Saving the world from the giant, alien zombies, and the bomb thingy…

            I really like Christopher Walken.  I think he is hilarious.  I like the way that he can take a simple piece of dialog and make it his own. He does the unexpected; he plays with the usual cadence of the spoken word and completely reverses it to come out with something unique and funny.  He takes the cliché and makes it new.  In writing, this is called the “180 Rule”

            The “180 Rule” applies to almost every element in writing from plot, and character, to setting.  When I write I try to avoid cliché as much as possible.  For me a perfect story would be a story that does not contain any clichés and is a product of complete originality.  This may however be impossible as clichés permeate everything.  The “180 Rule” is a tool for writers to use that will help them to avoid cliché. 

            This is the rule: If you feel that your character (plot, setting, etc.) is feeling a bit too cliché, a bit too familiar then take an aspect or two of your character and reverse it.  For example, in the story I am writing I originally had my protagonist’s, named Michael, love interest, named Samantha, die, which explained why Michael had PTSD.  After reading it through again, up to this point, I felt that having Samantha die was cliché and that the reader could really see it coming from the beginning of the story.  So, I employed the “180 Rule” and instead of having her die I had her lose a leg and made it Michael’s fault.  I felt that this was less cliché than having her die and it opened up the story for more character interactions.

            Are you writing a story set in a post-apocalyptic desert?  Why not set it in the lush rainforests of Washington.  Is your protagonist a high school jock who loves cheeseburgers, muscle cars and blondes?  Why not make him also love Shakespeare and ride a moped.  For all writers the avoidance of cliché is paramount to good writing.  The “180 Rule” is a useful tool for writers to help them generate more original stories.  Today I leave you with another quote from Mark Twain.

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you're inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be” – Mark Twain

The Most Interesting Man in the World…

           Over the weekend I found myself watching the majority of season one of Dexter.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show I suggest you go and watch an episode right now, as this is one of the best shows on television.  The show follows a serial killer who was taught by his foster father to control his murderous urges and only hunt and kill murderers who have either cheated the system or who haven’t been caught yet.  Oh yes, he also works for the Miami Police as a blood splatter analysis tech.  While the premise sounds intriguing itself the character of Dexter, played by Michael C. Hall, is really what draws the viewer in to the story. 

            Characters are a difficult piece of fiction to write and as an author it is difficult to come up with a character, or two, or twenty that are both relatable and flawed.  The character needs to be believable and dynamic at the same time.  There are several things that I have heard from writing instructors that I think Dexter’s writers employ perfectly in their characters.  They are the use of small character acts to show meaning, character agenda, and inventory.  First, small character acts, something touched on in the last post, are exactly what they sound like.  Instead of saying something like:

           

            (Jack would worry.  He would worry about the locks on the house, the gas in the car, his wallet in his pocket.  What if it slipped out and he didn’t notice)?

The author could place in small character acts:

           

            (Jack walked down his front steps.  He absently felt his pockets for his keys, his phone, and his wallet.  He stopped at the bottom of the stairs.  He looked back up at his door, turned and started again down the street, then turned around and walked up the stairs and checked his lock.)

            By using small acts to convey meaning for the character you can capitalize on the efficiency of the words and can essentially say more about a character without explicitly telling the reader how your character feels.

            Giving a character an agenda is a great way to complicate your character’s lives and to give them things to do.  Give your character someplace to work, make them responsible for something.  Have them pick up the kids after school or take the dog to the veterinarian or have them tutor high school math after school.  A character with an agenda helps the character be more dynamic and more real for the reader.

            This goes along with the character’s inventory as both the character’s agenda and inventory will define who the character is better than just writing who the character is.  A character’s inventory is all of the stuff that the character surrounds itself with.  By writing the character’s things, be it a pocket watch, a photograph or something as simple as a pack of cigarettes, the character becomes more real and these items reveal things about the character.  It helps to establish that uninterrupted, vivid vision that writers are trying to establish when they write fiction.

           

“The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” – Mark Twain

Open the door...

          Having recently seen Inception I decided to go back and watch Christopher Nolan’s other masterpiece, The Dark Knight.  The movie was started.  The popcorn popped.  As I watched the opening sequence I found myself immersed, despite my tiny television.  I originally saw The Dark Knight in the theatre and the opening sequence, with it’s slow traverse of Gotham city and the suspense-building zoom in to the Joker’s mask, really hooked me in right from the first shot.  The first thirty seconds of this film does a lot to draw in the viewer.  It establishes that something is amiss in Gotham city and introduces the story’s villain in the middle of one of his schemes.  I was immersed because of the quality of story.  This is the goal for writers when they begin a story.  Immediate immersion. 

            Some of you might be wondering why I like talking about film when this is a blog focused on writing.  The reason is simple, without writers there would be no stories to make films of.  Everything that is seen on the screen begins on the page as a character, a description, an original thought transcribed in to physical being by a writer.  Before the Joker blew up a hospital on the big screen he did it first in ink.

