Stay tuned, readers. A grand surprise is in the works!
Why do we care?
I was reading a story the other day, and I thought I would share it with you:
“I thought my songs were okay. Kind of Sonic Youth meets the Dirty Projectors. Nathan did not think they were okay.
‘Abominable,’ he’d told me, ‘A noisy mismash. You must learn to do more with less.’
‘Thanks, Nathan, thanks a lot,’ I said, really ticked off. ‘Care to tell me how?’
His great advice was to listen to the guitar phrase about four minutes in on the song ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond.’ He says David Gilmour wrote it and it’s only four notes long, but it sounds exactly how sadness feels. I told him I didn’t need an old stoner to tell me how sadness feels. I knew.
‘That’s not enough,’ he said. ‘My schnauzer, too, knows what sadness feels. What matters is this: Can you express that knowing? That feeling? That is what separates you.’
‘Separates who? Me from a schnauzer?’
‘Separates an artist from a schmuck.’
‘So I’m a schmuck now? That is the last time I give you anything of mine to listen to.’
Nathan’s reply was this: ‘One day in 1974, a man named David Gimour was sad. So what? Who cares? I do. Why? Because of that one incredible phrase. Because it endures. When you can write music that endures, bravo. Until then, keep quiet and study the work of those who can.’” – Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution
When I read this passage, I began to think about why we should care about stories. I get asked this question almost daily by my students. Why does it matter? When all this other stuff is going on in the world, why do we need books and plays and movies? Why does Peter Pan or Moby Dick or Lizzy Bennett matter when we have people like terrorists and gangsters and divorced deadbeat fathers in the world? Because it’s through those little measures of music we become human. We find our souls lifted above any other species in the world because we have enduring and beautiful dialogue on things we can’t see. Through music, through themes in our books, through characters and stories we’ve known since we were kids, we have an unspoken language to talk about the things we never came up with words to describe. The stories that mean something … that really stick around forever … are those who found just those four notes to describe not only what the character and author were feeling … but what thousands of millions of other people have felt before. We look to these notes to see that we are in fact not alone in the universe. That there is a rhyme and rhythm to the everyday struggles we go through. There is a sort of beauty in a breakdown, as Frou Frou puts it. There is a sort of music to a rainy thunderstorm. There is someone out there who ripped their heart out and splashed it on the page for us to nod our heads in agreement when we see it painted there in front of us.
We need stories. Even in the worst days, we need those four notes.
Have a good night.
Why Does The Lion King Still Matter?
This past weekend, Disney’s The Lion King hit theatres and scored 30 million on their first three days of sales. This is pretty impressive … especially since it was released in 1995.
As I sat in the theater and watched these little youngin’s see Mufasa die for the first time, I wondered why it was this movie and not others that withstood the sands of time. Why was it not The Great Mouse Detective or Lady and the Tramp being re-released? Why The Lion King? Why was it that when I asked my students what their favorite movie was, they always answer the same?
It’s a question that we as writers face when we think about writing a great book. Not a “good” book. Not even a “eh it was okay” book. Don’t deny it; every single one of us want to write that book. The one that years from now, we’ll have songs written about it and movie trailers following and little kids will still flock to bedtime to hear. Okay, so maybe for some of us, not little kids. But the gist is made.
Jane Austen was not the only novelist of her time. Neither was Twain or Shakespeare or Beckett or any other famous person you’ve heard of. There were hundreds of thousands of stories told, so why is it that there are only four remaining from Greek festivals (barring the fact that most of them went up in a pile of smoke in Alexandria)?
I always tell my students it’s because of a few very important elements the writer hits right.
The Yellow Volkswagon
I’ve talked about the Yellow Volkswagon before, but I’ll hit it again. In order to have a good story, you gotta laugh and you gotta cry. Check out TLK for example. Simba’s father has just died. Scar has just sent this little ten-year-old boy to go die either in the desert or by hyena teeth. These three hyenas go running after him, and his only escape is through thorns. We’re about to cry because it’s so terribly sad … and then Bonzai falls in the thorns and comes out screaming “Ayeeeeeiii!” Shenzi then says, “I ain’t going in there! What you want me to come out lookin’ like you? Cactus Butt?” It’s funny, and we laugh. Whenever anything too terribly sad happens, they play up the laugh. It’s a constant weigh scale, balancing the two masks of drama.
