Fiction Writing Demystified Read online

  Or, worst-case, once you start making changes — the entire structure begins to collapse.

  In TV we call that kind of after-the-fact phenomenon “pulling threads.” A most-disheartening experience for a writer.

  By outlining, you can avoid such disasters. Your outline is where you construct — and more easily deconstruct and/or reconstruct — your story.

  Whether you work with file cards on a bulletin-board, or a computer program, or scribble on a legal pad, your outline will, for instance, enable you to look critically at each scene, each situation, to judge how it fits into the whole of your story — the dynamic. You’ll see how you’ve paced your story. Where it sags, where it needs help. You’ll make discoveries about your characters. It will help you maintain balance — and that so necessary objectivity, or “distance.” If there isn’t enough edge or angst or heat inherent in a scene or a setup or a chapter, you’ll have a far better chance of recognizing it, being able to fix it, adding to your mix. If consecutive scenes are too much alike — or too jarringly different, you’ll see it. Is this scene too long, that one too short? Is there enough incident — stuff happening — or too much? Are you maintaining your desired focus? Is there a hole in your plot? Is your story entertaining enough, compelling enough?

  I’m convinced that with few exceptions, whatever reasons a writer gives for working without the net provided by an outline, what it really means is “I’m too lazy to work the kinks out of my story ahead of time.”

  Can successful novels, plays and movies be written that way? Sure. It’s your call. But know this:

  Outlining will help you and your writing — and it can save you from disaster. Viewing it another way — do you want to win — or lose? Are you willing to gamble your time on another uncompleted project? I’m not. In my own writing, assuming my story idea survives the outline stage, I finish what I start.

  Conflict Defined

  It’s important to understand that conflict is not necessarily warfare, or yelling and screaming. In fact, the conflicts within your story should be of varied intensity, orchestrated by you so that they are not all the same. It’s how the great composers write their music — how you should write yours.

  There are writers who may disagree with my insistence that there be some level of conflict in every scene. In fact, there have been a few I’ve worked with in television who questioned it. But unless those writers came around to my approach, that was the end of our work-relationship. I suggest that you adopt a similar tenet for your own efforts.

  A shipwreck victim easily reaching a nearby reef is dull. The child getting to the cookie jar without difficulty is uninteresting. Why? Because the goals are too-effortlessly achieved. Show your reader the swimmer overcoming hazards — from an inability to swim, to high seas and pounding surf, to sharks or... Dramatize the child straining to reach the cookies, in danger of falling off the shaky chair on which she’s standing. On the verge of being caught, and perhaps breaking the family heirloom cookie jar. Or give it a non-physical edge, the child’s emotional struggle, feeling guilty or wary because she’s been warned against it. All are variations of conflict. Problems that add texture (sometimes referred to as color) to the story you’re telling. Even problems so tiny that they’re sometimes not immediately or obviously identifiable as conflict.

  Can you have too much conflict? Sure.

  Is it possible that the problems you place in your characters’ paths might be repetitive — too similar? Sure. Conflicts that follow a recognizable, predictable pattern. In TV we describe that as writing “by-the-numbers.”

  What about levels of intensity — can there be too much heat? Absolutely. We’ve all read books or seen action movies where the explosions, the special effects crashes-and-clashes are so frequent and so big that they anesthetize us.

  Incident-after-incident at the same high emotional pitch tends to work against itself, dulling all of it. Similarly, the audience can become just as stupefied by too many slow scenes in a row. You should aim for an up-and-down dynamic — not only from scene-to-scene, but also moment-to-moment within your scenes. More about that later. That’s part of self-editing your work. It’s another way you’ll benefit from writing your outline.

  About Texture

  An excellent example of texture is embodied in a memorable scene in the brilliant 1954 movie classic, On the Waterfront. Remarkable for its screenplay by Budd Schulberg (suggested by a series of articles written by Malcom Johnson), and it’s direction by Elia Kazan, the film also features a number of dazzling acting performances, all of them overshadowed by that of the young Marlon Brando who, in this and other roles of that era literally reinvented the art of acting.

