Fiction Writing Demystified Page 3

  Your model, your favorite, that book or group of books that has touched you, may be “literary,” or trashy, obscure or best-seller, pulp fiction, Thomas Mann or Shakespeare. What matters is that you try to understand the material itself, and why you respond to it. As a writer, it is well worth your time to analyze it, and to study what the author did to make his or her words speak to you.

  Okay, so you’ve based your story on some tale that resonates for you. Sometimes the source will be instantly recognizable to the audience. Sometimes not. The ancient Greek legend of Pygmalion, has variously been retold in children’s’ literature as both Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, was written in more modern terms as a stageplay (also called Pygmalion) by George Bernard Shaw, and filmed in 1938 (Scr. Shaw, W.P. Lipscomb, Cecil Lewis, Ian Dalrymple & Anthony Asquith — Dir. Asquith & Leslie Howard). Which in turn spawned My Fair Lady (Scr. Alan Jay Lerner, based on the musical play by Lerner & Frederick Loewe — Dir. George Cukor). The tale was filmed more recently as Pretty Woman (Scr. J.F. Lawton — Dir. Garry Marshall). Not to mention numerous more obscure variants. Occasionally we encounter stories that seem original.

  They’re not, though there are a few created in modern times that come close. Franz Kafka’s brilliant short story, Metamorphosis, is one of them. It has meaning on several levels, including difference and prejudice and magic. Yet reduced to its core essentials, it is a story about — as the title indicates — change.

  But when a story is told more freshly than others, when it feels as if we haven’t been there, it is a tribute to the author. And when that happens some audiences love it — and for others it can be too fresh — or unfamiliar. Consider the work of such writers as Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelme or Samuel Beckett. The enemies of their more extreme, off-the-wall output are almost as vocal as their advocates. A movie example: Being John Malkovich (Scr. Charlie Kaufman — Dir. Spike Jonze) was for me the most original film I had seen in many years. A lot of people hated it for the many of the same reasons that I loved it — it was for them too inventive. One of my biggest reasons for loving it, incidentally, was that I could not have written it. When John Cusack emerged from the elevator onto the 12and-1/2th floor, they had me. I knew that I was in the presence of original minds. For me, almost up there with Mel Brooks’ overhead shot of the chorus in the devastatingly funny Springtime for Hitler production number in his landmark comedy, The Producers (Scr. & Dir. Mel Brooks). Likewise, The Truman Show (Scr. Andrew Niccol — Dir. Peter Weir) and Sliding Doors (Scr. & Dir. Peter Howitt) felt fresh — as if I hadn’t seen them before. And yet, all of them have their roots in oft-told tales.

  Feeling fresh.

  That shouldn’t be a lot to ask, but it is.

  While on the subject of originality, I’d like to impart a suggestion for avoiding clichés in your prose as well as in your storytelling. A technique I’ve tried to impose on my own writing — a kind of discipline, really — another aspect of the Writer’s Mindset: Train yourself to recognize when you’re employing common, often-heard or hackneyed phrases — and — if it isn’t intentional (as, for instance, a character who’s supposed to speak in clichés), either eliminate it, or rephrase the cliché so that it takes on a fresh(er) flavor. In a way, this can be viewed as reinventing — or tweaking — the familiar.

  A simple example: instead of using the one about someone’s “ears burning” (presumably because another has been talking about that person), why not vary it with “heating up,” “sizzling,” “simmering” or the like? While the foregoing are hardly brilliant, they give the phrase a slightly more thought-out feel — as if it wasn’t just tossed-off, the first thing that popped into the writer’s head (not a good advertisement for one’s writing). And when used in dialogue, a fresh turn of cliché makes a similar statement about the character who speaks the lines.

  Stealing Stories From Oneself

  If writers always obeyed the old “write about what you know” slogan, there would be no Science Fiction, Stephen King, fairy tales, nor Shakespeare, to name a few. Unless “what you know” includes human behavior and mental processes.

