Fiction Writing Demystified Page 6

  Part of the equation is, I suppose, economics. Small movies with large emotional content rarely become blockbusters — which in our system means that not many are produced. And when they are, they receive only limited distribution. Another factor may be in the American Psyche itself — insofar as it is understood by the creators of our entertainments — a desire to escape, to avoid for a few hours having to think or feel, or to deal with reality. Which may to some extent account for much of modern art’s popularity — a preference for emotionally undemanding wall-decoration rather than the substance and often-visceral pull of, say, a painting by John Singer Sargent or Edgar Degas.

  In musical theater, the history of this phenomenon extends at least as far back as Britain’s Gilbert and Sullivan, Viennese Operettas, and no doubt beyond. But on Broadway, the “Musical” (an odd noun, when one thinks about it — a musical what?) has elevated shallowness, banality and cleverness to an almost-religious cult status. Yes, many of them contain admirable, well-written popular tunes, clever lyrics and book, superb production, sterling performances, inventive choreography, great costume-and-set-design and often-amazing stagecraft.

  And an emotional bite that’s right up there with mayonnaise.

  We sit there tapping our toes, admiring the show cerebrally, sort of — or even largely — enjoying the experience, yet not really connecting. Too often, for myself anyway, an hour later I can barely recall the show. Did I have a pleasant evening? Sure. But at those prices I expect more than pleasant. I’ve often wondered what it’s an escape to?

  Admittedly we’re talking about forms that are intended to simply entertain — certainly a worthwhile goal. Oftentimes toe-tapping, laughing and humming the songs (or the scenery) on your way home is enough. And who knows, maybe the Hollywood/Broadway folks have it right. Perhaps there does exist a kind of ingrained national opposition to having our deeper emotions assaulted or manipulated — as if in a way it’s a violation of our privacy.

  Nonetheless, while it’s undoubtedly true that few of us want a steady diet of profundity or intense feeling, my own boredom with much of what I read and/or view, my own sense of having wasted my time, tells me there’s a market for far more thought-and-emotionprovoking, more deeply involving material than the small amount we’re given.

  The point is that in any case, denying or avoiding emotion is emphatically not what being an artist should be about.

  It is not what good writing is about.

  If you are interested in moving your audience, connecting with your readers on below-surface levels, I suggest that you study, and borrow or steal, from the European filmmakers and Italian opera. Yes, there’s always the risk of descending into mawk and melodrama — but I’m convinced that it is better to err in that direction — and then if you must, dial it back — than to aim for blandness.

  Don’t be afraid to use the power your words can have.

  Remember that guy with the remote in his hand.

  Back to the notion of playing the moments, another way of stating it, another worthwhile axiom from the visual media:

  Don’t tell us about it — show it!

  And still another TV Don’t: Avoid having your characters, or your narrator, talk about yet-to-appear off-stage characters, players the audience has never met. As in, “When I worked for Dave Mason...” or “Margaret is going to the show tonight...” when we’ve not met Margaret or Dave Mason (unless they’re about to come onstage — or it’s intentional foreshadowing). Why? Because it’s confusing, and until the viewer — or your reader — can put a face to the character, largely meaningless.

  Of course there will be, and have been, significant and totally valid exceptions, such as in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, where the entrance of Hickey is much anticipated. Or Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty. And certainly, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (who never does show up — or does he?), and others that employ such references to foreshadow the arrival of someone new — and important. In mysteries it’s a common device. But generally, a lot of talk about characters who haven’t appeared, or worse, aren’t going to appear, is a flag to be wary about.

  Another term from television (and movies) that you should know and understand, because it will help you identify what’s important in the story you’re telling is:

  The Money Scene

  The facedown on the dusty Western street, the big emotional moment between two of your characters, the climactic battle, or the solitary protagonist’s instant of revelation. In film and television the term usually — but not always — connotes the big, expensive-to-shoot moment(s) in the show. Sometimes it’s the scene with dozens or even hundreds of extras. Sometimes it’s the party scene, or the big car chase or special-effects-and-stunt-laden action blowoff. In Musical Theater they’re referred to as Production Numbers. Grand Opera usually has at least one per show.

  A story or script or novel can have several of them.

  For the director of a television dramatic series, who has to shoot eight-to-ten pages of script per day in order to finish on schedule, the term can take on a meaning particularly relevant to the writer of narrative fiction. The director, in breaking down the script (“prepping” and/or scheduling the shoot), may see that of two comparable three-page scenes, one seems less important than the other in terms of theatrical or story value (more commonly, in TV the writer/producer will point it out). So the director will allot, say, thirty minutes to shoot the less-crucial scene, and perhaps several hours to shoot the other.

  How is this accomplished? Often by minimizing the choreography within the less vital scene, by reducing number of camera setups or moves, each of which can eat up time relighting the set or location. Shooting the scene in a single “take,” with no cuts, also speeds things up. The more expensive money scene will then be filmed with greater care, devoting extra attention to sophisticated camerawork and/or lighting, more “production value,” thus heightening its significance for the audience.

