Our Story Begins Ten Years Ago...

            For those who came in late...

            So we’re in the middle of a big discussion/lecture/infodump about story structure.  To be more exact, the different types of story structure, because there are several of them and they all serve a different purpose.  If you missed me blabbing about linear structure last week, you might want to jump back and read that first.  Or maybe re-read it as sort of a refresher before we dive into this week’s little rant.

            Speaking of which...

            Now I want to talk about narrative structure.  Remember how I said linear structure is how the characters experience the story?  The narrative structure is how the author decides to tell the story.  It’s the manner and style and order I choose for how things will unfold.  A flashback is part of the narrative structure, as are flashforwards, prologues, epilogues, and “our story begins ten years ago...”  If you studied (or over-studied) this sort of stuff in college, your professor may have tossed out the term syuzhet. 

            One more note before I dive in.  Within my story there might be a device or point of view, like a first person narrator, which gives the appearance of “telling” the story.  For the purposes of this little rant, though, if I talk about the narration I’m talking about me, the writer, and the choices I make. Because I’m God when it comes to this story, and the narrator doesn’t do or say anything I don’t want them to.

            That being said...  here we go.

            In a good number of stories, the linear structure and narrative structure are identical.  Things start with Wakko on Monday, follows him to Tuesday, and conclude on Wednesday. Simple, straightforward, and very common.  My book, The Fold, fits in this category.  It’s loaded with twists and reveals, but the linear structure parallels the narrative.  Same with Autumn Christian’s We Are Wormwood, Dan Abnett’s The Warmaster, or Maggie Shen King’s An Excess Male.  These books may shift point of view or format, but they still follow a pretty straightforward linear narrative.

            We don’t need to talk about this type of narrative too much because... well, we already did.  When my narrative matches my linear structure, any possible narrative issues will also be linear ones.  And we discussed those last week.

            There are just as many stories, though, where the narrative doesn’t follow the timeline of the story.  Sometimes the writer does this with flashbacks, where a story is mostly linear with a few small divergences. In other instances, the story might split between multiple timeframes. Or the story may be broken up into numerous sections and the reader needs to follow clues as to how they all line up.  These are often called non-linear stories, or you may have heard it as non-linear storytelling (it was the hip new thing for a while there).  My own Ex-Heroes series employs numerous flashbacks, all in their own linear order.  So does F. Paul Wilson’s latest, The God Gene.  In his “Vicious Circuit” novels, Robert Brockway splits almost every other chapter between present day and the events of forty-odd years ago.

            Narrative structure involves more than just switching around my story elements, though.  It’s not just something I can do off the cuff in an attempt to look trendy.  If I’ve chosen to jump around a bit (or a lot) in my narrative, there’s a few things I have to keep in mind. 

            Be warned, we’re moving into an area that requires a little more skill and practice.

            First off, putting things in a new narrative order can’t change the linear logic of my story.  As I mentioned above, the week goes Monday through Friday, and this is true even if the first thing I tell you about is what happened on Thursday.  Monday was still three days earlier, and the characters and events in my story have to acknowledge that.  I can’t start my book with everyone on Thursday baffled who stole the painting, then roll the story back to Monday where everyone was a witnesses and saw the thief’s face.  If they knew then, they have to know now.  If I have Yakko act surprised to find a dog in his house on Friday and then have the narrative jump to him adopting the dog from a shelter on Tuesday, I’m going to look like an idiot while my linear structure collapses. 

            These are kinda stupid, overly-simple examples, yeah, but you’d be surprised how often I’ve seen this problem crop up.  Writers want to switch stuff around in clever ways, but ignore the fact that the logic of their story collapses when the narrative elements are put in linear order.  This is an easy problem to avoid, it just requires a little time and work.

            The second thing to keep in mind when experimenting with narrative structure is... why?  Why am I breaking up my story instead of telling it in order?  Sure, all that non-linear stuff is edgy and bold, but... what’s the point of it in my story?  Why am I starting ten years ago instead of today?  Why do I have that flashback at that point?  How is the narrative improved by shaping it this way?

            Now, these may sound like silly questions, and I’m sure many artsy folks would sweep them aside with a dry laugh.  But they really deserve some serious thought. I talked a little while ago about how when my reader knows things can greatly affect the type of story I want to tell.  By rearranging the linear order, I’m changing when people learn things.