            The opening of a story is important.  It sets the tone and introduces characters and plot and setting.  Authors spend hours on their first paragraph; agonizing, rewriting, deleting, rewriting again, revising.  The opening is what the reader reads first and if it doesn’t engage them they may just put your story down.  There are a few rules of openings that help to make them pop to the reader. 

            Start your story in the action.  If you’re writing action start in the middle of a gunfight.  Drama? Start when your character’s spouse asks for a divorce.  You can even start in mid conversation.  The phrase “in medias res” is Latin for “in the middle of,” which is a great place to start a story.  Not all stories have to begin at the beginning; they can sometimes employ a frame structure or a 2-1-3 structure where the middle comes first, followed by the beginning then the end. 

            Next, don’t overload your opening with back story.  The back story is more effective when it is sprinkled throughout the story.  No reader wants to read an info dump about your character or setting within the first few pages of your story.  They want to be hooked. 

            One of the best tools that I have ever used to help better my openings is imitation.  Take the opening paragraph of a story and imitate the paragraph’s tone or style or cadence or even syllables and punctuation.  The beauty of this exercise is that it is short, just one paragraph, and you are mimicking some of the most effective portions of a writer’s work. 

            My story starts in the middle of a grocery store at four in the morning. It starts in the middle of the action and in the middle of the story.  Not quite as exciting as the rooftops of Gotham city, but I’m not writing about crime fighters in costume.

            Today you get two quotes; explaining why some writers are eccentric.

What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window.  ~Burton Rascoe




The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes.  ~Agatha Christie

Second verse same as the first…

     I began writing this short story just a handful of days ago and already it has changed from a disaster story, to a post apocalyptic story, to a story that is set in the real world. I think that it has finally reached its final evolution. It’s nice to be able to write a story where the setting isn’t always changing. Setting, as much as things like character and plot, is just as important to a story as, well, character and plot. Setting lays the groundwork for what can and cannot happen in your story. The rules and laws that your characters must abide by are determined in a large way by the setting. For example if you take the story The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris and change the setting to a space colony on the moon, well, that sounds kind of cool actually but I don’t necessarily want to read about Hannibal Lecter bouncing on the moon in a spacesuit. By taking Lecter out of the realm of the immediately possible it makes him less scary to the readers. In other words, it takes away the sense of “this guy could actually be out there somewhere.”
     Whenever I get an idea for a story it will usually go something like, “I want to write a story about a man whose dreams begin to blend in with his reality.” For me this really narrows down the setting, I immediately think of a man who is working at a corporate desk job in some large American city. Maybe he takes the bus to work because his dreams interfere with his driving. The setting is sometimes already built in to the kind of story that you want to write.
     My story takes place in Hawaii. Not only is it was fun to write about the empty ocean and the searing sun, but it is important to your readers that they see what you are seeing. This brings up another point; “Show don’t Tell.” You don’t want to tell your reader that the protagonist is nervous you want to show it through dialog or small character actions. For example:

The cashier looked at him. It made Jack nervous.
     Vs.
The cashier looked at him. Jack looked away and absently twisted his watch around his wrist.

     The difference here is that the reader gets to figure out what Jack is thinking for himself, and it should be apparent through his actions. Showing a story is a great way to allow the reader to become immersed in the story and helps them buy in to the plot, characters and setting.
     As for my story it has taken some interesting turns so far, especially because it is only two pages long. It will be interesting to see where it goes now that the setting has been established. Today I think I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes about writing:

     “The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.” ~Mark Twain

In the beginning?

I have recently begun writing a short story, and by recently I mean today. Today is the day, I told myself, that I will write something new and amazing. Oh yes, I have written several short stories before but I have fallen in to a slump. I think the problem is that it is hard to start a story. The possibilities, the potential, the questions unanswered and unasked creates an ominous wall; a wall that holds back characters and back story and plot lines and dialog and cities and landscapes and whole worlds. You can see how this can be a little bit daunting. This has always been my problem with writing fiction. Where to begin?

I have had several creative writing instructors pass on this small piece of advice and whenever I can't figure out what I want to write about it has served me well. Write what you know. Ever been to Mexico? Write about that. Have a crazy friend who likes to jump off of bridges? Write about that too. The great thing about writing fiction is that every story has a beginning and an end, but you don't necessarily need to start at the beginning. Sometimes you won't know where a story begins until you're waist deep in it. Stories evolve and change as they are being written, and sometimes the author's vision for the story is not where the story wants to go.

As for my story I think I figured out what I want to write about. Sometimes it's good to just jump in and start writing. When I start a story that is proving difficult for me I tend to want to outline or summarize. This helps as it gets out all of the back-story that was, uh, backing up my writing process. It helps to get all of the things I feel that I needed to say out on paper. The story itself tends to flow from there. Out of all of the back-story, character descriptions and scene outlines that I wrote, something would catch my interest and make me want to write more about it. The wall doesn't seem so ominous once you're on the other side of it.