  Okay, that’s how it works on the screen. But what we’re talking about here really isn’t significantly different for writers of narrative prose. It’s about deciding how much relative weight to give to the various parts of your story. Some just don’t need three or four pages. Others will require more. Sometimes it’s only a matter of short-handing the less important stuff.

  Which at bottom is about knowing what doesn’t need to be emphasized in your story. Which steps or moments or transactions are not worth dramatizing or showing — usually because they’re obvious and/or without sufficient entertainment value to justify their inclusion. This subject is addressed in some detail in Chapter Five. For now, however, let’s deal with identifying and amplifying the material that counts — your money scenes.

  Often, money scenes are not big production scenes, but rather are turning-points — moments in the story where events suddenly go in unexpected directions. A scene for example in which the writer might have to make an extra effort to justify such a turn for the audience. In The Sixteenth Man, one of the most crucial and challenging money scenes occurred when my protagonist, Charlie Callan, was faced with a complex series of truly epic personal choices, all of them trumped finally by a moral decision of historic importance for which there was no “right” answer: what should he do with the hard evidence in his possession of who really killed President John F. Kennedy?

  It was a largely internal struggle in which the path Charlie finally chose could easily have been regarded by my audience as stupid or unbelievable — thus causing readers to lose sympathy for him, or worse, to very probably stop reading the book.

  I knew that, given the limitations of who he was, I must show Charlie considering as many shadings of risk-versus-gain as he was capable of handling — this flawed, very human guy whom I hoped my readers would find as fascinating as I did. He had to weigh his overall situation, the effect his decision might have on his loved ones — while all along factoring in his emotions, his finances, and his sense of the realities. And �
� Charlie would finish up the whole process with a choice that, while farfetched, arguably crazy, and almost certain to end badly — had to seem to him (this character I had created, who was speaking to me), the only course he could have chosen.

  But even more importantly, for the readers it had to be inevitable — they had to believe it and to go with Charlie, to root for him. To say yeah, crazy as it seems, if I were Charlie, I’d probably have done the same thing. This also falls under the heading of “bolstering” (justifying) your story-moves.

  The key point here, for the writer of fictional comedy or drama, as well as history, biography or memoir, is that you must learn to identify your own money scenes, and then give them appropriate weight.

  The Plot Device

  Appropriately named, Plot Devices are story-tools that can help us tell ours more effectively, with more pop, zip, emotion, motivation, or whatever we need a little more of. The following are gags that have been employed — and often abused — in endless variations for as long as people have been telling stories. The trick, as always, is to employ a fresh spin, to avoid having it come across as cliché. Not always easy. Some, such as the conveniently unlocked door, present more of a challenge than others.

  Plot Devices: Clocks

  Clocks are extremely useful energizing devices. A clock is nothing more than a deadline — a time-limit. As in: Something bad will happen unless the money (or whatever) is delivered by such and such a time. Or, the mortgage has to be paid up by one o’clock tomorrow afternoon or else they’re going to foreclose. Or, if the ransom isn’t paid at a certain hour, the kidnap victim is going to be killed. Time-bombs. Literally ticking clocks.

  It’s tried, true, often hackneyed, but it works.

  In TV we refer to some generic clocks via dialogue, as in the bad guy-line: “Okay, then we’re moving up the shipment. It’ll hafta go out now, instead of at ten o’clock.” Shorthanded as “The Old MovingUp-The-Shipment Gag,” it usually means that the undercover hero, who has arranged a police-raid for ten o’clock and, unable to alert the cops to the revised schedule, will have no choice but to try saving the day on his own — at great personal risk, of course. Sound familiar? While your clock must sometimes be disguised in order to avoid being flagged as a cliché, it can nonetheless add needed urgency and/or suspense to your story, and angst for your characters, neither of which has a downside.

  Plot Devices: Maguffins

  The maguffin is the object of great value that almost everybody in the story is after. Sometimes it’s the secret plans. Sometimes it’s the computer disk, or the microchip. In Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, the maguffin is the Falcon itself, a legendary jewel-encrusted golden statuette. Sometimes it’s the most valuable diamond in the world. Or the suitcase full of money that your protagonist has mistakenly picked up from the airport luggage carousel.

  Occasionally the maguffin is a desirable woman, especially in Film Noir, wherein the traditional setup consists of two men who want the same extremely sexy female. Badly enough to kill for her. For the gag to work, of course, she is usually untrustworthy, and always to die for. For me, the ultimate, definitive film noir is Out of the Past (Scr. James M. Cain, Frank Fenton, and Geoffrey Homes, from Homes’ novel, Build My Gallows High — Dir. Jacques Tourneur). And it didn’t hurt that the leading man was the perfect noir hero, Robert Mitchum, nor that his co-star, Jane Greer, was the ideal, sultry Object of Desire.

  A bit of advice in choosing a maguffin: nothing becomes dated more quickly the latest high-tech item.