            And if this new narrative form doesn’t change when people learn things... again, what’s the point?

            The  third and final issue with having different narrative and linear structures is that people need to be able to follow my plot.  I mentioned last time that we all try to put things in linear order because it’s natural for us. It’s pretty much an automatic function of our brains.  This flashback took place before that one.  That’s a flash forward.  This flashback’s showing us something we saw earlier, but from a different point of view.

            The catch here is that I chop my narrative up too much, people are going to spend less time reading my story and more time... well, deciphering it.  My readers will hit the seventh flashback and they’ll try to figure out how it relates to the last six.  And as they have to put more and more effort into reorganizing the story (instead of getting immersed in said story), it’s going to break the flow.  If I keep piling on flashbacks and flash-forwards, and parallel stories... that flow’s going to stay broken.  Shattered even.

            And when I break the flow, that’s when people set my book aside to go watch YouTube videos.  No, it doesn’t matter how many clever phrases or perfect words I have.  People can’t get invested in my story if they can’t figure out what my story is.  And if they can’t get invested... that’s it.

            Y’see, Timmy, narrative structure can be overdone if I’m not careful.  This is something that can be really hard to spot and fix, because it’s going to depend a lot on my ability to put myself in the reader’s shoes.  Since I know the whole linear story from the moment I sit down, the narrative is always going to make a lot more sense to me, but for someone just picking it up... this might be a bit of a  pile.  Maybe even a steaming one.

            That’s narrative structure.  However I decide to tell my story, it still needs to have a linear structure. Perhaps even more important, it still needs to be understandable. 

            Next time, I’ll try to explain how linear structure and narrative structure combine to (hopefully) form a powerful dramatic structure.

            Until then... go write.

The Happy Ending

            Oh, get your mind out of the gutter...

           Well, it’s been a brutal week on a couple levels. And it’s the holiday season, I think we can all use a little cheering up, don’t you?  So let’s talk about some good stuff.

            And I’ll start by talking about what happens in the grim, dark future...

            As I’ve mentioned once or thrice here, I’m a bit of a geek.  One of my biggest geekery hobbies by far is Warhammer 40K.  If you’re not familiar with the game, it takes place in the distant future (around the year 40,000—surprise!) where mankind has risen, fallen, risen, fallen again, risen one last time... and is now pretty much on the way out.  Not immediately. Not in our lifetime.  But the glory days are gone and the Empire of Man is well past middle aged and fighting to hang on to its driver's license, if you get my drift.

            When my lovely lady and I first started hanging out, she expressed interest in this silly toy soldiers game, and—being a geek—I immediately started telling her about the different armies and the massive back story and setting of the game.  And after a few hours of listening to stories of the waning Imperium, she finally laughed and said, “Why would anyone want to live in this world?  I’d just kill myself.”

            Which is a fair point.  To be honest, I hadn’t been fond of some of the earlier stories myself.  They were just bleak as hell. You may have heard the term “grimdark” used for some fiction.  It actually comes from this game.  That phrase I used up above, “in the grim, dark future”—that’s part of Warhammer 40K’s tagline.

            Of course, it’s not just the little toy soldiers.  The grimdark label ends up on a lot of things these days.  Urban fantasy stories.  Post-apocalypse stories.  Superhero stories.  And this isn’t just about genre books.  People try to do “serious” books all the time that are nothing but sadness, misery, and death.  There’s a common belief that making things gritty and dark, and edgy automatically makes them more “mature.”   I’ve mentioned once or thrice before how some writers think having bleak, depressing endings is artistic because it’s more “real.”

            I’m sure you can think of plenty of examples of this.

            The catch is, this gritifying of stories rarely works.  Usually making something grim and dark just makes it... well, grim and dark.  That’s it.  Seriously, check out bestselling books or big box-office movies.  The popular stuff almost always leans toward lighter and fun.  A lot of it has (gasp) happy endings.

            As another famous sci-fi icon once said, it’s not enough to live.  You have to have something to live for.

            Again, why would anyone want to live in my fictional world?  Seriously.  Take a moment and think about it.

