Fiction Writing Demystified

  FICTION WRITING DEMYSTIFIED

  Techniques That Will Make You a More Successful Writer

  * * *

  Copyright © 2002 by Thomas B. Sawyer. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  * * *

  Published by Ashleywilde, Inc.

  For information, address: Ashleywilde, Inc. 23852 Pacific Coast Highway, #132 Malibu, California 90265 www.ashleywilde.com

  ISBN 0-9627476-1-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2002110026

  First Edition

  * * *

  Printed in the United States of America

  Design and production

  Leena Hannonen, Macnetic Design

  For Holly, and my parents.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My thanks to all those seasoned writers who held my hand in the months and years following my discovery of my calling. My gratitude also to Dr. Sidney Levy, and to Leonard Starr, mentor, friend, brother, without whose guidance none of this could have happened. And especially, I thank my parents for endowing me with so many assets, perhaps the most valuable being a lifetime supply of chutzpah and blanket invulnerability to rejection.

  Acknowledgements

  Preface

  An Approach to Storytelling

  * * *

  ONE — The Writer’s Mindset

  Face it — We’re Entertainers

  The TV Writer’s Mandate

  The TV Writer’s Bogeyman

  The Hitchcock Motto

  The Computer in Your Head

  Write to The Money

  * * *

  TWO — Beginnings — The Story Idea

  Asking Yourself “Where’s The Heat?”

  A Word or Two About Originality

  Stealing Stories From Oneself

  Predictability

  The Story Idea

  Pitching

  * * *

  THREE — The Process

  Building Your Story

  What is a Story Outline and How does it Differ From a Synopsis or a Treatment?

  What Does a Story Outline Look Like?

  One More Plea (But Not the Last) On Behalf of Outlining — Or — How the “Drudgery” of Writing Your Outline Will Turn Into Pleasure

  Conflict Defined

  About Texture

  Red Flags

  Play the Moments — Don’t Just Talk About Them

  The Money Scene

  The Plot Device

  Clock

  Maguffins

  Hiding in Plain Sight

  Meet-Cute

  Platforming

  The Deus Ex Machina

  Parallel Action

  The Penny-Drop

  Coincidence

  Sounds

  The Moral Decision

  Using Research — Without Letting it Use You

  Closure

  Let Your Characters Generate Their Own Stories

  * * *

  FOUR — Creating Vivid, Memorable, Engaging Characters

  Start With the Edges

  Avoid Flat-Out Opposites

  Find the Facets

  Thrust

  Goals — Small and Large

  Make it Worth Your Characters’ Time — and it’ll be Worth Your Audience’s

  Franchises

  The Character Bio

  Attitudes and Conditions

  The TV Series Character-Mix

  Naming Your Characters

  Give ‘em Secrets

  Liars Play Better Than Saints

  Habits, Hang-ups, Hobbies and Hatreds

  Find the Permutations of Conflict

  Character-types: More About Heroines and Heroes

  Make Your Audience Cheer For Your Protagonist

  The Fatally Flawed Protagonist

  Attractive Protagonists

  Intriguing Heavies

  Outsiders

  Con-Artists and Other Appealing Rascals

  Character Arcs

  Remember, They Had Lives Before Page One

  Discovering, and Then Listening to Your Characters

  Character Traps

  Making All of Your Characters Count

  Some Characterization House-Numbers

  Anger

  Passive-Aggressive

  Control

  Hunger for Approval

  Caretaker

  Low Self-Esteem

  Psychopaths and Sociopaths

  The Really Hard Part — Or — What Should Be The Hardest Part: Introducing Your Characters to Your Audience

  Exposition: Don’t tell it. Show it!

  Amateur Exposition — The Dreaded “But, you are my sister...” Syndrome, and Other Sins

  Front-loading — Some Advice — and Some Solutions

  * * *

  FIVE — Construction — Telling Your Story

  Plotting — Laying Out Your Story

  Plot Conveniences, Holes, and Other Audience Distractions

  Plugging Plot Holes

  How to Get Ahead of Your Audience — and Stay There

  Knowing What to Include — and What to Leave Out

  Backstory

  Playing Fair

  Point-of-View

  Focus

  Scene Structure

  Choreography

  THINK Picture/THINK Action/THINK Dialogue — A Screenwriter’s Approach

  Stoppers

  More About Where to Start a Scene and Where to End it — Or — Why the Playwright’s Curse is the Novelist’s and Screenwriter’s Blessing

  Punchlines, Buttons and Act-Outs

  The Non-Scene — Causes and Cures

  Kicking It Off — That Super-Critical Opening Moment

  Payoffs and Blowoffs — The Endgame — Or — More Fastballs and Curves

  * * *

  SIX — Writing Great, Unique Dialogue

  “Unique Dialogue” Defined

  Self-Explainers (and Other Works of Fiction)

  Hearing Your Characters’ Music

  Subtext

  Functional Dialogue — and How to Avoid It

  Listen to the Silences

  Helping Direct Your Actors’ Dialogue

  Memorable Dialogue

  Dialect

  Crosstalk

  The Aria

  Staying With It

  Tombstoning

  Don’t Tell Your Audience What It Already Knows

  NEVER Write Show-and-Tell Dialogue

  Energy/Urgency

  Dialogue Attribution in Prose — An Opinion or Two...