Clear Plotline
The Lion King is what we call a bildungsroman. It is the story of a hero who goes from child to adult. He proves himself. Now does that mean that the movie is drab and a tale as old as time? No, there are twists and shocks and fun parts, too, to keep us entertained along the way. But it isn’t muddled. It all is going toward a goal of the character’s need to be king. When my classes plot out a Disney movie on the Freytag, I tell them to stay away from certain movies (such as The Little Mermaid) because it’s just too difficult to follow. There is no clear ending and clear goal all the way through. Ariel wants to have freedom, but she wants the boy, but she wants her voice back … and who’s the villain? Triton? Ursula? Sebastian? Who?
Complex Characters
However, does this mean that everyone needs to be hero or villain? No. I think one of Mulan’s greatest downfalls is the fact that Shan Yu is clearly a bad guy and Mulan is clearly a good guy. Okay so she’s clumsy, but Shan Yu has yellow eyes. Simba is a little jerk, and he grows up to be a bigger jerk. But we still root for him. Timon and Pumbaa are bums, but we still love them. Scar is terrible, but we still feel sorry for him. Mufasa is a great father, but he’s a terrible brother. All of these characters are complex, and so we find them to be more interesting. We relate to them more …
Heart
Finally, heart. This is the final ingredient you need. It needs to matter to the audience. It needs to hit us in a place that clicks deep inside. There is an entire society here on earth that knows what it means when Mufasa has fallen. Everyone remembers the first time they realized he wasn’t going to get back up. Everyone gets goosebumps when they see Simba take the throne. When they hear Mufasa in the clouds. They laugh when they watch “Hakuna Matata.” It connects deep inside somewhere we can’t really place. We’re not just watching a Disney movie, we’re watching a part of our human narrative.
So go see The Lion King. Take a notebook. Jot some notes. And start writing. I’ll see you in another fifteen years when it comes out in 4D.
My New Writing Desk
This post is about my writing desk.
I recently (last week) moved into a new apartment. Now I knew in this new living space, I wanted my own area for my writing. The idea manifested from a million and a half desks bought, constructed, and placed in my room in order to compel me to scribble every day. But just like the million and a half diaries and journals bought in the same vein, I would use that journal and desk for about a day and then leave it to blank empty pages … or an assortment of dirty clothing.
But I was bent on succeeding this time around. I would have a writing nook, just like when I played Sims 3 and gave my avatar an adorable and cozy little writing room. It would be mine. I would write every day. And that was that.
In order to find the perfect desk, I headed out to Goodwill. And there it was, marked at 9.99. A gigantic brilliant sturdy wooden writing desk, with four drawers on each leg and one of those little pencil drawers in the middle. The thing was as big as a baby elephant, and as slick and beaten up and magnificent as an old race horse. And it spoke out to me, “Hello, Jenni. I am your writing desk.”
So that is when I took Calderon Herman Orwell Rowling Dickens of St. Petersberg III home (CHORD for short).
Chord now sits under my laptop, resting nicely with relics taken from the closeout sale of fixings and furntire at the local Borders (rest his soul), and I’ve written nearly every day.
Now of course there’s a reason for me to tell you about my new best friend. It’s to remind you to find yourself some place in your clutter of a life to make up shop for what is important. You’ve got couches, posters, coffee makers, and unfinished work brought home from the office. You’ve got dinners to make, lunches to serve, and breakfasts to skip for rush hour. But somewhere in there, please find yourself a desk. Please find yourself an hour at that desk. Place a big blank white piece of paper up on the wall above it, and remind yourself that this is worth lugging a seventy-pound block of wood up three flights of concrete stairs. It’s worth not watching that last half an hour of the Gilligan’s Island marathon. It’s worth it. So do it.
Happy writing.
TOP THIRTEEN THINGS TO KNOW WHEN STARTING OUT AS A YOUNG WRITER:
13. FIRST RULE OF FIGHT CLUB – Every rule can be broken. But only after you learn the rule.
12. THE YELLOW VOLKSWAGON SYNDROME – The most successful, relatable stories are those that can laugh, but also know when to cry.
11. ANSWER THE WHY QUESTION – So what? You wrote a book. So what? Why do we care? What does it connect to? Why take the time to read it?