  In Waterfront, Brando portrays a likeable, unschooled, slightly punch-drunk, failed prizefighter/dock worker. His co-star, played by Eva Marie Saint, is a shy, sheltered, convent-schooled young woman. Early in their relationship there is a wonderfully constructed walking-talking scene, tentative, guarded, full of subtextual tension. She’s somewhat afraid of him, of his strength. He’s intimidated by her gentility, her education. As they stroll along the Hoboken waterfront, conversing uneasily, Ms. Saint drops one of her knitted gloves. Brando picks it up, but to her minor surprise and confusion, he doesn’t give it back to her. Instead, as their verbal sparring continues, he uses it to gain control. Still talking, he sits on a child’s swing and idly pulls the small glove onto his large hand. She watches, running her lines (neither speaking of the glove, nor reaching for it) and we watch and listen — fascinated by this little piece of business into which all sorts of subtext can be read. We sense that she’s distracted by what he’s doing, that she must fight to stay on-subject. And he seems to recognize the advantage, using it to play with her. It is a marvelous moment in a marvelous, landmark scene. Ironically, it was not scripted, but rather invented — adlibbed — on the spot when Ms. Saint accidentally dropped her glove. Brando retrieved it, continued the scene without missing a beat. So our sense that she was distracted is accurate. Like the audience, she was riveted by what he was doing. That Kazan had the inspired judgment to let the camera run is a tribute to his brilliance. Students of film history know it as “The Glove Scene,” and while the way it turned out was-n’t written on the page, it was in effect written by the actors and the director. And more to the point, it stands as a model, the kind of moment we, as writers, should stretch ourselves to reach.

  That’s theater. That’s entertainment. That’s good, edgy writing — but mainly — it’s a form of conflict — the place from which you should consciously approach your writing — until it becomes so much a part of you that you no longer need to think about it. Till you automatically ask yourself “Where’s the heat?”

  An exercise: Next time you write a scene in which your characters are, say, in a kitchen, have one of them making a pot of coffee while the other character’s (or characters’) dialogue is playing out. Then — consider adding a problem that seems unrelated to the conversation — the Mr. Coffee malfunctions, he or she can’t find the scoop that is usually left in the coffee can. A distraction, which now becomes part of the scene, possibly making it necessary for the other person to assist, or become irritated by having to repeat a statement. From there it’s easy to see how much more lively your writing can become. In the-ater/film parlance it’s called business, and as in the Brando example, actors often come up with it on their own. And sometimes directors create it. But since I cannot count on either of the above, I write it into my scripts (as well as into my prose). I urge you to do the same, no matter what form your storytelling takes. Listen carefully, for example, to the next professional joke-teller you see; if the gag is longer than a one-liner, most likely he or she will have loaded the buildup with business that adds to the humor, stuff that has you laughing long before the punchline. Flavor. Texture. Entertainment.

  Red Flags

  Perhaps the most valuable gift you give yourself by writing your outline is getting stuck.

  T
hat’s right. Reaching that point where the forward thrust of your story screeches to a halt. We’ve all experienced it — you just plain cannot figure out where your story should go next — that desperate “I know, maybe if I have my characters do X” moment when you begin forcing the next scene, and the next, hoping they’ll inspire you — until you realize you’re writing fill.

  In my experience as a TV writer, the above-described Flag (fill) usually means one thing.

  Not enough story. Not enough complication.

  Not enough going on — problems, goals, angst, urgency or whatever — to sustain audience-interest — or your characters’ — or yours — for the full 44 minutes — or whatever length your story happens to be. Such a Flag almost always signals a need for another layer of complexity. Sometimes adding a minor subplot takes care of it. Sometimes an additional character or two. Or you need to make your adversary smarter.

  Okay, once again it’s write-it-on-your-forehead-time: When you have enough story, the question of what should take place next almost never arises — and if it does, it’s usually easily answered.