  It goes virtually without saying that often the most fruitful source of story material is one’s own life — the things we’ve experienced, the people we’ve known. The characters, both good and bad, with whom we’ve shared the stage. All of them provide potential story material. For instance, a number of years ago I had a fascinating — and simultaneously horrifying — encounter (a business association, actually) with an individual who, it gradually became apparent, was a pathological liar — a person who literally could not tell the truth about anything. Anyone reading this who has been closely involved with such an individual will recognize that which I’m describing. He became the basis for an unusual antagonist in one of my TV scripts. That, along with some other types of psychopathology is dealt with in greater detail in Chapter Four.

  On a more prosaic level, during my writing career I’ve created characters and entire stories by pirating the foibles and virtues of friends, famous people, my mother, father, in-laws, two wives and my own — and others’ — children, as well as myself. If you are not already doing so, you should.

  Predictability

  While it is generally not a good idea to tell stories in such a way that your audience is “ahead” of you, sensing how this or that thread is going to turn out, there are exceptions. Predictability can be useful, as in, say, telling a story like the Titanic disaster, with its epic inevitability. But only if the journey on which you take your audience toward that known ending is full of surprises — is not of itself predictable.

  Another way to make predictability work for you is a technique familiar to writers and readers of mysteries: misdirection. Take your audience down a path that seems obvious, and then surprise them by swerving at the last moment onto another route. In writing any kind of puzzle-mystery, it’s good to be aware that you’re playing a game with your readers or viewers, that unless they’re very young children, they’re probably hip to the rhythms of such stories, and are trying to outguess you. Which is why in TV, I tried to avoid what I call the Perry Mason (Wr. Erle Stanley Gardner) set-up wherein you introduce a half-dozen characters, one of whom is absolutely beastly to everyone else in the show, thus giving all of them motives — and then you’d kill him. What kind of surprise is that? The viewers expect him to die because he’s a mean sonofabitch — and because they’ve seen it before.

  Worse, if that’s what you deliver, you’ll lose your audience. So, one of my favorite gags was to choose, as the murder victim, a character so minor that he or she had had only one or two lines of dialogue. Or none. A victim for whom there were no obvious murder motives. Another alternate was to make the victim an unintended target — a character in the wrong place at the wrong moment.

  Essentially, all this means is — think surprise. Think about what you’ve set your audience up to expect — and then flop the coin — or give the rug a good yank. They’ll love you for it.

  The Story Idea

  Let’s start with a question: what does a good story consist of? I’m sure you have read and/or heard about all sorts of theory and/or rules, from the three-act structure to Aristotelian concepts to fugeddabout-the-three-act-structure-it’s-old-hat to this-has-to-happenbefore-that-can-happen to who-knows-what. From you must start with a theme to the necessity of summing up your theme in a few well-chosen words (such as a story about seeking-and-not-finding) to not even thinking about the “meaning” of what you’re writing.

  Incidentally, with regard to starting with theme, I find that it often tends to force the writer to plug in archetypal, symbolic, not altogether human characters. A couple of notable examples are John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and Herman Melville’s Billy Budd. Both are allegories about good (or innocence) versus evil, both undeniably powerful, but for me the effect was diluted by the black-and-whiteness of the characters.

  Nonetheless, some of the theories are arguably valid.

  So
me of them.

  But before dealing with those points, there are three even more basic elements of storytelling — a set of criteria — an acid test — again, a mindset — that have worked very effectively for me in my writing career. Fundamentals that enable us — long before we get into the details, the complexities of our stories, the poetry of our writing, our narrative voice, point-of-view and so forth — to examine whether or not we’re starting it right. Three key essentials, without any one of which — to put it bluntly — your story ain’t gonna work. I call them The Three C’s (forgive the somewhat cutesy-poo alliteration — but it makes them easier to remember):

  Conflict

  Characters

  Construction

  Now, you’re probably muttering to yourself that these are obvious requirements for a well-written story.

  And you’re right. Yet over time I have been astonished on more occasions than I can recall by professional writers — people who should know better — who have overlooked one or more of them. Most frequently the first — Conflict.