10. DON’T THINK ABOUT PUBLICATION – When you’re starting a piece, don’t even utter the words “market,” “target audience,” “genre,” etc. Don’t think about the final product. Think about creating the product. When you get to the final version of the product, you’ll worry about the final product. All you need to worry about in a first draft is that you enjoy writing it, and someone else would enjoy reading it. And sometimes that second one isn’t even important at that stage.
9. READ AS MUCH AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN – You will not be a good writer if you don’t read. Hands down. Even Mozart had to listen to music before he could play it. You will learn all the tools and tricks from those who came before you, not to mention a much better understanding of whatever sort of things you are looking to write.
8. WHY HELLO, WRITER. I’M YOUR STYLE. – Start to understand your own personal style. What is it that you do well? What is it that you suck at? What sort of stories do you lean towards? Why do you write? What is something you bring to the table that no one else does? Do you work better as a poet? A novelist? A short story writer? A playwright? A screenwriter?
7. COMMUNITY – Find a writing community. Writing is not just for you, solely holding yourself up in an attic with a lone lightbulb typing away your sorrows in words only you understand. Along with reading, you must share your own writing. You have to have a sort of support system because this stuff can be brutal. Rejection, uncertainty, etc. You need at least a writing buddy. Or a writing group. Or a professor. Or a workshop. Or an online forum.
6. CHARACTER COMES BEFORE PLOT – If you lead with your plot, your story will have no heart. Always let the characters lead. If the characters decide to up and screw your preassignmed plot over, then so be it. They’re telling you what they’re doing, not the other way around. That way, the story will grow organically. Never force anything.
5. SHOW DON’T TELL – This is such an old one, but it’s one of the absolute most important ones. Never tell us your plot. You are describing what happens in front of you, not just giving us a bunch of exposition. If it starts to sound like a summary or an assumption about a character, then stop and figure out a way to show us through the action of the plot.
4. CONFLICT – We need conflict. Someone wants something, they can’t have it because of something else standing in their way. This isn’t just your overall conflict. This is a tension or a sense of stakes in each scene/chapter. What does the character want? Why do they want it?
3. 80 PERCENT OF WHAT YOU WRITE WILL NOT MAKE IT. – And 90 percent of what you write will never be read by anyone. You need to do leg work on things, do many a draft on it, etc. Character exercises for AAE go on for a good 200 pages when compiled together. These are 200 pages that will never be read by anyone, let alone touch the actual book. But it is necessary to write that book. You need to know the characters. You need to know their history, their relationships, their favorite ice cream when they’re on vacation. And you also need to know your space. If you don’t know the world, no one else can be expected to. It needs to be real.
2. MAKE YOURSELF WRITE – Many books never get published because they’re never written to begin with. Make yourself write. Even if it’s crap, keep writing. Write through the crap. If you don’t write, you won’t write. It isn’t going to magically appear before you. And you’re not magically going to be a brilliant author if you never put the time in to practice.
1. WRITE FOR YOU. – Do not write for anyone else. Write because you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself and something big would be missing from your life if you didn’t write. Write for you. Write because you believe in your story, you believe in you, and you believe both are worth it.
Why M. Night is the Worst Best Writer of All Time
(On a side note before we begin our blog sojourn, as you can see, we have been trying out new themes and skins for our site. I think I’ve found one that looks not only formidable but also somewhat like a writing-esque setup. That said, sully forth!)
For those of you who read this blog with slight regularity, you may have realized by now that I am what some would deem a “nerd.” I reference nerdy shows, I make random nerdy pop culture references … so it should come to no surprise that I was discussing with a colleague why the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie was atrocious.
As an enthusiastic Last Airbender fan (all look out for the new mini-series this upcoming fall!), you can imagine my hatred for M. Night when it was made clear halfway through his film that he had failed the franchise, and furthermore, had failed the art of storytelling and cinema altogether.
“He did it for himself!” I exclaimed after watching an interview with him. “He didn’t do it for the fans, he didn’t do it for the story, he did it for himself!”
This is why I believe M. Night, once a shining prodigal star in the night sky of brilliance, is now a sham.
Now some would agree that one should not write for their audience. While working on a novel, the writer should be thinking about himself and only himself. Well, this is all well and good if you’re doing reflective writing or some sort of a diary, but if you plan on sharing your work, you must assume that it is going to be just that: shared. This means that there will be a collaboration in the storytelling.