            What saved the world of Warhammer 40K for me was the writing of folks like Dan Abnett and Sandy Mitchell.  They added a human element.  They told stories that involved jokes and drinking buddies and love and people just enjoying their lives.  Heck, Abnett had a whole subplot in one book about a toymaker saving his business by building wind-up robots.
            I’ve gotten a lot of praise for my Ex-Heroes series.  It’s a series that’s lasted through five book so far, and across six years. Long after when many people said zombies were... well, dead.  And I believe a lot of that praise and success comes from one simple thing.

            It’s a post-apocalyptic story, but it’s a hopeful one.  Yeah, things are overall awful, but the characters are actively trying to make life better.  They choose to move forward rather than do nothing or wallow in the past.  They laugh.  They love.  They play games.  They flirt.  They celebrate.  They have fun.  A lot of their life is stressful and difficult, but it’s not every-minute-every-hour-every-day stressful and difficult.

            And it’s important to see these other moments because now we know why the characters are going on.  We know what they’re living for.  Deadpool is a story about hopelessness and terminal diseases and bloody revenge, but it’s also a story where Wade and Vanessa pretty much screw each other silly for an entire year before he proposes with a Voltron ring

            Resist the urge to have nothing but grim darkness.  Don’t be scared about having a good thing or three happen in your story.  Don’t think you can’t have any light-hearted moments. 

            Believe in the happy ending!

            On which note, I hope you all have a fantastic weekend and (if it’s your holiday) a very Happy Christmas.

            Try and get a little writing in before then.

The Scooby Ambiguity

            Not a pop-culture reference to the title of a Middleman episode.

            But it could’ve been...

            So sorry I’m behind in the ranty blog.  Between finishing the new manuscript and Texas Frightmare, the past few weeks have been a blur.  I think I’m back on schedule now, though, and you should be getting very regular posts for the next few weeks.

            I was trying to come up for a term for the idea I wanted to get across this week, and my girlfriend suggested the Scooby Ambiguity.  Which fit perfectly and also helped me structure my little rant.  As before, I’m hoping this becomes a standard term in storytelling.

            Allow me to explain.

            I’m sure most of you reading this are familiar with the basic plot of a Scooby-Doo episode.  The gang rolls into town and encounters some kind of ghost or monster, usually three or four times.  Then Velma finds some clues, applies some deductive reasoning, and reveals the ancient mummy to be Dr. Najib, the museum currator, in a disguise.

            (For the record, there’s a fantastic article about Scooby Doo and secular humanism over here at Comics Alliance.  No, really.  It’s also makes some brilliant observation about character and setting, so check it out.)

           Now, every now and then, in a Scooby episode or another story structured like it, we’ll have a moment of confusion, often near the end.  We’ll get one fact that doesn’t match up.  If Dr. Najib was in the costume... then who was the mummy we saw in the old tomb? There weren’t any other accomplices.  The film projector was shut off.  Could that have really been... the mummy?

            (cue spooky music)

            You’ve probably seen this sort of thing in a lot of stories.  It’s a pretty classic “...or is it?” device.  One of the first times I remember seeing it in was the old X-Men/ Teen Titans crossover penned by Chris Claremont, when the ghost of Jean Grey shows up to warn the X-Men about Darkseid.  Simply put, the Scooby Ambiguity is the one element that doesn’t fit in my established setting. 

            Now, when done right, this can be a wonderful thing.  When handled with a light touch, it can give the audience a little thrill of excitement.  It might even count as a minor twist.

            When done wrong, though... well, your story falls apart

            For example...

            There’s a series of fairly successful books I read now and then.  I’ll be polite and not name them, even though they’re kind of a guilty pleasure.  I know they’re awful on several levels, and they always frustrate me for one reason or another, but I can’t help myself...

            Anyway, the series is firmly grounded in the real world.  Real locations, real law enforcement, real problems.  It’s a lot like Scooby Doo, in fact.  There are stories about zombies, mummies, and vampires, but in the end we get a solid, scientific explanation for these things, and more than a few times someone actually gets a mask pulled off.

            In one of the books,  the main character is a passenger on a jumbo jet with an unknown killer on the loose, and a huge stormfront is actually keeping them in the air, forcing them onward rather than trying to land. 

            Then, in the last hundred pages or so, we learn the killer is actually the physically manifested psychic energy of four passengers who are all projecting their Id out into the world.

