Again and Again and Again and Again and

So, hey... things are a little crazy and intense in this world of ours right now. Hopefully you’re somewhere safe and hunkering down a bit. Also hopefully you’re not someone going “Ha ha ha look at me” as you wander around potentially endangering other people.

Be a hero. Don’t willfully endanger anyone else right now. Okay?

Anyway... bonus post. Figured everybody could use a little extra stuff to read while they're stuck at home.

I'd like to share a random writing-type thought that’s bounced back and forth through my head a few times recently. I think it’s something a lot of you may automatically get, but this might help solidify it a bit in your own heads. And for some of you, this may be an all new concept.

I’ve mentioned the idea of repetition in writing here a few times, coming at it from a few different angles. It’s one of those elements that can be very powerful if used the right way... and completely brutal if I use it the wrong way. Or overuse it. It’s like one of those vitamins or minerals that we absolutely need to live, but just a little too much and now it’s a deadly poison.

Anyway, it recently struck me why repetition can turn on us like that and—oddly enough—it ties back to another idea I’ve mentioned here once or thrice. And that’s a concept Damon Knight talked about in one of his short story books. The idea of information vs. noise.

To sum up quickly, it goes like this. When we come across a fact we don’t know, it’s information. When we come across a fact we already know, it’s noise. We pay attention to information, but we tune out noise because... well, it’s noise. It’s just a distraction, keeping us away from the stuff we’re actually here for.

Now, Knight was talking about this mostly in the sense of exposition, and this makes perfect sense. We don’t want to read two pages about why Nazis were bad because, well, we all know that already (okay, most of us know that...). But we’re up for two pages about how true artificial intelligence came into existence, because this is something we don’t know and (hopefully) find interesting and relevant within the context of the story.

Getting hit with the same facts we already know is... well, boring. Sometimes flat-out aggravating. It feels like the author is padding and wasting time rather than giving us what we want.

But here’s the thing. This is true of pretty much all repetition. As I’m putting words down on the page, repeating anything the reader knows (or can figure out) is going to quickly become noise.

Think of names in dialogue. We roll our eyes when characters constantly use names while talking to each other. Or if the author constantly uses dialogue descriptors with names rather than pronouns (or just assuming we can follow who’s talking). After hearing Wakko said... a dozen times on one page, we start grinding our teeth. We can’t help it. It’s noise to our ears.

The same thing holds for descriptions. Yes, I know Phoebe is over six feet tall. You’ve mentioned it seven times in the past ten pages. Or that the blood is bright red. Or that Phoebe is six feet tall. Or that Yakko is a cyborg. Or that one of my over-six-foot characters is Phoebe. See what I mean? I’m clearly doing it as a humorous way to make a point, but it’s kinda getting on your nerves, isn’t it?

And I’ve talked before about doing this with reveals. The first time I reveal something to my readers is an amazing, jaw-dropping thing. Because it’s facts they don’t know. It’s information. But the second time I show it off it’s... well, it’s not as interesting. And the third time, if there’s no point to this, it’s kinda boring. By the fourth time okay seriously can we just get on with this? What? A fifth time? Seriously?

Repetition can turn anything I have to say into noise fast. So I want to be very careful if I’m going to repeat any information for a third or fourth time. And like I just joked, if I hit a fifth time...

Wow, I should probably rethink some things.

Next time we’re going to jump back to the A2Q and talk about theme. Yeah, I know. You just had this gut, high school reaction to that word. I’m going to try to help you get past that.

Until then, go write.

Ignorance Is Bliss

            I just realized that Valentine’s Day is this weekend. If I’d remembered earlier, I wouldn’t‘ve spent the time on this post, I would’ve done my traditional love and/or sex themed post.  And while surprise sex usually goes over well with everyone, I’m afraid I don’t have the time for it right now. Maybe next year.

            Wow.

            It sounds pretty grim when I say it like that.

            Anyway, I wanted to go over something one more time.  Because a couple of you still seem to be baffled by this for some reason...

            Take the Blu-ray case off the shelf.  Use your thumb on the right-hand edge to open the case.  Locate the Blu-ray disc inside the case.  Note that if this is a multi-disc set, you’ll need to select the specific disc you want to watch.  They’re usually numbered.  The number will correspond to a guide of some sort, usually located on the opposing panel of the cover or on the back of the case.  Look for the specific material you want to watch, then find the disc with the same number.  Remove the disc from its bracket.  Hold it by the edges (you don’t need to do this, but it’s easier in the long run).  Set the case back down.  Press power on your television controls.  Press power on your Blu-ray player, and then open.  A small tray will extend out from the player.  Set the disc on the tray with the picture/logo side up and the shiny side down.  Let go of the disc.  Press play and the tray should retract.  Go sit on the couch.  Pick up the remote control for the Blu-ray player.  If you are given the option to skip over all of the previews, do this.  Watch the movie or television episode you have selected. Do not talk during the movie or television episode.  If you have seen the movie or television episode before, do not spoil plot points or character moments for other viewers..