Theatre artists are well aware of this. If you ever speak to a playwright, he will tell you that he most certainly thinks about his audience. Is the audience going to be able to follow the story? Is the audience going to enjoy the story? Is the audience going to get anything out of the story? If not, then why write it? Playwriting is one of those arts that cannot just be completely created by the writer himself. He needs actors, a stage, and an audience at the very least in order for the take to be realized fully.
Fiction writers and poets (and screenwriters, M. Night!) should see their work in the same light. While we’ve talked on this blog about writing for ourselves, we also need to keep in mind that these characters are going to live in the heads of our readers. The moviegoers are going to need to connect to the pictures you put on the screen and follow the story without going, “What?” Once I had a writer friend who said to me, “Well, I write for myself and that’s all that matters.”
No, it’s just one piece of the puzzle if you’re planning on letting anyone else partake in your tale.
This is where M. Night fails to deliver. His stories are convuluded, self-indulgant, self-congratulatory, and created mostly so he can sit down in a theater and enjoy it. Now this sounds harsh, but let’s unpack my statement. Please sit down and watch Lady in the Water and explain the plot to me. If you say, “It’s about an alien chick in an apartment complex’s pool and she helps Paul Giamatti heal from the death of his family,” then you may feel like you did a real bang-up job of picking apart the nonsense that is that script. And I would congratulate you too … if it hadn’t been for articles and interviews I’ve read about this particular movie. Turns out Lady in the Water is an anti-Iraq piece. That’s right. The movie where Bryce Dallas Howard has fish skin and Paul Giamatti is a janitor who must call upon a gigantic eagle and ward off wolves made of grass … that movie is about the Iraq War. And to top it off, it’s based on Bob Dylan music!
None of this make any sense? Well, it makes sense after M. Night walks you through his meaning behind every single complicated piece of symbolism. But without the director sitting there and spelling it out for you, no one gets his message. And he starts to do himself a disservice.
And while we’re on the subject of Lady in the Water, let’s look at my claim that he is “self-indulgent” and “self-congratulatory.” M. Night is actually an actor in Lady. He’s the prophet writer. That’s right. The prophet writer.
M. Night is writing a book that is a manifesto of his ideas and beliefs. That manifesto is something he is killed for. Yes, someone assassinates the prophet writer.
Furthermore, a little boy in Iowa then reads the manifesto and he is propelled to run for President of the United States.
And even furthermore, that little boy ends up bringing peace to earth and goodwill to all men.
That’s right, ladies and gents. M. Night wrote and casted himself as the prophet manifesto-writing author who is assassinated and inspires the President of the United States to end all wars. Ever.
This goes beyond the usual Mary Sue-ing that most authors dabble in. There’s no harm in elbowing yourself into your own story, hundreds of people have done it. Dan Brown does it in every single book he’s ever written! But M. Night does what he does best: takes it to a whole new level of crazy.
Speaking of taking it to a whole new level, let’s switch back to The Sixth Sense. Now for those of you M. Night fans who have been thinking in your head, “Yeah, but what about Sixth Sense? That was amazing!” You’re right, it was amazing. He was in his mid-twenties when he wrote and directed that movie, and it’s a piece of brilliant cinematic gold.
But go back and watch it. Listen to the way the characters talk. Soon you’ll realize something about the dialogue.
Everyone talks exactly the same.
Then go and watch The Village. You know that weird, broken ye olde English everyone was speaking in that movie?
Go back and watch The Sixth Sense.
Now scroll forward to The Last Airbender.
There it is again!
One writer once advised me, “Flip open to a random page of your manuscript and read a line of dialogue. You should know exactly who that character is who is saying that line without looking. If you don’t, then you haven’t written your characters strong enough.”
Each character has a different voice. But all of M. Night’s characters speak as if they are a teenage girl writing Arthurian fanfiction. “They know not what they do,” “He is the hope this world needs,” “You will not hide things from me!” Who talks like this?
And the best one is from The Village: “”Sometimes we don’t do things we want to do so that others won’t know we want to do them.”
What?! I can’t even say that once, let alone five times fast!
This leads into M. Nights tragic flaw. His hubris, if you will. M. Night never … ever … grows. He was told at a young age that he was brilliant (because he was), and he never decided to up the ante. Here we are over ten years later, and his best movies are still the first two he made! The Last Airbender, if he had spent the past ten+ years honing his craft and listening to other people’s advice, would have turned into a real masterpiece.
