Many writers get their start in the areas of science fiction, fantasy and the myriad of genres that incorporate or border on one or the other.
One common assumption is that it's easier to build your own world than to work within the confines of an existing one, so that when you begin to write about things more interesting or grandiose than those you've done yourself, you don't have to waste time on any pesky research or risk straying accidentally into potential hot-button areas of the modern world and its many sensitivities.
In a sense, that's true: when you write the world, you write the rules. Want laser swords? Look at that, laser swords. How do they work? Who cares! They're laser swords! Welcome to soft sci-fi, friend. Take a seat next to the hemophage and make yourself comfortable.
The age-old joke of "a wizard did it" is actually at the core of a frighteningly high percentage of first works (and sometimes entire series). Why bother with rules when you can just chain a number of cool scenes together on an arbitrary set of environmental factors that just crapped out for the heck of it. It makes the backdrop to your stunning foreground an effortless exercise in "because I said so."
The difference between the slurry of such half-assed pseudo-settings and an iconic world that keeps a series alive even when you kill the characters off every other book is the dedication to building yourself an honest-to-god world.
If you're taking to sci-fi or fantasy with any seriousness, you've got to look at your setting from the perspective of the skeptic. Every science from physical to social is involved in crafting a new world, a new time, a new species or culture. The moment you step off the well-defined rock, you had better hope you are prepared for the void of empty space between yourself and the believable setting you crave.
That's not to say you have to triple-major just to craft a fantasy epic. There are holes in the science of some of the greatest fictional settings of all time and no one much seems to mind. What's important is that you recognize where the sticking points are in a setting so that at least your second-tier readership don't bang their heads against the wall trying to reason out the presence of Olmec writings in North Dakota.
First, the physical: if you're going with a new locale, it's important to start roughly at the beginning. If your setting is stable and planetary, use the basics of what you know here on Earth to support it. Altering the overall climate, the ratio of land to water or properties of the metals used will give it an alien feel without having to redefine physics as we know it.
Be careful of going to extremes. While they can emphasize a point and lead you into an entirely new feel for how people survive, most systems we're familiar with work on the perspective of equilibrium.
Too much of anything tends to come with some fairly drastic drawbacks or environmental repercussions. If you can provide the reader some evidence of that backswing or an external point against which the extreme is balanced, it settles the brain from wondering why the whole thing hasn't teetered into the abyss already.
Life systems are far more complicated to intertwine. Metals or elements with new properties are simplistic and pure enough that readers can adapt to rocks that float and liquids that crystallize under new and different stimuli, but life is a system unto itself, which when wrapped inside a larger ecosystem creates a sort of Sierpinski Triangle effect that can become infinitely recursive.
If both these terms are alien to you, you might want to consider going with fantasy instead of sci-fi.
When it comes to life, remember that every quality something has was at some point an evolutionary advantage. It doesn't have to be an obvious one (in fact, sometimes all the better when it isn't), but if it's unnecessarily complicated or doesn't have at least the hint of a practical application towards survival your readers are likely to guess you're just playing with the scenery.
Though they may not necessarily mind.
Life is connected both to its environment and to each other, so if you're going to toy around with the ecosystem, you may want to start with what you know. If you need help emphasizing the alien nature of the new lifesystem within an existing context, look to our finest and weirdest examples: deserts, jungles, and deep under the ocean.
Depending on your story, the social element can be more vital, and much more complex. As I mentioned, life interacts with both its environment and each other. The same is true from a social perspective: cultures evolve, grow, interact, impact each other, absorb, blend, conquer, trade, intermarry and collapse.
If you're planning on building a social/political world, don't just build up the city or kingdom where the story takes place: have an idea in mind of the outlying lands. Distant nomads, enemies abroad, a land across the sea: even if the local knowledge is sparse, rumors and legends will abound. It helps prevent your setting from being Castle #187 and blends it with a new canvas of worlds that tantalize the imagination and leave you open for far-ranging sequels.
Time is another realm where you can insert a good bit of mystery even in more modern settings. History is not always perfect or clear, and the past leaves treasures galore in the ghosts of civilizations long since past their time. Just remember that even The Ancients had a culture and a reason for being. Leaving behind ruins or abandoned technology doesn't make much sense if you haven't thought about why the people are no longer there in the first place.
Politics is an entirely different can of worms. If your story involves an organized society, there's bound to be law and rule and possibly even those who dispute that rule. Understand the basis for that structure before you start to impose it on the world. You don't have to explain it at length to the reader, just ensure that the parts of it which impact your story are internally consistent, else you risk wandering into Disney Villain territory.
There are dozens of premade ways to rule and philosophies on how best to govern a society, from militaristic martial law to free-thinking, laissez-faire, communal democracy, and none of them are inherently good or evil. Just because a dictator is totalitarian doesn't mean he doesn't have your best interests in mind. Just because the fate of a people is in their own hands doesn't mean it's in the best hands.