            Now, let's stop and consider the previous paragraph.

            How many of you started skimming halfway through that?

            It's okay.  It was kind of mind-numbing for me to write, so I can't imagine reading it was any better.  As it happens, though, pretty much every reason why exposition tends to suck is in that fascinating explanation of how to watch a Blu-ray. 

            Allow me to explain. 

            First, that paragraph is something we know.  I know it, you know it.  I know you know it. You know that I know you know it.  

            Exposition is boring and pointless if we know the information being presented to us.   It's just wasting time while we wait for something to happen.  Plus, none of us enjoys sitting through a lecture on something we already know, right?  The more detailed (read—unnecessary) it is, the less interested we are.  So we just zone out and start skimming.

            Damon Knight pointed out that a fact we don't know is information, but a fact we do know is just noise.  No one wants to read a story full of noise.  As writers, we need to know what our audience knows and work our story around that.  I don’t want to waste time telling people how to open a Blu-ray case.  It’s just a given.  All those words are better spent on something useful.

            The Second  thing to consider is that a lengthy explanation about how a Blu-ray player works serves no purpose here.  None.  This is a blog about writing tips, so a paragraph about electronics is a waste of space.  Nobody came here looking for that information, and the people who are looking for it won't be looking here.  You’ll notice that those instructions don’t tell you the best way to kill a Deathclaw in Fallout 4—even though Fallout is a really cool game which (like Blu-rays) can be played on a PS4.  The instructions also don’t mention that I don’t even own a Blu-ray player. Or a PS4.  Mildly interesting facts, sure, but even less relevant than the bit about killing a Deathclaw.

            These two points are, on a guess, about 83% of the reason most exposition sucks.  Find any book or story  with exposition that gnaws at you, and I’ll bet it falls into one of those two categories.

            So, how do we get around that?

            I've mentioned something called the ignorant stranger  a few times.  It’s my own term, one which I came up with while writing a review of Shogun years ago.  It's a simple way to use as much exposition as I want in a short story, screenplay, or novel.    

            Just have a source of information explain something to someone who doesn’t know these facts.

             Easy, right?  Just remember these three things...

            First, my ignorant stranger has to be on the same level as my readers.  I don’t want to confuse ignorant with stupid.  It’s only this particular situation that has put him or her at a disadvantage.  The reader or audience is learning alongside my character, so we don’t want to wait while the stranger’s educated on how Amazon works, where Antarctica is on a map, and why people eat food.  Again, my ignorant stranger can’t actually be stupid. 

            Second, the person explaining things, the source of knowledge, has to be smarter than the stranger on this topic, and thus, smarter than my audience.  If what’s being explained is something my readers can figure out on their own then the Source is wasting everyone's time (and my page count) by explaining it.  Remember, I want information, not noise.  Yeah, maybe this particular Source doesn’t know much about baseball, Star Wars, or the eternal mystery that is love, but on the topic they’re explaining this character needs to be an authority.  It needs to be clear the Source’s knowledge dwarfs the ignorant stranger’s on this topic.

            Finally (or third, if you like), there needs to be a pressing need for the Source to explain this.  There may be lots of things our stranger (and the reader) is ignorant about, so why are they talking about this fact right now?

            Shogun gets away with tons of exposition because Blackthorne—an English sailor trapped in feudal Japan—is a perfect ignorant stranger.  He’s a smart man, a man we can relate to, but he’s in a  country where he doesn’t know the language, the customs, the culture, anything.  So even as his situation forces him to interact with people, they’re forced to explain pretty much everything to him.

            So there it is.  If anyone tries to tell you only bad writers use exposition in a story, tell them it's only the bad writers who don't know how to use exposition.  Then explain the ignorant stranger to them.  And then look smug while you pop in a Blu-ray and watch Star Wars

            Next time, I’d like to tell you about my perfect woman.

            Until then, go write.

Information vs. Noise

            Many thanks for your patience.  Sorry I missed last week, but—as suspected—travel stuff kind of overwhelmed me.  Texas Frightmare was pretty amazing.  If you’re a fan of horror, or any subgenre of horror, I highly recommend it.

            Enough of that, though.  Let’s make some noise.

            Actually, let’s not.

            Writer and writing coach Damon Knight made an interesting observation about how we receive facts as we read.  When we come across a fact that we don’t know, it’s information (I have four different statues of the Egyptian god Anubis on my desk).  Information is new, and we tend to pay attention to it. 

            A fact that we already know, on the other hand, is noise (the sky is blue, candy is sweet, the KKK is bad).  Noise is annoying.  It’s repetitive and distracting.  We try to block it out and focus on other things, because we know listening to noise is a waste of our time.

            Let me give you an example...