But M. Night is a writer who directs American Express commercials showing his brilliant imagination off, when he hasn’t given us a big enough collection of movies to be allowed that honor. He isn’t Alfred Hitchcock, he isn’t even Rob Reiner. M. Night stopped growing, and he stopped writing for others. And that is why I believe he is the world’s worst brilliant writer.
How to Find a Good Writing Partner
We are going to delve into an anecdote.
When I was in college, I had a brilliant writing partner. I usually bring her up on this blog, because she taught me most of what I know. Even though my partner in crime was my age, she had sprung forth from a fountain of knowledge and rich family writing history. Either that, or she was a genius. Regardless, most of what I know comes from her.
I knew she would be a good writing partner because from the moment I told her my awesome idea for an awesome medieval series, she told me it was utter crap. I thought to myself, “Someone who is willing to call someone else’s life’s work either is a jerk or is never going to lie about something being good.” It became then, my goal in life to have my writing partner agree that something I wrote was good.
My writing partner could look at something and begin her comments by saying “Lemme guess …” or “Oh come on you can do better.” This cynicism made me cry and pout, but in the end, I got better for it.
However, I decided that my writing partner was not enough, and so I went grazing for another. It was then that I met the evil … as we shall call him … Dr. Bad Writing Partner. Dr. BWP was flattering, in astonishment at my brilliance and virtuosity, and of course … gorgeous. All year I worked away at my draft with vonBad reading and salivating over every word I wrote. It wasn’t until I realized … after the fog of gorgeousity had cleared … that Dr. Bad couldn’t write to save his life and it had only been a ploy to court me with a woo-ing birdsong.
Disheveled, I returned to my old writing partner with my wasted revisions in hand.
What to glean from this situation? As you may have read in earlier posts, writers are sometimes hesitant to pony up with a writing partner. This can be for many reasons. We don’t want someone telling us something is good when it’s not, we don’t want someone telling us something sucks when we’ve had a bad day. We also just sometimes don’t want people reading our stuff. But I’m a huge advocate for writing partnerships, so I’ve compiled a list of questions to ask before teaming up with another writer.
1. Is this writer a good writer? Have you read this person’s stuff? Is it good? Do you like it? A lot of people can read things and criticize it, but unless they’re practicing what they preach, their sermon is probably not worth listening to. Don’t get stuck with someone who writes terribly; you’ll just either get fake praise or fake turmoil.
2. Do you like what this writer writes? Do you like the genres or types of fiction that they write? Do you like their voice and style? If not, they probably have no clue about that sci fi novel you’re writing or even worse, you’ll start getting edged into a voice you don’t particularly want to sound like.
3. What is your relationship to this writer? This is a tricky one, mostly because the best two writing partners I’ve had are the ones that are the closest to me. My writing partner in college was my best friend and roommate. My writing partner and co-author as of now is my fiance. But a lot of my friends and family members have attempted to help out, and they haven’t been much of a help. Also, make sure that the person who is reading your stuff doesn’t want something else out of you. How many times did you tell that cool guy with the guitar that he sounded like Bob Dylan? Things aren’t any different with anyone else’s behavior. Make sure to find someone who will up front tell you that something you’re working on is not as good as it could be, and then attempt to have them tell you that something is good.
4. Do they like Twilight? Now this may seem like an unfair criteria, but let’s be honest. I personally hate Twilight (although I do not speak for my affiliates at WriteLife, only a personal opinion). Would I want to have someone critiquing my stuff who belongs to the Forks Fan Club or has “Meeting Stephanie Meyer” on their Bucket List? No. No I would not. If someone likes Twilight, that person and myself disagree wholeheartedly on what makes a good book. So I will not want them looking at my stuff and giving their opinions. Whatever Twilight is for you, substitute it in the bullet title. Are you really not a Sedaris fan? Well first, shame on you. But second, don’t get someone who loves Sedaris to look at your writing. Find someone who doesn’t only write what you like, but who values the kind of writers you value.
5. Are they helpful? I’ve had writing partners before which I will hand four hundred pages to, and I’ve still not seen it back. Admittedly, I can sometimes be this person who withholds my time from the manuscript and lets other people’s writings just sort of hang out in my gmail inbox. Is it right? No. Do I feel bad? Yes. Would I want someone who exhibits that behavior as my writing partner? Of course not. There are other types of unhelpfulness. For example, you hand them four hundred pages and the edits mysteriously end after the twentieth page only to pop up again on the three hundredth and ninety-first page. And the plot thickens when you attempt to discuss the intricacies of the second act with them only to find that they have no clue what you’re talking about.