  Another Flag that is, happily, likely to make itself known during the outline process is the discovery that one of your characters is serving no purpose, save for possibly one or two small points. If reading this rings no bells for you, I guarantee that it will the next time you encounter it in your writing. And when you notice that you’ve got such an extraneous, not-really-necessary character, the usual solution is to dump him-or-her-or-it, or to combine that character with another.

  The purely “mechanical” scene or moment is another place to beware, another flag that will often show up in your outline. What do I mean? In TV we describe as “mechanical” those points in a story that have must be portrayed in order to clarify and/or advance the plot, yet serve no other purpose. Incidents or actions which may be so perfunctory that the inexperienced writer, just to get ‘em in there, will write them in an uninteresting manner.

  Example: For whatever reason your story demands that you show your protagonist purchasing — say — a train ticket. If you are unable to make the transaction part of a larger, more interesting scene, if it must stand alone, find a way to make it work in terms of conflict that will, ideally, test and expose your major character, the scene’s protagonist. How do you pull it off? Let me suggest one or two.

  The ticket clerk has an attitude or eccentricity that your protagonist finds irritating — or comical. Or, the clerk is impatient, or distracted, having — say — just lost a contact lens (the important point is that it generates a reaction — an edge).

  Or — another traveler, late for his or her train, rudely tries to elbow past your protagonist who, maybe out of sympathy, defers to the harried customer. And perhaps the ticket clerk takes a particular point-of-view, figures the protagonist is being too tolerant.

  Conflict = entertainment.

  And in the process, we can learn something new about our protagonist.

  Another symptom of fill is the scene or chapter in which the story stands still — the place at which, despite all the dialogue or char-acter-stuff or action you’ve just written, leaves your players in substantially the same place they were at the beginning. Not good. Again, the important point here is learning to recognize the Flag. Often, the fix will require nothing more than moving them a bit closer to their overall goals, or throwing the next obstacle across the path of one or more characters.

  These are a few of the Red Flags we all encounter as writers. The trick is learning to quickly, instinctively recognize them — and what they’re telling us. And how much better to detect them — and fix the glitches — in the outline-stage — before you are faced with tearing apart your carefully-written work. The aforementioned Pulling Threads.

  Put another way, there are few tasks more depressing than having to fundamentally rewrite a work to which we’ve devoted months, or worse, years.

  Some writers however are into pain.

  If you’re one of them — get over it.

  Big Flags, little Flags. A carefully constructed outline isn’t a cure-all for rewriting, nor will it guarantee that you’ll put together a story that makes sense.

  But it can’t hurt.

  Oh, yeah — I’ve heard the often-used argument that outlining hampers creativity. Not true.

  Play the Moments — Don’t Just Talk About Them

  In film and television that phrase is near the top of the writer’s checklist. Play your characters’ big emotional moments, their turning points, their battles, their deaths, their wins and their losses. Dramatize them. Write them. Make scenes out of them.

  That seems so obvious, yet over and over I have been amazed to see, in the work of otherwise gifted writers, even some very successful professionals, the biggest scenes taking place off-screen, stage or page. Or, if they’re played, often blunted. I have a hunch it is less about ineptitude than it is the natural inclination of most of us to shy away from highly emotional moments in our personal lives, especially our over-civilized desire to avoid confrontation. Or real thoughts of death and/or violence.

  I first encountered this phenomenon in a script-meeting early in my TV career. I was one of three or four staffers who were giving notes to a freelance writer before sending him off to do a final draft of his teleplay, which was about a young mentally retarded man — and the question of his ability to live on his own after his father/guardian’s sudden death. The writer had come up with a quiet scene at the gravesite, wherein the grieving, mentally challenged young man spoke to his late father.

  The discussion among the writers was about what the young man should say. A suggestion pushed by the scriptwriter was to have him quietly sing the theme song from the character’s favorite TV show, Gilligan’s Island (Cr. Sherwood Schwartz — Comp. Schwartz & George Wyle). Other notions included some maudlin, on-the-nose remarks about how he missed the old man. Happily, these were quickly rejected.