            No, I’m serious.  Out of nowhere, in the middle of this reality-based story, the killer is a telepathically-created monster.

            On the flipside, consider Dan Abnett’s ongoing book series about Gaunt’s Ghosts.  It’s a sci-fi war story about soldiers during a massive interplanetary crusade.  There’s guns, tanks, ongoing logistics and morale issues.

            And every now and then... a miracle.  Nothing gigantic, nothing that couldn’t be written off as odd coincidence or luck.  Yet Colonel-Commissar Gaunt and his men are following the crusade path of Saint Sabbat, and they do seem to attract a lot of coincidences and a lot of luck.  It never wins the day for them, and it never leaves much in the way of evidence, but it is there and the colonel-commissar is often left feeling a bit confused and in awe of it in the aftermath.

            Y’see, Timmy, the Scooby Ambiguity works great as a thinly-connected side note, but the minute I make it a major element of my main plot, things start to crumble.  Either I’m writing about a world where X can happen or I’m not.  By its very nature, the ambiguity doesn’t fit within my established world, so making it a major part of my plot creates a jarring distraction that breaks the flow.

            This isn’t to say I can’t have a story about homicidal psychic-energy monsters, but if I do it needs to be clear from the start that this is a world where such things can exist.  If not, pulling some bizarre element out of left field is going to alienate a lot more readers than it impresses.

            And alienated readers often find something else to do rather than finish reading.

            Next time, not to sound morose, but I wanted to talk a bit about death.

            Until then, go write.

That’s Crossing The Line!

            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.

Lifts and Supports

Perverts. Your minds always go there, don’t they?

By the way, I’d like to take this moment to note that this marks my 100th post on this here ranty blog. Who would’ve ever guessed I’d have this much to say about writing. Well, without it devolving into incoherent jabbering and a lot of gestures.

Anyway...

There’s a comic book writer/ novelist/ screenwriter by the name of Peter David. If you’re reading this and haven’t heard of him, I highly recommend hitting Borders or Amazon and grabbing one or three samples of his work. The man knows how to write characters like no one else.

In one of the early issues of his run on the comic X-Factor, David had someone make the keen observation that every super-hero group has a strong guy. The immediate joke was to explain the huge muscle-bound guy on the team (who was then inspired to adopt the codename “Strong Guy”), but there’s a larger point to be made with this.

Every superhero group has a strong guy because at some point they need a strong guy. As a writer, the reason you have a character who can bench press 90 tons is because at some point in the story there will be a Sherman Tank that needs throwing, a house-sized boulder that needs to be shifted, or a giant ninja-robot between your team and their ultimate goal. You put the strong guy on the team because you’re going to give him a chance to show off his strength.

This has been an enduring theme in literature for centuries. The mismatched team where every member eventually becomes necessary. You’ve probably heard some variation on the classic fairy tale about the six friends. A young man sets out to perform some tasks so he can win the hand of a princess. During his journeys he becomes friends with the fastest man in the world, the strongest man in the world, the hungriest man in the world, the man with the sharpest vision in the world, and so on. Oddly enough, to complete his tasks the young man needs someone who is incredibly fast, strong, hungry, etc. Charles McKeown and Terry Gilliam adapted this tale, by the way, and called it The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Now, there’s a simple corollary to this I’m sure most of you have already figured out. If there isn’t something for the strong guy to do, you shouldn’t have a strong guy on your team. You’ll notice few superhero groups include someone who can blink at amazing speed. None of the variations of the Grimm’s fairy tale feature someone who can shoe oxen better than anyone else in the world. In no version of the Ocean’s 11 films do they make a point of getting a great pastry chef on their team (although I freely admit I never saw the last one so... maybe they did). These people all may be fascinating in their own way, but they don’t really contribute anything to the particular story being told. High-speed blinking may be superhuman and somewhat interesting, but it’s also kind of useless when you’re saving the world from Galactus.

Thing is, this little observation holds for every character, not just ones in genre stories. If the character isn’t doing anything and doesn’t contribute, why are they there? As the name implies, a supporting character should be helping to hold things up. Not big things--that’s what your main characters are for--but they’re bearing the load around the perimeter and on the edges. They keep the tone balanced, give the main characters a sounding board for ideas and exposition, and help sustain the suspension of disbelief. If you’ll pardon my saying it, they’re the ones keeping it real.

