cockroach story (or something
worse), and there will always be people who just load up on basic mistakes like spelling or flat characters or incoherent plotting. In my experience, though,
most genre stuff goes wrong in three basic ways—whether my story is one pure
genre or several overlapping ones.
The first
and often biggest mistake is when authors try to make their stories too fantastic. If I have an idea, it gets included in the story. No matter what it is, I’ll cram
it in there. If you’ve ever watched old
slasher movies, you know most of them just devolved into creative ways to kill
people, and sometimes there are excess characters for no other reason but to
allow for more inventive deaths. Most of
us have probably read a sci fi novel that went to great lengths to explain how the
weapons, shoes, uniforms, food, transportation, education, and economics are
all very different on that other world or in that not-so-distant future. I read a book recently that had to do with...
well, everything. No, seriously. Government conspiracies, bio-engineering,
super-soldiers, angels and demons, secret identities, zombies, aliens
from Neptune, extraterrestrial dragons, thrill-killers, child abuse, sadism, torture porn, regular porn, and lost civilizations in the Amazon. All of these things were major threads and
elements in one average-length novel. Heck,
I’m tempted to say it was even on the shorter side.
The problem
with writing a story like this (book or screenplay) is my audience has nothing to
connect with as they’re overwhelmed with all these unfamiliar elements. The people are different. The setting is different. Motivations are different. I may have created the most amazing
post-apocalyptic matriarchal feudal society run by a supercomputer (and its
secret android army) that’s ever been seen, but my readers need to be able to
understand those characters and that society and relate to it right now
while it’s on the page in front of them.
This is
closely related to the second problem—when the writer tries to explain
everything. Bad enough that I felt the
need to include the secret android army, but now I’m also going to write about
how they were first developed by the Mysteridroid Corporation three hundred
years ago, how they see the world, and even how they recharge in various
situations. I think most people reading this
have read a story or two that suddenly deviated into exposition like that. Edgar Rice Burroughs had an awful habit in
his Mars books of having his characters stop and explain various aspects of
Barsoomian technology (one midnight walk with the Princess famously spun into a
discussion of how radium bullets are manufactured and used). A few recent horror films have gone to great
lengths to explain why their antagonist turned out the way he or she did, even
though that mystery was part of the character’s strength.
What this
often leads to is stories that feel very exotic and detailed, but very little
ever actually happens in them. Page
after page of explanation can add up really fast, and no matter what my chosen format is, there's only going to be so many pages. Suddenly a
third of my book is just... details. And
while I’m going over those details, my characters are just sitting around
twiddling their thumbs, waiting for something to happen again. This can also lead to a bit of resentment from the reader as I’m spoon-feeding them all this information.
As it turns
out, problem number three is the flipside of
two. It’s when the writer doesn’t
explain anything. I’ve gone through
whole chapters of a book trying to figure out which character was Kristo. Mystery Science Theater
3000 once had a running gag about a mystical object (or maybe it was a
person...) called “the Sampo.” We’ve all
seen stories where people ride “twyrfels” and we’re left wondering what the
hell a twyrfel is (an animal? a vehicle? some kind of transporter beam?).
There’s
also the folks who hide motives and actions to create a sense of mystery. Characters
will appear, make a mysterious statement or three, and then vanish from the
story. Creepy messages will be found on
walls, sidewalks, or computer screens and we never learn how they got there. Disturbing objects are found in the cellar,
but never discussed again. Ever.
There are
two general causes behind this, in my experience. In the first case it’s when I’ve sunk so far
into my fictional world and spent so much time there that I forget the reader
isn’t quite so familiar with it. I can
tell you the whole history of the twyrfel as transportation, so I forget that
you don’t even know what one looks like.
In the second case, they’re trying to duplicate the tone of books like House
of Leaves or shows in the vein of LOST or Person of Interest,
but they don’t really understand how those stories achieved that tone. This is especially frustrating when there’s clearly no real mystery, just a bunch of withheld information.
So, there’s
three big, common mistakes in genre fiction.