  Plot Devices: Hiding in Plain Sight

  The photograph or video that inadvertently records something (an event, a person, object, or other image or information) that should not have been seen by the camera. Or the clue that was always there for everyone to see, but it’s so obvious that for awhile it’s ignored.

  The potted houseplant, its shoots pointed away from the adjacent window because it was rotated when someone removed the door key concealed beneath it.

  The map or document that consists of more than is apparent at first glance. Or, the crucial information is invisible to the naked eye, only discernable in, say, UV light. A map containing hidden data was used to wonderful effect in one of the truly classic, still eminently watchable WWII movies, Five Graves to Cairo (Scr. Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, based on Lajos Biro’s play, Hotel Imperial — Dir. Billy Wilder).

  Plot Devices: Meet-Cute

  For decades, the meet-cute (sometimes referred to as “cutemeet”) device has been virtually a required ingredient of Hollywood’s Romantic Comedies. To the point of wearing out its welcome because it became so obvious, so often. And yet it endures because, when well-executed, it can very effectively set the tone for one’s story. It’s that first-meeting, boy-girl scene (now of course it may be boy-boy or girl-girl) where he accidentally spills his tray of food on her expensive gown, or she is demonstrating her tennis forehand and inadvertently knocks him in the head, or he or she falls into the swimming pool. Usually, in the older films, and in today’s as well, the result for the remainder of the first two Acts is that while he’s wild about her, she can’t stand him (the “wrong-guy-who’s-really-Mister Right” gag) — or, vice-versa, he resents her, but she has the hots for him. Or, neither likes the other until fate, or the plotting of friends, brings them together again and shows them the Light.

  There have been many, many takes on the meet-cute gag, some of them tedious, many of them wildly inventive and/or laudable. But for me none surpasses its use in the unforgettable And Now, My Love (Scr. Claude Lelouch, Pierre Uytterhoeven — Dir. Claude Lelouch). In this timeless movie, the meeting of the two lovers — and it is cute — doesn’t take place until the final minute of the film. And delicious it is — though if you’ve never seen the movie, I caution you to try viewing in its almost-impossible-to-find original French (with titles), since the dubbed version is a horror, truly an atrocity committed against this work of art.

  While the meet-cute has arguably been overused, it works. But the writer who becomes familiar with some of the many variations has a far better chance of coming up with an inventive approach.

  Plot Devices: Platforming

  Arguably a technique as much as it is a device, platforming, as used in TV, is in many ways another term for foreshadowing. Particularly when it’s about laying in the hint of an event-to-come, a twist, a clue, or character-nuance-or-change. It’s about planting something physical, verbal or descriptive at one or more points in your story, that will pay-off later. Or, so that when a certain event occurs, it won’t seem too jarringly out-of-character-or-place, or provide the wrong kind of surprise — the kind that can cause one’s audience to quit, or walk away disappointed. Or worse, angry.

  But you need not necessarily worry about platforming when you’re writing or outlining page one. Often it is accomplished deep into the work, when the writer realizes the need to “set-up” an action by going back to earlier scenes and plugging in related references or incidents.

  Again, in The Sixteenth Man, the fact that protagonist Charlie Callan was a former minor-league pitcher whose arm had gone dead played a key part in the narrative, and in the central mystery. But until I was nearing the end of my outline I didn’t realize just how important it was; it necessitated my going back through the story and inserting (platforming) moments that emphasized his passion for baseball, his experiences as a player.

  In mystery writing, starting — in your head — with the solution, and then working backward is a common approach. In my case, concocting TV mysteries, once we had the premise, the central “play” that was the heart of each show, we almost invariably worked backward from the “Gotcha” scene. This meant laying in the clues, the evidence, including the all-important “Play-Fair Clue” (more on that later), the murderer’s slip-ups if any, and the detective’s observations that eventually led to the real killer. In my own scripts, however, I seldom decided who the murderer was until I had almost finished the outline. At that
point I had a better fix on who might be shaping up as the least likely assassin. Occasionally for me — in the mystery writer’s ongoing game of trying to outwit the audience — figuring my viewers had already zeroed in on that ploy, I’d reject the least likely character and opt for another.

  A few pages further along, under “Closure,” you’ll find reference to another kind of platforming, which is embodied in Chekhov’s “Rifle Above the Mantelpiece” Rule.

  Plot Devices: The Deus Ex Machina

  Literally, from the Latin, god from a machine. In ancient Greek and Roman drama, a deity brought onstage to resolve a difficult situation. In modern times the device is often in the form of an improbable character or happening that accomplishes the same thing. Or, short of resolution, the device may alter the balance of the situation. The sudden storm that results in a flood, or loss of electric power, the unexpected earthquake.

  The term also describes an elaborately devised event, most familiarly the diabolically contrived murder, which may employ mechanical devices. For my taste, the deus ex machina should be plat-formed long before its appearance, preferably as subtly as possible, so that while its ultimate appearance in the piece comes as a surprise, your audience will feel it should have been expected.

  Plot Devices: Parallel Action