A good chunk of the time, though, a supporting character get stuck into a story for the wrong reasons. Often it’s because the writer has seen a similar character in a similar story, so said writer just wedges a rough copy of that character into their own story. It doesn’t matter if this character does anything or not, there’s just this unspoken assumption they have to be there. A lot of comic-relief characters come about this way. Fledgling comedy writers stick in the goofy sidekick or wild neighbor because comedies always have a goofy sidekick or wild neighbor. Zorro, the Green Hornet, and Batman all have helpful manservants, so I should stick one into my adaptations of Doctor Fate, right?

Y’see, Timmy, much like the golden rule, just because something works in your story doesn’t mean it’s going to work in my story. This is especially true of the characters. I can’t just cram a random person into my novel or screenplay because there’s a good chance they don’t mesh with the story or the existing characters. Forcing them in means they’re unnatural, which usually means they’ve just become unbelievable characters within the scope of this story. Why would Phoebe and Dot possibly be friends when they’re complete opposites in every way? How could a bumbler like Yakko have possibly made it onto this elite squad of high-tech thieves? Why would dark ninja overlord Wakko allow someone like me (or worse, me as played by Rob Schneider) to stumble along behind him on his mission of vengeance? There has to be a reason for a supporting character to be in your story, otherwise they’re just eating up words and pages that should be spent on your main characters.

Speaking of which, a follow up problem is when main characters take a backseat to the supporting characters. We’re following Wakko for the whole manuscript, but suddenly at the end Chicken Boo dashes in and defuses the bomb, gets the girl, or lands the plane. To be terribly honest, I did this myself in the first two drafts of Ex-Heroes. It wasn’t St. George that beat the monster in the end, but a guy on the walls of the Mount named Ilya. It was still a fun, cool scene, but what I’d effectively done with it was made my hero useless. He didn’t save the day--some regular guy with a rifle did. Not impossible, but also not what this story was about.

Main characters do the main things. Supporting characters do lesser things. In the movie Aliens, Corporal Hicks survives and helps Ripley and Newt escape the hiveworld because he’s a main character. Vice versa, he’s a main character because he survives and helps Ripley and Newt escape the hiveworld. Aliens doesn’t focus on Frost or Apone or even Vasquez because they’re the lesser characters. One of the reason we can tell this is because they die early on in the story.

It sounds a bit like circular logic, I admit. However, don’t look at it from the story point of view (where it’s confusing) but from the storytelling point of view. If Hicks wasn’t the main character, why would he survive over someone else? Why would he succeed where others fail? I’m not a good storyteller if the focus of my tale isn’t about the people who survive and succeed (assuming anyone does survive this particular story).

Dan Abnett has a habit of introducing characters in his Gaunt’s Ghosts series, giving us a name and a thumbnail description, showing them in a few action scenes, and then killing them. Why? Because the Ghosts are fighting a war. They’re almost constantly wrapped up in one battle or another, and, awful as it is to say, it’s not a believable war when only the bad guys die. Abnett introduces these secondary characters--and then often shoots them in the head-- to remind the reader how brutal life is on the battlefield. Even the sci-fi battlefield of the future.

Next time around, on a somewhat similar note, I’d like to prattle on about your story. The one you want to tell.

Until then, go write.

Getting in on the Action

Well, since not one of you voted last week, I got to seize power again and decide what to rant about this week with no input or opinions. Viva Democracy! The system works!

So, speaking of things working, action can mean a bunch of things. It can be Yakko finally getting a backbone and standing up to his abusive boss. It can be Wakko fighting off cyborg ninjas from the future. It can be Dot running from a serial killer deep in the forest one night because she was doing naughty things at summer camp.

We all want to do cool action, because it's fun and it's memorable and it makes producers think "this would look great on the big screen-- give that writer a quarter-million dollars!" But most of us have probably read a book or three with painful action descriptions, and any script reader can tell you about the dozens they dropped because the action scenes were sleep-inducing at best.

Probably the most common problem I see with action is a desire to put in all the action. Every single instant of it. Every gunshot, every punch, each flail of the legs as someone tries to climb up a cliff, and all the individual roars of an angry dinosaur.