Sci-fi, horror, fantasy—we could probably give an example of each
failing for each genre. We could even
make a chart.
Or we could
go over a few simple ways to avoid these issues...
For that first
problem up above, my story needs to have something my audience can immediately
relate to in some way, and it’s best if it’s the main character. Someone who hates their job, who wants
something they can’t have, or maybe who just feels like an outsider. Simply put, a person with a universal need or
desire.
I’ve mentioned once or thrice that believable characters make for
believable stories, and that’s especially true here in the genres. Seriously, pick a popular genre story and I’ll bet
the main character has a very humble, relatable origin. Dan Torrance is a nursing home orderly before
he’s forced to confront the True Knot. Katniss
Everdeen is just trying to put food on the table when she’s forced to fight for
her life in an arena. John Anderson
(a.k.a. Neo) was a cubicle drone who was dragged into a war between humanity
and sentient machines. Dana, Marty,
Jules, and their friends were regular college students before they decided to
spend their vacation at that old cabin in the woods. Hell, even in Pacific Rim, one of the
most over-the-top movies of the year, our hero Raleigh is working a
construction job when we catch up to him in the present, still shaking off the
death of his brother.
If a reader
believes in my characters, they’ll believe what’s happening to my characters.
It has to do with willing suspension of disbelief—I can’t believe in the
big elements of a story if I don’t believe in the basic building blocks of it. Once I’m invested in Wakko’s life, then I’ll
be more willing to go with it when he finds a lost civilization under the
bowling alley or when he finds out the crab people have been running his life
since he was born.
I think
there’s two ways to deal with the second problem, too much
information. One is a concept I’ve
talked about here in the past—the ignorant stranger. If things are going to be explained, I should
have an actual, in-story reason for that explanation. Yakko may know all about the secret android
army, but Dot doesn’t. This gives him a
valid reason to talk about the Mysteridroid Corporation for a page and a
half. I just need to be sure this really
is an ignorant stranger situation and I’m not falling back on the dreaded “as you know...” crutch.
But is it
necessary to the story, or is it just there to help push things deeper into my chosen genre? It’s cool that my
hero has an energy sidearm that uses ultrasonic beams focused through a blue
quartz crystal to set up a harmonic vibration in the target’s cells which causes
extreme pain and eventual molecular disruption, all powered by a cold-fusion
microbattery... but in the long run is this any different than just saying he
has a blaster? Or a pistol? I may have the most inventive take on
teleportation ever, but if there’s no point to teleportation technology in my story
except to show off this idea... why bother?
If the plot flows along fine without it, why take up space on the page
with it?
The third
problem, not explaining anything, is a little tougher. On one level, it’s just a matter of skill and
practice. I need to be a good enough
writer to know how my plot’s shaping up and to empathize with my audience.
A friend of
mine gave me a great rule of thumb once—my main character should mirror my
audience. If my main character’s angry
about something, the reader should be angry about it. If my protagonist is puzzled, it means the
audience should be puzzled. And if my hero is annoyed because he still doesn’t
know what’s going on... well, that’s probably a sign I should have a reveal or
two in the immediate future.
The other
way to deal with that third problem is to be sure my story actually has a real mystery, not just the sense of one. Tying in to what I just mentioned, nothing
will aggravate my readers more than to stumble through a story alongside my
hero and then discover I’m not revealing a single thread of my mystery. Or, worse yet, they might realize there isn’t
a mystery at all—I was just stringing them along with some nonsense clues. I need to know what the secret is going to be
and work backwards, making sure my characters are smart enough to uncover it or
honestly motivated to hide it, depending on which side of the mystery they’re
on.
Are these
three the only problems that might crop up in my genre writing? Not by a long shot. But these are the ones I see cropping up
again and again, so they’re worth looking at and considering. And fixing.
Next time,
the last post before Christmas, I’d like to share a little holiday conversation
I had with the writer-director of Iron Man 3, back when he was just the
guy who did Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,
Until then,
go write.
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