Again, be careful of extremes: history tells us that we rise up against too much law or in the absence of any. Humanity and its kindred ilk strive for some degree of balance and stability. Again, use the environment to help stabilize an otherwise lopsided situation. A city on the dangerous frontier is more given to martial law that a large urban center far removed from any immediate threat.
Don't be afraid to be fancy. Need a unique form of government your readers likely haven't seen before? Look no further. Just remember that every style has its place, and it weaknesses. Look for them in your setting before your readers find them for you.
When it comes to world-building, don't feel pressured to reinvent the global wheel. There's a great deal of variance on our own terrestrial home, it's easy enough to switch things up and keep it interesting without having to build everything from scratch. But if you're looking to make your own place out of the pieces floating through your mind, just be sure to fill in the blank spots between.
Try to follow the dots you're drawing and see if they add up to anything sensible. Want laser swords? No problem. Just have in mind a rough sketch of how they work. "Magic rock" here is an acceptable answer (in fact, it was), because a rock is already a more attainable concept that "my sword glows like a Christmas tree on steroids."
Remember, too, that you don't have to explain all this to the reader. We come to sci-fi and fantasy wanting a little mystery and magic and mysticism. But if you start to build for yourself rules on which that mystery is based, you run into fewer problems when the pieces don't seem to add up. It's enough to keep the larger part of your audience satisfied (and brainstorming new ideas) so that you can get your story out without any distractions.
And when the Comic Book Guy's of the world try and tell you it's still not good enough, remind them that when wookies are the norm, they can overlook a little thing like hyperdrive.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Fight Club - Writing John Woo
Some media have it easy.
A photograph can capture with the press of a button what a writer would need hours to recreate. When it takes more strokes to pen the words than it would a brush across canvas, you know you're looking at something truly beautiful; something you may have little chance of conveying with any power through words alone..
Accents are easier to write (and to read) when there's true audio involved. An otherwise delightful cockney lilt becomes a gushing river of dropped word-endings and apostrophes the likes of which God himself has never seen.
According to conventional wisdom, video equates to 24,000 words a second. Not even Steven King can match that. At least, not yet. The man has written a successful story about a possessed Plymouth, I put nothing past him at this point.
As an amateur musician and playwright, I know first-hand that every media has its downsides. Writing has its own brilliant constructions that other methods have to strain themselves to mirror. The sheer poetry of the right five-word phrase can bring even theater to its knees, to say nothing of the ability to quantify emotion as part of the standard narration filling every foreseeable crack on the page.
That said, there is one area where writing gets its comeuppance: when it comes to the deeply technical, visual media win out time and time again.
The ember that has set this particular flame burning with new life lately is the myriad of fight scenes required to complete The Order. I've covered action scenes in general previously, but this particular discussion veers into new territory, and it isn't limited to fight scenes alone.
To clarify the point: imagine a fight between two real people. It's ungraceful and uncoordinated, a flailing hodgepodge of misguided attempts to get the other person to stop hitting you back. Now imagine instead a fictional fight: a deeply choreographed sequence of fluid movements leading to regular shifts in supremacy resulting in a climactic final flurry with the clear victor walking away.
The former is not terribly impressive through any medium, although the writer can add to it all manner of meaning that it might otherwise lack, bringing light to the private internal struggle exploding within each combatant. The latter, by contrast, is extremely entertaining to watch, but loses something of its original grace when delivered via the written word.
It comes around to the same old song: that which is visually stunning is not always passable in print. If you're looking for the skillful fight between experienced opponents, the unnaturally orchestrated exchange of blows, then you need to take into consideration a few significant modifications to achieve the same result.
The initial trouble (and the natural lure) are the technical details. If you have a visual imagination or find it easiest to base your scene on what you've seen, you will want to describe each move as it happens:
With the exception of a narrative voice that border on the obscene, the above isn't necessarily all that bad, but break it down: this is about two seconds of action, total. That's thirty words a second. Compared to the rate of film doesn't seem so bad, but film also captures more than just the blow-by-blow.
To keep your fight engaging, you have to involve the environment around them. As the fight moves to new surroundings or the elements in the room become part of the action, you have to ensure that you not only convey what the characters pick up or slam into, but that those objects were there all along. You have to dress the scene as you go, placing Chekhov's fabled guns in each new room they enter.
More words and all the white space between now creates a second problem, this time for your reader: the pacing will shift. Reading "and then he totally kicked him in the junk" takes longer than watching it, if only just. Add in even the slightest poetry to your narrative and the scene starts to stretch like so much silly putty until it becomes too thin to sustain itself.
Both issues also apply to highly technical scenes. When describing intense operations with which the general populace isn't already intimately familiar leaves you with a lot to explain before the reader can have any hope of knowing what's going on without already being a professional in the field.