            I saw the pilot for a television show a few months back.  Well, most of the pilot.  I shut it off halfway through.  Normally I wouldn’t call out shows or movies for mistakes, but since this one’s already been cancelled, I don’t think it matters.  The entire first act of Once Upon A Time In Wonderland goes back and forth between young Alice adventuring in Wonderland with her Djinn boyfriend and adult Alice in an insane asylum, where she’d been for years because she insisted her childhood stories were all real. 

            As we kept going back and forth, the style of storytelling (and, granted, the whole premise of the show) made it very clear that Alice actually experienced these things.  So the ongoing inquisition at the asylum became doubly pointless.  I knew they thought she made it up and I also knew it really happened. 

            And information we know is just noise. 

            What’s interesting, though, is that as this back and forth continued, a shift happened.  The Wonderland sequences became noise, too.  Even though they were giving new information, it was still couched in the frame of “this really happened.”  And I already knew it really happened, because that was established early on.  So I began to glaze over the entire first act of the show and wondered when the actual story—something new—was going to begin...

            I just finished a book where everyone in a small village is being affected by mood-altering technology that are making them dull and listless.  The most vibrant people are tired and apathetic, and even pale from lack of sunlight.  As our young heroine returns home, she keeps observing how everyone is tired and apathetic and pale.  The girl at the local Quik-E-Mart is tired and apathetic and pale.  The clerk at the grocery store is  tired and apathetic and pale.  The deputy who she confronts about it is tired and apathetic and pale.  And she comments to her as-yet-unaffected friend about how tired and apathetic and pale everyone seems to be, and they wonder what’s going on.

            And I’m sure you were skimming a bit at the end there, because there’s only so many times you can see “tired and apathetic and pale” before you start glossing over it. It’s what I ended up doing.  I have to admit, I skimmed large swaths of the book because it kept showing me the same things over and over again.

            Y'see, Timmy, I need to be aware of noise not only in my story, but in the way I tell my story.  It’s unavoidable that I’ll need to repeat something every now and then.  But this should be the rare exception, not the standard pattern of my storytelling. 

            My story should always be moving forward.  My characters should be growing and learning and developing.  This is all progressive motion, and it’s what every story needs to survive. 

            Because if my story doesn’t have forward movement, it’s just me sitting there making noise.

            Next time, I’d like to speak in code for a bit.

            Until then, go write.

One Time Only

If at first you don’t succeed... destroy all evidence you ever made the attempt.

No, no, don’t do that...

A few years back I was working on a film set where we were staging a bank robbery. The director... well, let’s be polite and say he wasn’t quite as knowledgeable as he thought he was.

We ended up doing a big dolly track move that encompassed the whole scene. Then we did a series of tighter moves. Then we did a wide master of the scene and got all the coverage. Then we did a reverse master of the scene and started doing coverage on that. Then came all the reaction shots for everyone in the bank. And by this time, the crew was starting to grumble, because every one of us knew what was going wrong.

As it turned out, my department had an intern, and he was still watching all this with complete newbie glee. As the day (and the bank robbery) wore on and on, he asked me what everyone was getting so grumpy about. After all, weren’t these all cool shots? I agreed they were, but pointed out that at least half of them were a waste of time. When he asked why, I came up with this way to explain it.

“When all this gets cut together,” I told him, pointing at one of our extras “you can only use one shot of them robbing that bank teller. You can break it up a bit, but not much because it’s happening so fast. At the end of the day, you can only rob teller number five once, so filming nine different versions of her getting robbed is a waste of time. If this guy knew what he was doing, he’d just get the shots he was going to use and that’d be it.”

The intern took those words to heart, and two or three more times during that project he’d give me a nod on days when scenes were just dragging and say “You can only rob teller number five once.”

The point of the story being, I know at least one person has gotten something useful out of my rambling.

No, wait, sorry, the point is that when you’re telling a story you can’t do the same thing again and again and expect it to have the same weight.

There’s an idea in literary theory (sorry, I do have to go there now and then) which says you can only experience a story for the first time once. After that first time, your brain can’t help but restructure your view of the story to see it with more experienced eyes. If you’ve ever read a mystery novel for a second time, or maybe rewatched films like The Sixth Sense, Dead Again, or The Prestige, you know it’s a very different experience when you go through these stories a second time. Or a third time. But you can never, ever get that first time again. Even something like The Empire Strikes Back changes between the first and second exposure to the material.

This is why we all hate spoilers, because the innocence, so to speak, of that first experience is being taken away from us and we can never get it back. To be honest, this is also one of the problems I have with the “film school” approach to movies. A lot of these folks get taught to study and dissect films rather than to watch them, so the first time with the story is lost on these people. They never see the movie the way it was intended to be seen—they just jump straight to the second viewing. Which seems counterproductive when you want to learn how to do something. It’s like going to cooking school and never bothering to taste anything.