Thing is, too much detail slows action down. It can be the most amazing bit of kung fu fighting ever, but each time the writer pauses to describe the harsh open-palm strike which is blocked with a swift overhand block which rolls over the wrist and into a hold to create an opening for two quick punches, one to the face, one to the... man, that should be half a second of fighting, but it's two lines here. That is one slooow, overwritten fight.

Putting in all the action also tends to get messy from a vocabulary point of view. Bad enough the writer is putting in all seventy punches, but they also know that seeing "punch" seventy times on the page is going to get dull. So suddenly the combatants are punching, hitting, striking, whamming, banging, thrusting, pounding, blasting... It starts feeling needlessly complex, and yes, you should also notice that it starts sounding vaguely pornographic as well.

Now, compare all that to this...

Their hands were a blur of strikes, blocks, and counterstrikes.

I didn't give as much information, but I did convey a much faster, intense scene, and with far fewer words. Fewer words means a faster read, which means a faster fight.

In my mind, action is a lot like character descriptions. You want to give broad strokes and only use fine details when absolutely necessary. Let the reader fill in a lot of it-- because odds are they will anyway.

Action, by it's very nature, is usually fast, so use this as a rule of thumb. If something is only taking a few moments to happen in your story, it should only take a few moments to read. If there's an important detail that will matter later in the story, sure, add it in. But otherwise, keep it clean and simple.

Another key note... it has to be possible for the reader to visualize the action. One screenplay I read a while back had gladiatorial games where one man was pitted against three hundred. It actually said that in the script-- "Now he fights 300 men with just his sword." This was going on in the background, for the record.

Gigantic action scenes involving a hundred thousand people are cool, but they're hard for someone to keep in their mind. That's why such huge battles tend to concentrate on smaller, individual conflicts. In Tolkien's The Two Towers, thousands fight at Helm's Deep, but we're mostly concerned with Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas. When Dan Abnett writes about the Tanith First and Only on a battlefront, he tends to focus on Gaunt, Mkoll, or Rawne, not on the regiment as a whole. Saving Private Ryan is about World War Two, but it's mainly about this one small unit of soldiers.

Visualizing can also be a common knowledge problem. It's cool that the author knows all the Japanese names for every kick, punch, strike, and block from each of fifteen fighting styles... but does the reader know them? Do they need to? From an audience point of view, it there a huge difference between a hail of bullets from an M-16 and the spray of lead from an AK-47? Anything that makes your readers pause to consider what's going on is slowing down the action and it's breaking the flow of your writing. Especially watch for this in genre material, where writers can be making up completely unique weapons and fighting styles. It's great that Nimwadda is a Zonbovac master with his gwerttig, but it's a lot easier to visualize if I'm told he's a world champion axe-fighter... even if it's a special goblin axe.

A special note for screenwriters. A lot of action stuff gets redone on set, for a variety of reasons. Time is one. Money's another. Plus, let's face it... most stunt coordinators have a better idea how to set up a cool-looking fight on screen than most writers do. That's their job, after all. They're also keenly aware of what's possible-- and what's safe-- for the stunt teams and actors to do. I heard a funny story from the live action Spawn movie, about the petulant writer/ director who was angry a stuntman wouldn't do one stunt sequence he'd blocked out... because it almost certainly would kill the stuntman.

In a screenplay, worry about setting the mood and tone of an action sequence more than a shot-by-shot description of the sequence itself. The swordfights in The Princess Bride have a very different tone than the ones in Highlander. The slugfests in Rocky are not like the ones in Hellboy. Skim over the action itself, just make it clear what kind of fight it is, which way it's going, and who wins.

As an example, let's look at the lobby battle in The Matrix. Neo steps through the metal detector wearing a hundred guns he borrowed from his grandfather's arsenal and then it's mass carnage. From the moment we see Neo's boots coming out of the revolving door to the moment he and Trinity step into the elevator is almost precisely three minutes, fifteen seconds of bullets, karate, acrobatics, and aggressive redecorating.

How long is it in the script?

About half a page. Ten lines.

Neo and Trinity walk in, he guns down the guards. More guards come, they're gunned down, and our two heroes continue on their way, cool as ice. That's it.