  * * *

  SEVEN — Coda

  The Rorschach View

  INDEX

  PREFACE

  An Approach to Storytelling

  During 20 years as a writer/producer or story editor on 16 different network TV series, my experience has been dramatically different from that of most working fiction writers. In addition to writing my own scripts, I listened to hundreds of story-pitches from both staffers and freelancers, generated and commissioned hundreds of scripts which I then oversaw and edited. Of necessity, a large part of my job has been that of teacher.

  But not a teacher of theory.

  Rather, of nuggets about writing — of explaining to other writers — and to myself in the bargain — in clear, concise language, very specific, problem-solving ways to improve the end product.

  Where it misses. How to fix it. To make it work better.

  It is not entirely surprising that many of the rather specialized, highly pragmatic techn
iques one learns in the pressure-driven world of writing for series TV translate readily to fiction writing of any kind, from short stories to novels to stageplays to movie scripts. Even, for that matter, to poetry, non-fiction — such as biography — and textbooks.

  What is surprising is that this practical, result-oriented approach is seldom featured in books on writing or in creative writing courses. Touched on, perhaps, but not in the kind of depth that makes it all of a piece. One possible reason is that many of the books are written, and courses taught, by writers who, if they’ve had professional writing careers, have, like the majority of their fellows understandably spent much of their creative lives sitting in rooms by themselves, living mostly inside their heads. Thinking about what they’re writing rather than talking about it — rather than needing to analyze it in order to explain to others what they do — and why they’re doing it a particular way.

  Rather than — as in my own case — being paid to show other working writers how to solve their manuscript problems.

  That’s why I wrote this book, to help spell out, make accessible, to demystify those aspects and methods of storytelling that may seem daunting — or even unknowable — to so many would-be writers. For them, and for those who may already have many of the bits and pieces of storytelling knowledge rattling about willy-nilly in their brains, I hope that reading these pages will help organize — and again, de-intimidate them.

  That is what this book is about.

  I haven’t invented anything new about storytelling or characterization or construction. I certainly don’t claim to know everything there is to know about fiction writing — as if that were possible. I continue to learn, and to be amazed by the process of writing. You won’t necessarily find anything here that isn’t covered in other books or courses in creative writing — or that you’re not familiar with on some level. But because of those peculiar demands of my career, of having had to find fresh ways of looking at stories (my own as well as others’), to quickly nail the stuff that doesn’t work, and improve the stuff that does, much about the craft has become clearer to me.

  Including the fact that good, effective, workmanlike fiction writing does not demand genius.

  But — it’s not something everyone can do.

  It requires talent. Which you probably possess to some degree or you wouldn’t be reading this; the desire to create usually — not always, but usually — presupposes that you have some gift for the art.

  And, writing fiction takes knowledge about basic storytelling. Again, some of us have an instinct for it. A feeling for it. But if you sense that you do not, don’t give up. Much of that part is craft, and it is learnable. In my own case, as I’m sure it was (is) for many of you, when I began writing in earnest I discovered to my surprise that I knew more than I thought I did. And the knowledge seemed to amount to more than just an awareness of the differences between good writing and bad writing. I have the impression, from my travels as a guest-speaker on the Writer’s Conference Circuit, and my experience as a teacher of screenwriting, that this is a common phenomenon. The result, I suspect, of our almost universal, close-to-saturation exposure — by the time we reach adulthood — to stories, of our having read or viewed or otherwise absorbed hundreds or even thousands of them — from the classic children’s tales to countless episodes of I Love Lucy and other shows, to movies, novels and so on.

  But what I knew — perhaps “perceived” better describes it — was vague. All-over-the-place. Disparate, unorganized bits-andpieces that gradually started coming together for me as I began my television-writing career. Because, to my great good fortune, I was the freelancer being helped along, coached, by the seasoned writer/producers and story editors for whom I was writing scripts.

  In truth, I was being paid to learn from these practical-minded, experienced professional storytellers — writers who, selfishly, wanted me to succeed in order to make their lives easier. To hold my hand so that, when I turned in my final draft, they wouldn’t have to rewrite me from page one.

  Not everyone is so lucky.

  In this book you will be struck — often, I hope — by flashes of “whoa, of course” recognition. Stuff about writing which till now you’ve “sort of” understood, that will suddenly become distinct for you, viewable from a fresh perspective. Learnable techniques for creating solid, well-made, page-turning, audience-holding stories, whether fiction or fact, from thrillers to cozies, romance or memoir.