Anyway... I digress. But not by much.

There’s another aspect to doing the same thing more than once, and this is the idea of noise. A few times before I’ve brought up Damon Knight and his wonderful observation about facts. A fact we don’t know is information, but a fact we already know is noise. This is true even if we just learned the fact ten or fifteen pages earlier.

An example...

I read a book a while back where one piece of information was “revealed” four times. Essentially, character A discovered a mysterious South American temple that shouldn’t exist. Then A was killed and B found his notes, so B discovered the temple. B quickly related the story to C and then C explained the whole thing to D, so now D learned about the temple. And D... well D was pretty high-ranking, so he went to the President and told the whole Cabinet about the temple. And every single time people would have incredulous reactions and then the reader got the explanation of what the temple represented and who built and how we know it’s ten thousand years old and what we think it is.

Every. Single. Time.

Y’see, Timmy, that information is powerful the first time we hear it. Like so many things that get repeated, though, it loses power every time. In this case, it’s not just losing power, it’s taking a rapid plunge from information to noise.

Plus, it’s taken a huge emotional hit. Finding out that the pyramid strongly implied, if not proved, a pre-human civilization was amazing... the first time. The second time it was something we already knew, even if it was new to this particular character. The third time it was annoying. By the fourth time, personally, I was skimming.

Here’s an easier example, and one we’ve all probably dealt with at some point or another. Have you ever had someone tell a joke (or what they thought was a joke) and then they repeated the punchline when no one laughed? Maybe they repeated it two or three times. Perhaps they went after people one on one (“Hey, Timmy, did you hear when Mike said he wasn’t putting in enough hours and I said ‘That’s what she said’..”). In these situations, as the joke was repeated again and again, we all just got more and more annoyed, didn’t we?

Now, anytime a writer has a fair-sized cast of characters and an even slightly challenging plot, they’re going to have to deal with this issue. You can’t have everybody walking around together experiencing every single thing at the same time. Which means there are going to be points when A and B know something C and D don’t. The trick is coming up with ways to share that information without having the story come to a grinding halt while characters discuss things the reader already knows.

I bring this up not just because of the head-banging nature of that book I referenced above, or because of scarring memories of the bank robbery. Y’see, this is something I’m dealing with right now. In my current project I’m juggling a large cast who are investigating a mystery separately, but keep coming together to compare notes. I know my mystery, but the roadblock is getting past awkward infodump scenes without neglecting this character or that one. I mean, Debbie’s reaction to what they found in the sub-basement is just as valid as Pash’s, isn’t it? She just had the bad luck of having to work that day so she couldn’t go exploring and had to get that information second hand.

You get one chance for your big reveal and that’s it. One. You can’t keep revealing it again and again and expect that reveal to have the same emotional weight. It’s also not going to draw the audience in, because it’s gone from being a surprise to being... well, just another fact.

And if you’re not careful, repetitive facts can get dry and boring really quick.

Next week, I’d like to tell you about the time I sat around for hours watching the most inefficient bank robbery ever.

No, actually, next time I’d like to describe something you’ve probably never seen before.

Until then, go write.

Background Noise

A multi-purpose title, as will hopefully become clear.

Submitted for your approval is one Theresa Cano. Theresa was a character in the early drafts of The Suffering Map, my first solid attempt at a novel. She’s a young woman who works as a cleaning lady in San Diego to pay for her night courses in computer engineering. Theresa’s going to build the first thinking computer, you see. As it turns out, one of Theresa’s regular employers is an antique store owner named Lois Antanello. Lois is kind of an old bitch, to be honest (she is one of the lesser villians of the book), but she pays well so Theresa bites her tongue when Lois snidely refers to her “immigrant accent.” Theresa has no accent, you see, because her family’s been living (legally) in southern California for about fifty years longer than the Antanellos, who showed up just after World War II. As it happens in the story, Theresa is working there in the antique shop one day when Lois gets a disturbing phone call from her namesake, her Uncle Louis, who is, as some folks might say, a very bad man.

Keep all that in mind. We’ll be getting back to Theresa in a bit.

Names and descriptions are a kind of shorthand for readers. They let the readers know this person is important. They could be the protagonist’s best friend, an old lover, or an old rival. Maybe we’re supposed to note the color of their eyes or just remember them when their dead body shows up fifty pages from now. We don’t know yet why they’re important because the story’s just beginning. But when the writer takes the time to give us someone’s name and what they look like, that’s a sign to us we need to remember this person. They’re an actual character.

As such, a horrible mistake beginning writers tend to make is when they name and describe everyone. Every single person on the page gets a name, age, body type, ethnicity, and a quick (or not so quick) personal history. This is great for your main character, but it really sucks for the waitress who’s just saying “your drink, sir,” and putting a glass on the table.