However, it's still okay to note key elements of a sequence. In The Princess Bride, we need to know that Inigo and the Man in Black both switch hands during their swordfight, but we don't need to know which steps their blades clash on as they work their way up the staircase. Watch a couple films with elaborate action sequences, like Equilibrium, Brotherhood of the Wolf, or even (dare I say it) Attack of the Clones. There are long stretches of action, but what stands out? What catches your eye? Remember the "hallway of death" in Equilibrium? We remember the auto-loaders in Cleric's sleeves, his roll onto the "weeble" clips, and him kicking up the rifle near the end. There's a lot more to the scene than that, but that's all you'd need to focus on.

So that's where the action is, if you'll pardon the pun. And if you won't, well... you should've voted when you had the chance.

Next week, we bring on the bad guys and talk about why John Saxon never got to play a good screen villain, but Alan Rickman did.

Until then, take action. And go write.

A Character-Building Experience

You can't have a story without characters. They don't need to be human. They don't even need to be alive. But if the reader doesn't have someone to focus on you're going nowhere fast.

For all of us, the goal is to create characters that live, ones a reader can bring to mind and identify with. Most of us could picture what Harry Potter looked like long before we'd heard of Daniel Radcliffe. In Casablanca, without even seeing what happened in Paris, we know enough about Rick to guess why Elsa's arrival is having such an effect on him. Even though we've never seen it, we can all extrapolate how Darth Vader would deal with someone having a loud cell phone conversation in a restaurant

However, for every character that leaps off the page or the screen to be remembered forever there are a dozen who languish in obscurity. And for every one of that dozen, there's a couple dozen more who never even made the cut. They were so flat on the page they couldn't catch anyone's attention.

Characters will make or break your writing, which means they deserve attention. The mistake I see again and again, though, is writers who give their characters too much attention. Their characters never get off the page because they've been buried alive and crushed there.

Some rules-of-thumb and reasons I've pasted together over the years...

Don't describe characters in exacting physical detail. Your audience doesn't need to know someone's precise height, weight, cup size, skin tone, inseam, hair color, nail polish, and eye pigment. They don't need to be told the exact tie pattern he's wearing, where her skirt hits her thigh, if he likes boxers or briefs, if she likes thongs over bikinis, how many fillings either of them have, or precisely what they're having at the restaurant for lunch down to drinks, side dishes, and condiments.

You don't need any of that in your writing. Honest.

Long descriptions bring the reader to a grinding halt. The longer the description, the louder the squeal of brakes. You're performing, as some folks like to say, the infodump. The writer is throwing out a pile of information at a time the reader wants action and forward motion (which is—for the record—always). It's wonderful to know that, as Jane steps into the street, everyone notices her Prada bag, Yves St.Laurent jacket, eel-skin boots, wedding band with matching engagement ring, the St.Christopher's medallion she wears outside her midnight-blue silk blouse, her sapphire eyeliner, and her $300 hairstyle that's starting to sag, giving her one loose blonde strand that hangs loose over her face in a kind of sexy way as she puffs and swipes at it with her free hand.

You know what's far, far more interesting than all of that, though? Why is Jane stepping into the street? Is it a crosswalk? Is she avoiding someone? Getting into a limo? Throwing herself in front of a bus? She's been frozen there in mid-movement while the writer (in this case, me) prattles on about her clothes and hair. Heck, by the time I got back to her you'd probably forgotten she was even outside.

There's another reason to not spend time on physical descriptions, whether you're writing a novel or a screenplay. Silly as it sounds, you don't have much say in what this character looks like. When people read, they form their own mental images, and they're usually pretty different from the ones that were written out. In Dan Abnett's Ravenor books, I always see the character of Kara Swole looking like my friend Penny from college. Their descriptions don't match up at all (well, they're both female gymnasts, but that's about it) yet this is how I picture Kara. For that matter, in the same books, I always see Harlon Nayl as Jett from Cowboy Bebop. As you refer back to your extensive description, you'll jar the readers out of the flow of the story as they think What? Blonde? I thought Jane had black hair? Jar them one too many times and they'll start to get resentful, and then they'll start to read something else.

If you're writing a screenplay, this is even more telling. It's really cool that you've described Lynne as 6'3" with raven hair, blue eyes, alabaster skin, the physique of a pro bodybuilder, and half a page of further description. Then Jessica Alba expressed interest in the part and suddenly Lynne was a 5'6" tanned brunette with a body built along very different lines. So you just wasted half a page and messed up the timing of your script for nothing.