6. Are they a jerk? Opposite of Dr. Bad was Mr. Crabbypants. My freshman year of college, only a couple of weeks before I met my best friend and awesome writing partner, I met up with Mr. Crabbypants. Mr. Crabs was an English major at my college, but he never failed to remind us that he was destined for a better place than our drab urban private university. No, he had meant to go to Emerson, and he planned on pulling out to win as soon as he could. Finding this intriguing, and also thinking that his two-hour analysis of Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut was something to marvel at, I sent him my manuscript for An American Exodus. He wrote back calling it filth and nothing but drab filthy nothingness. I was torn apart from the inside out. Mr. Crabs hated my life’s work, and it was too much to take as a fragile eighteen-year-old writing major. Now of course, my awesome writing partner would spend the next four years helping me revise and edit An American Exodus, and yes she would have some unkind words for portions of the manuscript. But nothing was ever as evil as Mr. Crabs’s rendition of a Riverdance all over my face. Does your writing partner only cut you down? Do they ever say anything that is constructive or kind? Or do they just attempt to sweep your legs from under you and make you feel like you can’t get back up? You need to find someone who will support you, not just slice you.
7. Are they trustworthy? When I was heading off for the big city, I decided to connect with an old playwriting friend of mine. We’d graduated from the same playwriting troupe, and we’d known each other for a long time. So I said, “Since we’re both going off to prestigious colleges for writing, we should probably keep in touch and be writing partners.” She replied with a, “I don’t know about that. I don’t want to put my stuff out there and have someone steal it. Copyright and such.” This obviously showed paranoia and major issues with trust. I was hurt that she thought “someone” could steal her “brilliant” ideas, and decided it was not a good idea for us to work together. If she could even conceive of a writing partner stealing stuff from her, it meant that she was just bad enough to do it herself or she would never trust me enough to allow my critiques to penetrate her skull. Trust is a huge factor. If there is even a question that someone is going to steal your work, steer clear.
8. Are they sane? I feel like this may be a repeat from some other bullets, but it doesn’t bother to extrapolate. Upon returning from the city, I found a very short-lived writing partner. He sent me his stuff, and I gave it a looksie. It was complete insane nonsense. From what I could gather, it was a convoluded story about some detective doing some film noir detective-y stuff. Problem is, it was one gigantic paragraph. Upon asking what was wrong with the formatting, he replied, “It’s my style.” When I continued to tell him it was an incorrect style, he lashed out at me like a verbal crazy flailing inflatable arms man … or at least that’s what I imagined his gestures to be. We were messaging at the time. I decided that crazy detective man could find someone who enjoyed one paragraph stories, and went about my merry way.
9. Is it fun? Writing partnerships should be a hoot. I really mean that. I remember one of the best first moments I had with my best friend writing partner was riding the L train from Fullerton to Loyola, and all we talked about was the subject of which characters from An American Exodus would be which L-train line? Pard would be the Red Line, Daniel would be the Yellow Line, Faith would be the Brown Line, etc. On our way back, we discussed the intricacies of Severus Snape and Sirius Black. Paige is to this day a person I hold dear and near my heart, and the best college moments I can muster are usually consisting of the two of us in my garden apartment on the scratchy couch, listening to our book-themed mix CD’s and plotting out our books. To this day, the greatest fun I have is sitting down with my fiancé and typing up a new chapter to our sci fi series. There is a love and a compassion that comes from a partnership, and without that fondness, it can turn ugly real quick. It must have heart to work. So find someone with a lot of heart.
Writing partnerships are mandatory in my world. Just today, with the deadline of a short story only a few days lingering, I called upon three of my old pals to read my nine pages of nonsense. I gave them a due date of Monday, and they said, “Yeah sure I’ll do that.” When I called up one of them in Chicago, he said, “You’re just lucky I love you.” I said, “Yes I am.”
Writing partners will be there through life. It is a spiderwebbed network of support when you’re not sure what to do with your words. And they will call upon you to do the same. But you need to be able to trust each other’s opinions, morals, and talents. You need to be able to listen to one another. And most of all, you need to have fun.
Happy seeking.