The problem is that naming everyone clutters the story with characters. Yes, characters are great and they really make your writing. You can’t have good writing without good characters. However, pointless characters just drag on a story. As the reader, I’m trying to keep track of the important people and getting bombarded with the unimportant ones. An excess of characters is like that lady on the sinking ship who keeps insisting she needs to bring all fifty items of luggage into the lifeboat. All we really need to get moving is to get her in the lifeboat, but as long as she’s taking her time with hatboxes, makeup cases, and steamer trunks we’re not going anywhere.

Did you catch that? The sentence where I listed out all the types of luggage was kind of clumsy, wasn’t it? Because we don’t need to know all that. Your mind trips over it because, as an experienced reader, you instinctively know it’s not that relevant.

In his book Creating Short Fiction (check out the carousel at the bottom of the page) Damon Knight explains that a fact we don’t know is information, but a fact we already know is just noise. I’d add to that by saying a fact we don’t need to know is also noise, it just takes a bit longer to recognize it.

This mistake is lethal in scripts. Would you spend a full paragraph describing that waitress in so much detail in a novel? Then why would you do it in a screenplay, where the object is to make your writing as lean and tight as possible? Think about it. One hundred and fifty words spent on the hopes and dreams and legs of the cute waitress is 150 words you don’t get to spend on your main character. Or on that climactic action scene. So why waste those words on someone who doesn’t matter? There’s a reason people in film production refer to those folks as “background” or “extras,” and not as cast members. If we know she’s a cute waitress, that’s all we need to know.

Can you imagine reading the lobby scene in The Matrix if every person was named and described? The four cops at the metal detector when Neo and Trinity walk in. The two dozen guards who come filing out into the lobby. The whole scene would drag like nobody’s business. It’d be four pages of description before Neo even pulled out his second set of guns. Sure, maybe those guys have wives, kids, rich lives, and a lot of that, but for the purposes of this story they’re just there to catch a lot of bullets and a few kicks from Trinity. The screenwriters of The Matrix knew that none of those guys mattered, which is why that scene is barely half a page long.

And, yes, I used to do this myself. Remember Theresa? She existed for no other purpose but to overhear the start of a phone conversation. We never saw her before. We never saw her again. When I removed her from The Suffering Map it didn’t even cause a ripple. She was nothing more than a clever way to get into the scene and fill an extra two pages. Once I realized that, I knew she had to go.

It’s not just excess characters, though. Any decription can be rich and lush and vivid, but what it will be, no question, is a pause in the story. A big description means a big pause and a big pause gives me time to wonder if I should be doing the laundry rather than reading. Do we need to know exactly what this apartment looks like? Every detail of how Yakko is dressed? Each line and panel and rivet of that armored exo-skeleton? The readers are going to fill in a lot of that for themselves, so if you’re spending time doing it--especially on elements that have no real bearing on the story--you’re just shooting your writing in the foot.

Now some folks might argue that such elaborate descriptions of every character, major and minor, is what makes writing great. To a small extent, they are right. To a far larger extent, they’re wanking off. Leonardo wasn’t scared of painting empty space when it was needed. Shakespeare knew sometimes a soldier was just a soldier and a crowd didn’t need to be anything more than a crowd. If you think you’ve got a better sense of art than them, knock yourself out.

When you write, make sure you’re focused on the foreground, and not spending your time and energy and pages on those distracting background elements.

Next week, something a bit more definitive. I’m going to prattle on something the reader should never, ever see in your writing.

Until then, go write.

...And I'll Use Small Words!

So, one last time. Because some of you are having problems with it.

Take the bowl out of the cupboard and put it on the counter. Take the cereal out of the cupboard. Open the cereal box, open the wax-paper bag inside the box, and pour the cereal into the bowl. Do not overfill the bowl. When you've finished, close the box back up and return it to the cabinet. Now, take the milk out of the refrigerator. Unscrew the cap (counter-clockwise) and remove it. Pour the milk over the cereal in the bowl. Watch the edges and make sure the bowl does not overflow. If you plan on moving the bowl to another location to eat, do not let the milk fill the top half inch of the bowl. Once the appropriate amount of milk has been poured, replace the cap (screwing it on clockwise) and return the milk to the refrigerator. Open the drawer and get a spoon. Using the spoon, transfer an amount of the cereal and milk from the bowl to your mouth. Close your mouth around the spoon but do not bite down with your teeth. Slide the spoon out between your lips, keeping them sealed. Chew the cereal in your mouth. Swallow. Return the spoon to the bowl and repeat this process until all the cereal has been chewed and swallowed.

Now, let's be honest with each other for a moment.

How many of you started skimming halfway through that?

It's okay. I was writing it and I started skimming. It was boring as hell to write, I can't imagine reading it was any better.

This is why so much exposition sucks. It's all summed up right there in that fascinating paragraph. Allow me to explain.

Again.