So... extensive, elaborate physical descriptions are a no-no. Use broad strokes and fill in details only where you need to. Pick three or four good descriptive words for the character (not their clothes), and stick with them. Their dialogue and actions will bring them to life and your readers will fill in the rest.

In the novel I'm working on right now, for example, the antagonist I've just introduced is a pale man who's bald with tattoos on his head. There's hundreds of ways to interpret that description, but you've got a solid image in your head just off that, yes? Which means I'm now free to go talk about what he's doing with that AK-47, the ultimatum he's issuing for his boss... and he's already a bit more interesting and solid than Jane up above, yes? In about half the space.

Now, as far as the mental/ historical side, if this stuff is important, of course it should be included. If our main man has lost everyone he's ever cared about, if our heroine suffered from asthma as a child, or if an encyclopedic knowledge of rural New England history will be critical to resolving this mystery, then these things need to be in your writing. Again,though—no infodumps. If you introduce me to Robin and then explain how her hometown got its name, the name of her first pet, who she took to the prom, the state her parents grew up in, how she did on that second grade spelling test, and why she loves pink... there'd best be a damn good reason for all of that being in the first two pages, and it better all be important in the next 298.

That's the best rule of thumb for all of this descriptive stuff. Is it critical to what's going on within these pages? Your audience is going to assume if you're giving all this information, it's because they need this information. After the fourth or fifth exhaustive description of a character's jewelry, lunch time eating habits, or genealogy, your reader is going to make the assumption none of this is going anywhere and start skimming. First paragraphs, then pages, and then over the television listings to see what else could be filling this time...

Now, you can make an argument that any event in someone's past affects their present and every single decision shapes a person's life to some degree. Thus, anything you choose to include is relevant to the story on some level, yes? Again, though—this is not real life (please look back a few posts to resolve any confusion). No one wants to read about a character's personal history that does not have a direct bearing on what they're experiencing right now.

Again, for example...

I hate ketchup (and catsup). Honest and for true. Cannot stand it. Loathe it. Not for any flavor or texture issues, but for color. When I was five I was eating French fries and saw my dog, Flip, hit by a car outside the dining room window. Happened more or less right in front of me on Rt 1A in Cape Neddick, Maine. I could show you the spot today. I still remember his scream. And my screams. My mom and my little brother freaking out. And I remember the blood. And I've never been able to deal with ketchup since.

A formative event that still affects me to this day? Absolutely. I'd never deny it. Does it have anything whatsoever to do with the hints and suggestions I post here?

Nope. Not in the slightest.

It has nothing to do with my writing here, for CS Publications, or my own fiction, which is why most people reading this have never heard of it before. It has no business being in any of this. In fact, unless someone's writing a story where I've been replaced by an undercover agent/ alien shape-shifter/ android double and my girlfriend catches said doppelganger when he puts ketchup on his scrambled eggs-- this is a completely pointless bit of information about me.

Oh, but it builds character, you say? Expands the vast tapestry of my life? Tells everyone a little bit about me in so many ways? Makes me more human?

(Feel free to read that out loud in a Stewie Griffin voice)

So what?

You've got an actual story, don't you? If you want to focus on one thread in the tapestry of my life, choose one that shows the reader how my life relates to that story. Don't waste their time with something that has no bearing on the book/ screenplay/ short story they're reading.

Let the audience know how annoyed I was at thirteen when a doctor told me during a physical that writing wasn't "a real job." Explain how thrilled freshman-college-me was when he got a personal letter from Tom DeFalco rejecting my Marvel pitch but with hints and tips about how to improve and try again, plus a full copy of one of his Thor scripts for reference. Give them the visual of me in a panicky, cold sweat sitting outside Ron Moore's office, waiting to pitch a few Deep Space Nine stories I'd come up with that had impressed a long string of script readers and story editors.

See? That's all relevant. You're reading and saying "Wow, this guy's been serious about writing for a while now, hasn't he?" That's the kind of stuff that should come out in your writing.

And you've already forgotten my dog's name, haven't you? And the name of the road he was hit on? No worries. He'll always be important to me, but I understand why he's not important—or relevant—to you. Honest, I do.

Now, go write.