  So — back to the initial question: what constitutes a good story idea, and what comprises good storytelling?

  For now, let’s deal with the first part. The idea. The nugget. Your premise. The essence of a good, workable story. Where does it come from? What does it start with? In the following section on Pitching, several approaches are covered — including the what-if, the key-scene, and the Old Movie Shorthand. And in a very real way, these examples also embody aspects of how to find your story, to discover — sometimes to your own surprise — what it’s really about, and communicate it succinctly and effectively. To others — and just as importantly — to yourself. Again, first off, it must at least suggest, or imply, the central conflict. And if it suggests one or more secondary conflicts, that’s not necessarily bad.

  A story idea: Two long-feuding entertainers are forced to face each other — and themselves — when their grown children fall in love.

  Obviously, a take on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet — but instead of the tragic ending, we add the following: the young lovers’ relationship is strained almost to the breaking point when it looks as if one of the parents has attempted to kill the other.

  Not a monumental premise, but workable — and the main conflicts are clear.

  Pitching

  In television and film, pitching is the way stories are sold. Again, while you may never find yourself in a similar situation, the techniques of successful pitching have a lot of relevance, and great importance, for anyone who writes, from poets to novelists to ad-copy writers.

  Because pitching is very much about being clear and un-fuzzy in your own head about what it is that you want to write.

  Pitching your story well means that, over and above whatever gifts you may have as a salesperson, YOU understand — and can express to YOURSELF — what it is you’re going to write!

  In television, as in much of life, pitching, selling (AKA: the dog-and-pony show) — is a con job.

  A confidence game.

  Not, however, in a (necessarily) pejorative sense, but rather in the literal definition of the term. The object of the game is to instill in the person to whom the writer is pitching, the confidence that the writer can deliver the goods, can accomplish what he or she claims to be capable of — in this case, delivering a good script.

  In television, we mostly “pitch” stories for series episodes, or pilots or for movies, verbally, in one or two sentences. We often refer to these pitches as “TV Guide Loglines.” That’s right. Those concise show-descriptions you’ve been reading for years in TV Guide are the way we sell them to the producer, the star, the studio-or-network executive or whoever it is who can say yes or no. Such pitches are also referred to as “hooks,” or “springboards.” They contain the essence of the story.

  A good pitch is concise, articulate, and entertaining. In more cold-blooded terms, a good pitch is one that sells. One that gets the writer an assignment.

  The good pitch also says something important about the writer — about how he or she will approach the story. How it will be told. How solid a grasp the writer has of what it’s really about.

  But perhaps the single most important element of a good pitch is that it either suggests (if you’re trying for subtlety) or (better yet), spells out the main conflict. In the publishing business, it’s that quotable bullet that sets apart the idea for a novel, the one that succinctly says what it’s about, that can make it a “big” book.

  A story premise or situation that compels you — or your listener(s) — to involuntarily begin imagining the reactions of an established character, or characters, can be highly effective, both in selling the idea, and clarifying it for yourself.

  From there, if the pitchees are sufficiently hooked, the writer gives them a brief, verbal beginning-middle-end breakdown. In the case of a pitch for a series pilot, a movie or miniseries, the writer usually provides a “leave-behind,” a written proposal of from two to ten-or-so pages.

  Here are a few examples of verbal pitches:

  Murder, She Wrote premise. “A vampire comes to Cabot Cove.”

  That was the pitch, in its entirety. Two young women with almost no credits gave me that line, and we were in business. The expanded pitch was that a mysterious man, who appears to be a vampire, buys an old Victorian house. He was, incidentally, not the murderer-of-the-week — nor was he the murder victim. And although the conflict isn’t described in so many words, it is implicit; in that single sentence we immediately see the possibilities — the arguments between those townspeople who believe it’s a “real” vampire and those who do not — the reverberations, fears and angst that will arise, the drama it can create. And especially of course, we visualize the reaction of our practical-minded heroine, Jessica Fletcher who, we know, will say, “Wait a minute... a vampire...?”