First, that paragraph is something we know. Exposition is boring and pointless if the audience (either watching or reading) knows all the information being put forth. It's just wasting time while we wait for something to happen. Damon Knight has pointed out that a fact we don't know is information, but a fact we do know is just noise. No one wants to read a story full of noise. So, as writers, we need to know what our audience knows and work around that. If I'm writing a story set in the late 1930s or '40s, I don't need to explain to anyone that Nazis are the bad guys.

Second is the skimming that happened when you read that paragraph. People (or characters) don't want to sit through something they already know. Can you imagine my doctor sitting patiently while I explain the circulatory system to him? Hell, a first year med student knows more about the circulatory system than I do. There'd be absolutely no point to me explaining it and no point to him sitting through the explanation. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the two federal agents (and the audience) pay attention to Indy's lesson about Ark of the Covenant because it's something they don't know. After all, that's not their field of expertise. Notice that in the same scene, Marcus isn't listening with rapt fascination. He almost comes across as mildly bored, and he probably is because he already knows this.

Third, and last, is that a lengthy explanation about how to prepare and eat cereal serves no purpose here. None. This is a blog about writing tips, so a paragraph like that is a waste of space. Nobody came here looking for information like that and the people who are looking for stuff like that won't be looking here. As I've mentioned once or thrice before, there's a reason Indy's lecture to the feds doesn't involve Masada, even thought the story of Masada is very cool and the odds are they don't know it--it just isn't relevant. He also doesn't tell them about that cool time when he was a kid and those guys chased him on a circus train. The feds don't know about that, either, but it's probably less relevant than the Masada story.

A few times here on the ranty blog I've mentioned something I call the ignorant stranger which I came up with while writing a DVD review of Shogun four or five years ago. It's a simple, sure-fire way to use as much exposition as you want in a short story, screenplay, or novel--you just have a source of information explain something to someone who does not know these facts.

Easy, right? Just remember these two things...

One, your ignorant stranger has to be on the same level as your readers or viewers. The audience is learning alongside them, and they don’t want to wait while the stranger’s educated on what policemen do for a living, where England is on a map, and why you shouldn't play in traffic. There’s a big difference between ignorance and stupidity, and the ignorant stranger can’t actually be stupid. It’s only this particular situation that has put him or her at a disadvantage.

Two, the source explaining things has to be smarter than the stranger, and thus, smarter than your audience. If what’s being explained is something we can figure out on our own (or something that we’ll never need to know) then the Source is wasting everyone's time by explaining it. Remember, you want information, not noise. Yeah, maybe for whatever reason this particular Source doesn’t know much about football, noir detective movies, or the eternal mystery that is woman, but on the topic they’re explaining this character needs to be an authority. It needs to be clear the Source’s knowledge dwarfs the ignorant stranger’s on this topic.

So there it is. If anyone tries to tell you only bad writers use exposition in a story, tell them it's only the bad writers who don't know how to use exposition. And then look smug while you eat your Captain Crunch.

Next time, by request, I want to talk about balloons.

Until then, go write.

The First Rule of Fight Club

Starting the year off late, which doesn't set a good precedent, but also with a surprisingly clever pop-culture reference (as you'll come to see), which does. If you don't know the reference... go. Just go. I'm not joking, please leave now.

All those wanna-bes and posers gone?

Good. So, I figured I'd start by ranting about something I see crop up more and more in fiction. Would-be screenwriters, this week might be a bit thin for you, but if you follow along, who knows, I may say something clever.

Anyway, there’s a fiction writer (and sometimes writing coach) named Damon Knight who points out that first person is really a bit of a trap. A lot of people use it because they think it makes their story more personal, more realistic, and easier to get into. It also creates an instant character in the story—the narrator.

Truth is, though, first person is one of the most difficult tenses to write well. It isn’t personal, it isn’t realistic, and it makes it extremely difficult to create a character. I mean if it's so easy, why aren't the so-called hacks like Stephen King or Dean Koontz using it more often? Oh, sure, King's written a few first person short stories, a novella or two, but the vast majority of his work is plain old third person perspective.

The reasons first person is so tough are kind of invisible, which is why it's a trap. They're things that make perfect sense when they get pointed out, but until then... well, it's easy to wander in, set off a dozen tripwires, step into the beam of light, and suddenly you're at the bottom of a deep hole. Hopefully not one filled with stakes.

To be clear, I'm not saying first person is a bad tense to write a story in. Far from it. Some of my favorite stories are written from this perspective, and it is some gorgeous, genius writing. It's definitely not an easy viewpoint, though. Even experienced writers will run into a lot of problems with it, and inexperienced writers will often hit them at terminal velocity.

Here are a couple of those hidden problems. If you've got a first person story, you may want to take a glance through and make sure it doesn't suffer from any of them.