Why So Serious?
I was reading a book the other day named Skybreakers. I decided I did not like this book. I didn’t know why; it could’ve been because I didn’t believe in their convoluded explanation as to why the zeppelin was stuck up in the air for all of eternity. Maybe it was because the girl character was so obviously a romantic interest for the protagonist and nothing more. But I decided I could’ve excused all of the terrible tropes of this novel if it hadn’t been for one factor: the author took himself entirely too seriously.
I chastised him for this because it’s a terrible habit I myself have. When I’m writing something, it will either come out good or terrible. It’s never lukewarm or a “meh;” it either goes up in a blaze of glory or down in a blaze of uncomparable shame. And the one thing that separates the successes from the failures is how much I smiled while I wrote it.
Remember that thing your mother always said when you were a kid? Be yourself? Well, Sally, nothing’s changed since the first grade when you wore Spice Girls just because everyone else did. People’s natural instincts can smell a faker from a mile away. It makes them either sad, confused, or put off. And the same goes for your writing. Imagine how Oscar Wilde would have faired writing dramatic science fiction like George Orwell. Imagine Stephen King writing Pride and Prejudice. We have a voice for a reason. No one else has that voice. So why would we not use it?
I myself know that I am not good at serious pieces about tea cups and the intricacies of a mediocre day in the life of two lovers. I know that I am not good at pure comedic tales, either. I’m into the adventuresome, plot-twisting, epical points of no return kinds of stories, and it took me a long time to be okay with that. But I know that about myself, so I make fun and prod jokes at my characters and their situations. Can you imagine going an entire day or an entire week without anyone in your life making a joke? Without ever smiling or giving even a small chuckle or having one sarcastic remark to say? That is so terribly depressing, and if that’s the case, you’re probably depressed.
So as we can’t take ourselves too seriously, we can’t take the task of writing our stories seriously. Especially if you know a character is ridiculous or a scene is terribly fashioned but must happen, have fun with it. And whenever you feel like you’re attempting to write like someone else and wear that Spice Girls tee-shirt of normalcy, pull it off and do a dance in your tanktop. It’s polka dotted and no one else has it. Flaunt your voice, laugh at yourself, laugh at your writing, and enjoy.
That’s the most important thing. To enjoy.
Get to the Monkey
I knew this had to be the next blog entry as soon as I heard this phrase.
An Australian improv group named Tripod has a song called “Get to the Monkey.” It’s actually called something more vulgar, but we at WriteLife on this lovely WriteLife blog will edit that out. But today we are going to discuss what it actually means to get to this proverbial monkey.
As Tripod explains about Peter Jackson’s King Kong:
Don’t get me wrong,
I love Jack Black
Adrian Brodey is great
Naomi Watts is delightful, my friend
But I didn’t come here to see any of them
Get to the monkey!
Their argument is that they went to see Peter Jackson’s King Kong to see the monkey, not the hour and a half of exposition beforehand. They listed off other lovely shows such as Titanic which just drag at the beginning because you paid your movie ticket to see the ship sink and here you are on your second bathroom break and no dice.
This reminded me of an issue I was having with one of my manuscripts a few years ago.
An American Exodus was my baby, and that included the one hundred and fifty pages of exposition. In this exposition, I tracked the family of the protagonist starting with her great grandmother and working forward through the line as they survived in the refugee camp generation after generation. Then I needed to explain the origins of the protagonist, the childhood, the tragedy of her sister’s death, etc. It wasn’t until page 250 of 700 that the aforementioned American Exodus was even hinted at. My writing partner kept asking me, “Where’s the rebellion? Isn’t this book about smashy smashy boom boom? (her words)” and all I could say was, “Hold on, it gets good about 250 pages in …”
Well, here’s the thing. Now that I work as an editor, I know better. If I have a manuscript in front of me, I’m not going to have the writer sitting over my shoulder saying, “Hold on, it gets better.” I’m not going to sit through an hour and a half of Naomi Watts’ backstory to get to the monkey. I’m going to read about two chapters, decide it’s not for me, and go onto the next manuscript.
Here’s the rule of thumb I now follow: If you haven’t gotten to your monkey in the first 20 pages, you need to. If your Exposition and Inciting Incident haven’t happened by page 50, you are not going to fair well on an editor’s desk. By page 50, we should know the main characters, what they want, what the book’s about, where they are, and how they’re going to try to get what they want. You know, those W’s you learned in school. But not only that, but it needs to be in a perpetual motion upwards in the rising action.