  Again, a Murder, She Wrote pitch. “Let’s do Pagliacci and Casablanca in Cabot Cove” (in TV, the shorthand of pitching variations on movies, stageplays, etc., is fairly common currency; they’re within almost everyone’s frame of reference). The Pagliacci (Libretto & Music, Ruggero Leoncavallo) part: a small three-person carnival comes to town. The carny-owner, his boorish second-banana, and the boor’s long-suffering, attractive 40ish wife. The Casablanca (Scr. Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, from the play, Everybody Goes to Rick’s, by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison — Dir. Michael Curtiz) part: the attractive wife goes to the Sheriff’s office to obtain permits. The Sheriff turns, and finds himself face-toface with the woman who dumped him 20 years ago in college and ran off with their classmate, the boor.

  Parenthetically, you may have noticed that though Murder is part of the show’s title, in neither of the above Murder, She Wrote pitches was there mention of the murders themselves. There’s a reason: murder was a given. Further, Murder, She Wrote’s murders were rather sanitized, almost never the result of psychopathology, as in the real world of, say, serial killers or Columbine High School or the like. And, they were never grisly. We avoided decapitation, mutilation or death-by-torture. Therefore, the motives were pretty much limited to money, sex or power (or occasionally, the wrong person getting killed), which we likewise tried to vary from episode to episode. Similarly, we were largely unconcerned — especially at the pitch-stage — with how the murder or murders were committed. The method simply had to be different from the ones employed in the last four or five shows — so we wouldn’t appear to be repeating ourselves.

  Another TV series episode pitch, for Supertrain, a rip-off of The Love Boat (Cr. W.L. Baumes — Inspired by Jeraldine Saunders’ book, The Love Boats), but taking place instead on a futuristic railroad train. Supertrain, incidentally, was so monumentally awful that where it’s listed in reference sources, the writers appear to have removed their names, leaving only then-network-head Fred Silverman to take the rap for its creation (a rather delicious irony, since it was allegedly his brain-child).

  My pitch was that we d
o Journey Into Fear (Eric Ambler) and Lost Horizon (James Hilton). That hooked ‘em. The story: A revolutionary new, secret anti-aging cream is being transported from one coast to the other. Immensely valuable, it is sought by the Bad Guys, who want to steal it and make Big Bucks. And they’re willing to kill for it. Our protagonist has it, and is their target (that’s the Journey Into Fear part). Also on the train is a beautiful young (apparently) woman. By the time the train reaches New York, while the protagonist has managed to outwit and vanquish the Bad Guys, the effects of the seemingly miraculous cream have worn off, and the woman, living proof that the cream works, looks her age (she’s really in her nineties — the Lost Horizon part). That was the pitch in its entirety. Supertrain, incidentally, was mercifully killed before I could write the script (at that fledgling point in my career, I sought almost any work I could get).

  And another. For Kaz (Cr. Don Carlos Dunaway & Ron Liebman), I was asked to write an episode — it was pitched to me, the freelancer, by the head-writer, Sam Rolfe, after he’d rejected my own story suggestions — in which the protagonist/trial lawyer (played by Ron Liebman) defends a battered wife who has murdered her husband. That was all they gave me.

  Over the next few days I researched the subject of wife-beaters, and those women who had been imprisoned for killing them, and became infuriated at the injustice of it all. I told the show-runners that I would only write the script if the murder was dead-bang premeditated, and the wife is acquitted. I wanted the show to serve as a message to wife-beaters that their wives could kill them and get away with it. That was my pitch.

  Rolfe and company agreed, with the wise proviso that we not inform the network that that was our purpose. Had CBS known we intended to suggest that murder is sometimes justifiable, they would have undoubtedly forbidden it. The reason: because of commercial sponsors’ abject fear of consumer backlash, and the networks’ dread of offending advertisers, the unspoken rule was — and still is — that shows can only pretend to be about something — that if a statement is made about a controversial subject, it must be balanced by showing the other side of the argument. This is particularly true of “moral” questions. And, if the issue is too “hot-button,” they won’t go near it in the first place.