The first problem is suspense and tension. You've probably heard this one before, because it's one of the first issues that needs to be addressed in a story with this perspective. Any story has to have a degree of conflict and tension, but in a first person story a thick layer of that tension is scraped off the top because of the format. If we're only halfway through the book, we know there has to be more than the narrator's tale than just getting the girl. We also know the main character isn't going to be killed in a first person tale because... well, they're telling us the story.

Yeah, there've been a couple clever stories that have gotten around this roadblock, but they usually do it with a bit of a cop out. At this point, enough stories have revealed their first-person character is a ghost, angel, vampire, or some such thing that this reveal is probably just going to frustrate or bore readers more than anything else.

From this angle, writing in first person just drives us into a corner.

Next, first person is a very limited viewpoint. The reader can only see, hear, and experience things the main character does. We never get to see the other side of the door and we have no idea what happens to Wakko when he leaves the room. We don't get the suspense of us knowing something's happening that the character doesn't know about. This also means we can't be privy to extra detail, nor can we have any doubt if something did or didn't register with the main character.

By its very nature, this also requires most first person stories to be told from a very "average-man" level. If the character is too smart and figures things out too fast, it kills the story. If said character is rock-stupid and can't solve a single problem, it kills the story and frustrates the reader. Consider that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective stories are told in first person, but not by Holmes. They're told by Watson, a very smart and able doctor--but nowhere near the range of his best friend.

So, from this angle, writing in first person drives us into another corner. A different corner, yes, but a corner nonetheless.

Another problem that relates back to viewpoint is that you can't have forward motion in your story without action, and the common way action grinds to a halt is when the writer stops for description. I mentioned a while back that the problem with pausing to describe details about the main character's height, weight, eye and hair color, shoe size, skin tone, education, and preferred underwear color (sorry Facebook folks) is that everything comes to a halt while we do.

This kind of gear-grinding stop is bad enough in a regular story, but in a first person story what's the only way we can get this description? That's right-- if the main character starts talking about themselves. And what would you think of me if I spent the next ten or fifteen minutes talking about my chiseled abs, broad shoulders, or rock hard glutes (all of which, I can assure you, are a complete fabrication).

So in a first person story, this kind of description brings the story to a halt and it makes your main character look more than a bit egotistical. What kind of woman writes two pages in her diary about how hot she is? How much of a ninja are you if you pause to admire your posture and build in a convenient mirror?

Heck, imagine how awkward this would seem in a horror or adventure story? I open the door to reveal the armed terrorist/ hungry zombie/ angry ninja and I pause to describe them as they're leaping at me. The thing is, we see a lot faster than we can write or read. My first person character may register a lot of details, but it's a very tricky balance leaving those details in or out during moments of action. I can notice the ninja is a woman with green eyes and a wisp of red hair peeking out of her hood, but if I pause to say that it seems that she's just standing there in a very un-ninja-ish way. If I describe her afterwards, I now have to pause and refer back to something the character actually saw two or three pages back.

And so, here we are, written into a corner again.

For the record, I've just decided the word for a female ninja will be ninjette. At least for our purposes here. Just thought I'd get that in writing.

Now, Knight has a nice exercise in his book Creating Short Fiction. What he suggests is to rewrite a few chapters into third person with as few changes as possible. Don't restructure, don't add anything-- just turn me into him or her. He really suggests rewriting the whole thing, but he’s usually talking about short stories. Twenty or thirty pages will do for most of us here.

Once you've done this, re-read your story. If the character you had in first person has vanished, it’s because there wasn’t a character there to start with. Just the illusion of one. If your story vanishes... well, there's some work to be done. That's the trick of first person, and why you have to be careful with it. It gives the impression of creating a personality and defining a person, but it rarely does.

This ranty blog (any blog, really) is a great example of a first person trick. I may seem personable, funny, and clever--but do any of you reading this actually know me? Okay, granted, a handful actually do, but I know there's another, much larger handful that wouldn't know me if they bumped into me on the street. It feels like you know me, my likes, my dislikes--you may even have an image of me in your head. Once you stop and think about it, though... you really don't. Try writing down a rough character sketch of me based off the two or twenty times you've read something here and you'll be surprised how little there really is. If I rewrote this post as a third-person column I would vanish altogether.

Which is a great time to wrap this up.

Next week I'd like to take a moment to re-introduce the blog for those who came in late. It's still early in 2010 and I've been at this for almost a year and a half, so it might be good for all of us to recap.

Until then, go write.

The Ignorant Stranger

Exposition gets a bad rap.

People like to shriek that exposition kills a story, brings things to a grinding halt, and you’ll never make a sale if you use a lot of exposition. It’s an easy target, which is why lots of gurus warn against it and so many people latch onto it as an ironclad rule to be obeyed until the end of time. They can’t figure out how to do it, therefore no one should do it.

Of course, exposition isn’t a problem in and of itself, only when it’s part of bad writing. Honestly, you need to have exposition at some point or your story’s probably going to leave a lot of unanswered questions (and not in the good way). If you want proof, just look at a handful of the mildly successful movies or novels that use tons of exposition.