  Self-editing tools you’ll file away in your mental checklist.

  Once learned they should help free you from a lot of those nagging mysteries about writing, the sometimes daunting mechanics of the process that can so easily get in the way of inspiration — of art — and of the delicious pleasure that can be had from writing well.

  Put another way that should be clear to anyone who has tried writing, the creative side — the side that is art — is difficult enough without the added burden of insufficient knowledge about the form — an understanding of fundamental storytelling techniques. Again, that is what this book is about.

  I would like to assure you that what it is definitely not about is formula — about rules (though I will cite a few suggestions that come close) — about academic terminology such as secondary theme. Nor is it about the necessity as some will tell you that this or that transition or story-move must take place at a specific point. That I leave to those authorities who, though they may have never earned twenty-eight cents as fiction writers, seem to have it all figured out.

  In a very real way, this book is about troubleshooting your own writing. To illustrate, below are a series of phrases heard repeatedly in TV story and script meetings:

  “What’re the bad guys doing? We need to keep them alive.”

  “Where’s the heat? This is a non-scene. It needs an edge.”

  “Maybe give the guy a condition — hay-fever, a cold, an allergy, why don’t you? Or he’s cranky, tired. Or indigestion maybe. Or he isn’t getting enough sex.”

  “The scene on pages twenty-five through twenty-seven is talky. Tighten it up.”

  “Lose the girlfriend, or give her an arc. Right now, she doesn’t take us anywhere.”

  “His one-eighty comes out of left-field. Platform it back in Act One.”

  Working as a writer/producer in network series television, these are the kinds of story-problems — and solutions — one has got to learn to identify.

  All of which has a very direct application to each of us, whatever we write — romantic comedy, suspense, science fiction, horror, mystery, satire, juvenile, historical and on and on. Because we all need to recognize and remedy those same problems — and others — in our own output. Call it self-editing, or distancing, or objectivity — it all comes to the same thing(s). In part, to avoid falling hopelessly in love with what we’ve written. To regard nothing we’ve done — until we’re finally ready to part with it, to give birth to it — as etched in stone. It’s about learning to see and then fix those problems I quoted above — and a lot more that you’ll hopefully learn to pick up on while reading this book.

  Sure, some of you may luck out, as I did, and be taught on-thejob by professionals. But that doesn’t happen often. The truth is, none of us can count on finding an editor who will zero in on those problems in our manuscripts, point them out to us — and offer solutions. That is something else this book is about. Simply put — the techniques you’ll discover here will help to equip you to know what you’re writing — and why you’re writing it.

  Again, nothing you’ll learn from these pages is a substitute for Art. But they contain some answers, some tools, that should liberate you creatively, since presumably you’ll be fighting fewer doubts and questions about the Craft.

  Writing — even when we know these things — is for most of us rarely easy. That said, it is my sincere hope this book will help you to enjoy the process — to take increased pleasure from your writing.

  Because that is what it’s all about.

&nbs
p; Tom Sawyer

  Malibu, California

  www.ThomasBSawyer.com

  THE WRITER’S MINDSET

  Before moving into the mechanics and techniques I learned in the TV business, I want to pass along several points that I consider essential to success as a writer, no matter your medium or genre. Together, they form a kind of fundamental, philosophical grounding, a foundation. The place we should all be coming from.

  I am certain that I could not have succeeded in that field — or any other — without acquiring this type of pragmatic mindset and, I submit, neither will you achieve your full potential until you do so.

  Face it — We’re Entertainers

  First, and perhaps most important, the writer must understand that no matter what it is we’re trying to communicate — to readers or viewers — be it comedy, drama, instructional or informational, high art or lowbrow — we want our audience to respond — to laugh, cry, feel. We want to surprise and delight and yes, when possible, teach and illuminate. And to achieve that, to get our message across, we must entertain.

  We are entertainers.

  Now, that is not as tacky/shallow as it may sound. We — all of us, no matter how lofty our literary intentions — want an audience, or we hope to find one, for what we have to say — and we want to hold its attention. Strike that: we must hold its attention — or we won’t get our story across. To accomplish that, we must — in some way, tasteful or not — entertain. It’s an obligation. This is true whether we’re poets, peddlers or preachers.

  Or even trial lawyers. The noted novelist/attorney Scott Turow has said that when he was first hired as a prosecutor he was astonished to find that “the trial lawyer’s job and the novelist’s were... shockingly similar. The trial lawyer who lost the audience also inevitably lost the case. Engaging the jury was indispensable...Tell them a good story...”

  The TV Writer’s Mandate

  Ancillary to the concept that we are entertainers, and arguably just as important, is the mandate in commercial television that — while it’s unique to the medium — should resonate for all of us: In simple, the television scriptwriter’s mission is to deliver the audience to the commercial break.