Now can some books get away with not getting to the monkey? Well, did Titanic make 1.6 billion at the box office? Yes, if we’re sufficiently entertained, we’ll keep reading. Look at Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Tom Robinson isn’t even mentioned until way past page 50, and the whole point of the book doesn’t happen until the 25th chapter. But are there smaller plots going on? Oh yeah. Boo Radley, Jem and his arm, Dil’s arrival, etc.
What about Old Man and the Sea? That monkey … or fish … doesn’t come until way past page 50. Well … honestly I never did like Old Goat in the Boat much, but I’m sure that someone could make a compelling argument that Hemingway had something fun going on before he caught the allegorical trout of destiny.
There are always exceptions to the rule. But here’s the thing; it’s good to learn the rule before breaking it. So next time you’re writing, try it out. Get to that inciting incident in the first couple of chapters. If you have a lot of exposition and the whole thing doesn’t make sense without you telling your audience, just put it in dialogue or drop it as you go. But like the family that is already an hour late to start their vacation, you can sleep in the car and eat on the road; we’re pulling out and we gotta go.
Happy summer all.
Jen
Finding Your “Buried Guns”
The last post, we spoke about how to avoid cliches. While this is somewhat the same idea, we’re really going to hone in on one technique you can use to battle the drab and overdone.
There were two playwriting friends of mine. The first one was writing a play. It was amazing, a success, a smash hit … until the critics saw the final scene. It was shut down within a week.
The first playwriting friend spoke to the second playwriting friend, and he said he didn’t understand what was wrong. The play was about a failing relationship, and at the end, the man told the woman that even though it hadn’t seemed like it, he loved her even though he couldn’t show it. And he walked out. There was no other way to end the story.
So the second playwright looked at the script. There it was, ten pages of the man and woman hashing it out and finally the man saying to her, “I loved you, even though I couldn’t show it. Even though I was always busy, always sarcastic … etc.” I say etc. because it continued for a good long while. And then the man left the scene.
The second playwright pointed out that all he had to do was take out all that nasty therapy session nonsense. Find something that he already had in his arsenal to use.
They looked back at the script and saw a reoccuring thread of a song. This song, as the main character (the husband) discussed with his wife one night on a cold winter’s eve indoors, was what his own father had shown his mother on the night he proposed. His father was never good with words, and always seemed to say the wrong thing although his intentions were pure. So instead of opening his yap and ruining the moment, he turned on this love song to explain his feelings for his future wife. His mother understood immediately, and she said yes.
And so the second playwright said all the first playwright needed to do was have the wife accuse her husband of never loving her, of never showing it properly, etc. Then the husband would go get his things out of the bedroom. The wife would sit down to cry. The husband would then go to the stereo and turn on his father’s love song. And then stare at his wife, and then walk out.
This would indicate that he in fact did love her and just could never show it. And in turn, the wife was to blame because she never understood him well enough to see what he was actually thinking.
If you don’t say it, if you don’t discuss it, the audience will.
Chuck Palahniuk calls this “finding your buried guns.” Going back into the text and what you’ve already written in order to bring it together at the end. I quote:
When you get stuck, go back and read your earlier scenes, looking for dropped characters or details that you can resurrect as “buried guns.” At the end of writing Fight Club, I had no idea what to do with the office building. But re-reading the first scene, I found the throw-away comment about mixing nitro with paraffin and how it was an iffy method for making plastic explosives. That silly aside (… paraffin has never worked for me…) made the perfect “buried gun” to resurrect at the end and save my storytelling [butt].
In other words, there’s a point where you stop creating and start using what you have.
Another brilliant example of this is … and yes, I will once again use it as an example … Harry Potter.
In Chamber of Secrets , Rowling did not know what a Horcrux was. But she did know what that diary was. Later on, she used it to further her plot.
Look at things like Star Wars, too. Darth Vader was not supposed to be Anakin Skywalker, but Lucas used him to further the plot.
To bring Tangled up a second time this week, think of how they used her hair or the frying pan (And no, I’m not going to tell you how they did it because I want you to go out and see the movie).
Those are large-scale examples, but look at what you already have in your arsenal and bring them out. Have that inside joke with your audience. Have that throwback. And have a great ending.