  Then I offered that it might be appropriate, and moving, and startlingly real, to have him express his anger at dad for having died, for deserting him. Such resentment and animosity are very human, almost universal reactions to the death of a loved one. What surprised me were the reactions from my fellow writers. It was more than just flat, academic rejection. Several actually resented the idea — angered that I’d brought it up. All of them looked at me as if I’d suggested that the young retarded man unzip his fly and expose himself on-camera. I quickly shut up — realizing that clearly, I had inadvertently crossed into some off-limits territory.

  We settled for a shot of him squatting by his father’s grave, rocking back-and-forth on his heels, singing the Gilligan’s Island song (a lovely performance by Adam Arkin). Emotionally, it was about a 4. It was — okay.

  I believe, incidentally, that this resistance to having our deeper emotions touched is one of the reasons so much of America’s theater, cinema and television are such uninvolving, surface, escapist entertainments. This becomes especially clear when we compare our slick, big-budget movies with the better films from, say, France or Italy or Sweden. They are different from American movies, and the difference goes far beyond language. For me the most significant disparity is in point-of-view — a kind of basic approach. European films tend to be closely observed, highly personal and emotionally charged on levels rarely seen in American product, wherein the deepest emotional demands on the audience seem mostly to be made by explosions, car crashes or gunplay. Think of Cinema Paradiso (Scr. & Dir. Giuseppe Tornatore), Il Postino (Scr. Giacomo & Furio Scarpelli, Massimo Troisi, Anna Pavignano, Michael Radford — Dir. Michael Radford), or the films of Claude Lelouch, Federico Fellini or Ingmar Bergman.

  An illustration: In Cinema Paradiso there is a scene of parting. People embracing, saying, or expressing their goodbyes with their eyes, their faces. And there is a shot of an aged, gnarled, blue-veined hand on the shoulder of another. The camera lingers on that hand, and the moment is deeply touching.

  For me, that shot es
sences the difference between European films and those made in the U.S. With few exceptions (Spielberg comes to mind) I cannot imagine an American blockbuster-director even framing such a picture, much less including it in the final cut.

  Yes, there are a few American films as emotionally affecting, equally intimate. An example is contained in a scene from one of the truly great Westerns, The Outlaw Josie Wales (Scr. Philip Kaufman and Sonia Chernus, based on the novel Gone to Texas, by Forrest Carter — Dir. Clint Eastwood). In it there is the gut-wrenching moment when Josie (portrayed by Clint Eastwood) realizes that his family has been slain. The audience suffers his pain, and I’m sure many who watched it were brought to tears, as I was. Compare that to a similar story-point in a far more typical, white-bread-andmayonnaise, emotionally uninvolving American movie, Gladiator (Scr. David Franzoni, John Logan, William Nicholson — Story: David Franzoni — Dir. Ridley Scott). Early in that big, technically impressive film, the protagonist, a Roman General played by Russell Crowe, returns to his bucolic, rural home after a lengthy, exhausting battle-campaign — and discovers his wife and son murdered. This moment should have been powerful, deeply moving, tearing the audience to pieces as does the one in Josie Wales. Instead, it is curiously, almost startlingly distant. The audience sits there watching — feeling almost no connection with the character or the tragedy. A little sad for him, maybe, but definitely not pit-of-the-stomach, or even lump-in-the-throat.

  Was it because of Crowe’s performance? Choice of camera placement or angle? Or the way it was lit? Or might it have been fear on the part of the artists involved (chiefly, the director and producers) to confront their own emotions. I suspect it was all of those and more. I believe it’s part of an overall mindfix which seems to govern American entertainments in general. That Hollywood and Broadway perceive American audiences as being largely uninterested — if not outright resistant to — heavy emotional content may even be an accurate reading, though I question its validity. Nonetheless, that perception explains to my satisfaction why so many of the works created by our entertainment industry seem to be conceived and presented at arm’s-length from the audience.