Star Wars – Ignoring the fact every movie in this series begins with a two minute text scroll, let’s look at the classic first film. Obi Wan spends a good four or five minutes explaining to Luke what the Force is and how it works. Darth Vader has to explain his relationship with Obi-Wan. The rebels have to explain the plans to the Death Star and how they’ll exploit its weakness.

Shogun—James Clavell’s best selling novel involves constant explanation as Captain Blackthorne, called Anji-san (Sir Pilot) by his captors, is forced to learn the Japanese language and culture in order to survive. He has to learn from scratch and drags the audience along with him.

Raiders of the Lost Ark – Right in the beginning of the film, Indiana Jones and Marcus Brody have to tell the two visiting federal agents about the legend of the Ark, its mythic powers, and where it may be hidden, a lecture that comes complete with pictures and chalkboard diagrams. Note that the two Feds don’t need to explain who the Nazis are and why they’re bad—everyone knows this.

The DaVinci Code – In Dan Brown’s bestselling novel, which pauses to explain historical details every ten or fifteen pages or so, Langdon and Sophie pause for two whole chapters in Leigh Teabing’s library while he relates a dozen or so different hypotheses about the blood line of Jesus, his relationship with Mary Magdalene, and how the Catholic Church has corrupted the Bible over the centuries to serve their own needs.

The Matrix—This movie has a staggering amount of exposition considering it’s known as a dynamic action film. It begins with characters discussing Neo (in voice-over no less), moves through Trinity and Morpheus each describing the mystery of the Matrix, and then Morpheus explaining the truth of it once Neo wakes up in the real world. The crew is explaining things constantly as Neo’s training begins. Cypher gets a little speech, so does Agent Smith... the exposition just goes on and on and on in this film.

Now, Damon Knight makes an interesting point in his book Creating Short Fiction (go buy it—most of his lessons are universal for fiction writing). A fact you don’t know that’s presented to you is information. It holds your attention for the sheer reason it’s something new. A fact you already know that’s presented to you is noise. It’s something you want to ignore and block out so you can get past it and back to the good stuff. This is why a lot of exposition fails—it’s information the audience either already knows or would be able to figure out on their own with minimal effort.

I’ll add one other tenet to that little point. Relevance. Information the reader needs for this story is vital. Information that has nothing to do with the story is wasting time and space. The catch here is the audience won’t know if something’s relevant or not until the final scene or the last page (although sometimes it’s painfully obvious). Notice in the above-mentioned scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, the good Doctor Jones doesn’t progress into a lecture on Masada, the fortress-city where almost a thousand Jews were besieged by the Romans in 70 AD before committing mass suicide rather than be captured. The first time we all sat down, we wouldn’t’ve know any better and I have no doubt screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan could give us a completely gripping lecture on Masada. But then we’d reach the end of the film and say “What the hell was all that stuff about a fortress in there for?” Masada has nothing to do with the story of Raiders, which is why no one talks about it.

All those stories mentioned up above manage to pull off their reams of dialogue because they all do it essentially the same way. People in the know are giving information to people not in the know who need it. Years ago while writing one of my very first DVD reviews (for the miniseries adaptation of Shogun, actually) I came up with a term for this which I call the ignorant stranger. It’s when a character who is a source of information gets to do an infodump on a less-educated character. The name comes from John Blackthorne, the main character of Shogun, a man who is ignorant of Japan’s culture and language for the simple reason that it’s all completely new to him—an ignorant stranger. This is a surefire, never-fail, completely acceptable way to have exposition in your writing.

So, keeping that in mind, here’s the only two things you must remember so you can pull off the ignorant stranger in your writing.

First, the ignorant stranger can’t actually be stupid—there’s a big difference between ignorance and stupidity. It’s this particular situation that has put him, her, or them at a disadvantage. Your stranger has to be on the same level as your readers or viewers. We, the audience, are learning alongside them, so we don’t want to wait while the stranger’s educated on where hamburgers come from, what firemen do for a living, where Oklahoma is on a map, and who his friends and family members are.

Second, the Source explaining things has to be smarter than the stranger, and thus, smarter than your audience. If what’s being explained is something we can figure out on our own, or something that we’ll never need to know (within the scope of this story), then the Source is wasting their time, the ignorant stranger’s, and ours by explaining it. Remember, you want information, not noise. Yeah, maybe for whatever reason the Source doesn’t know much about U.S. currency, cooking on a grill, or this thing called love, but on the topic they’re explaining this character needs to be an authority. They don’t need a degree of some kind, the audience just needs to be clear the Source’s knowledge and understanding dwarf the ignorant stranger’s.

That’s it. Follow those two simple rules and you’ll be amazed how well exposition can work in your novels, screenplays, and short stories.

Speaking of which... aren’t you supposed to be writing?