The more common examples include hacking, military operations, invention (also known as "the entire pull of the MacGuyver series"), bypassing security (or generally being a sneaky thief), piloting and nearly any mechanical operation or maintenance.
In order to truly convey the scene, you have to fill in the missing pieces in your audience's knowledge, and that means straying into the same arena as lecture material and technical manuals, neither of which are exactly flying off the shelves. You're left with selling exclusively to those already in the field or looking for a way to convey what normally takes a six-year degree to understand in half a paragraph.
Thankfully, there are tricks to circumvent all these issues (or at least con your audience into thinking you did).
Addressing pacing: start by throwing out what you were taught in English class. Formal sentence structure and big words can interrupt the flow and kill the rhythm of a fast-paced scene. I don't care of the wounding was egregious, if your reader has to pause to fetch a thesaurus, you're generating the wrong kind of action. Don't get flowery. Flowers have no place in fight scenes, except when in vases hurled at people's heads.
Quick descriptions, short sentences or interwoven run-ons will keep the momentum going. If it doesn't feel like time for a period, blow past it and keep writing. If you reach the end of a page and the closest thing you have to ending a sentence is a misplaced semi-colon, you may way to give the reader a chance or two to breathe. Otherwise, chain away.
As for getting the necessary additives out of the way, there's only so much you can scrunch: without a reliable familiarity with the jargon, you can't boil down a complex process with phrases like "bubble sort" and "electroplating." Instead, look for analogies. Transpose the process you want to describe to something so basic (and, hopefully, poetic) that your readers can connect with it.
For those thinking it's an overdone trope, you're right, but it remains the best method for getting your meaning across without simplifying the process itself and thus risking offending the core readership (i.e. those who actually know the process you're describing).
If you're concerned with appearing unoriginal, bring it within the confines of the fourth wall and let the characters involved in making the analogy comment on it directly. If they're just as baffled by the analogy or recognize it as a "dumbing down" of a situation the other character clearly has a handle on, it gives the reader a chance to laugh at the situation without feeling like the joke's on them.
Barring the easy solution, it's time to think about your end-game: you want to convey to the reader that what's happening is involved, complex, difficult, challenging, fragile or similarly unattainable to those without skill and/or luck in unnaturally high quantities.
Eschew accuracy. Look for ways to convey the same meaning without describing the technical specifics. If you've set one of your characters up as a the resident genius or ace in a given situation, sometimes all it takes is for the other characters to be in awe of the mystery of their machinations as they work to solve the latest crisis impacting the crew.
All you have to describe is the end result, the surface evidence of their very involved underpinnings. If you have the opportunity, mix their actions with another concurrent chain of events that can take the focus off the pilot/hacker/mechanic between their moments of effective brilliance.
Back to the original issue: fight scenes. When you can't squeeze, it's time to truncate. There are dozens of moves and counter-moves in a cinematic duel because that's what it takes for quick punches and flicks of the wrist to fill a solid three minutes of film. In a book, it doesn't take that much combat to fill the pages.
Boil it down to the major turning points. It's rare you're going to impress someone with the mere description of a feat of skill inside a fight scene. If they can't see it, it doesn't have the same allure. All that matters is how close to danger their hero is that second, and how close she might be to overcoming the odds and winning out against her foe.
It all comes down to the same thing: when it comes to writing the things that look better on screen, remove the bits you don't need in order to maintain the pace and pulse rate you're seeking.
Now if only I had a cool graphic of someone drop-kicking the word "egregious" out of the middle of a sentence, I'd be set for life.
A photograph can capture with the press of a button what a writer would need hours to recreate. When it takes more strokes to pen the words than it would a brush across canvas, you know you're looking at something truly beautiful; something you may have little chance of conveying with any power through words alone..
Accents are easier to write (and to read) when there's true audio involved. An otherwise delightful cockney lilt becomes a gushing river of dropped word-endings and apostrophes the likes of which God himself has never seen.
According to conventional wisdom, video equates to 24,000 words a second. Not even Steven King can match that. At least, not yet. The man has written a successful story about a possessed Plymouth, I put nothing past him at this point.
As an amateur musician and playwright, I know first-hand that every media has its downsides. Writing has its own brilliant constructions that other methods have to strain themselves to mirror. The sheer poetry of the right five-word phrase can bring even theater to its knees, to say nothing of the ability to quantify emotion as part of the standard narration filling every foreseeable crack on the page.
That said, there is one area where writing gets its comeuppance: when it comes to the deeply technical, visual media win out time and time again.
The ember that has set this particular flame burning with new life lately is the myriad of fight scenes required to complete The Order. I've covered action scenes in general previously, but this particular discussion veers into new territory, and it isn't limited to fight scenes alone.
To clarify the point: imagine a fight between two real people. It's ungraceful and uncoordinated, a flailing hodgepodge of misguided attempts to get the other person to stop hitting you back. Now imagine instead a fictional fight: a deeply choreographed sequence of fluid movements leading to regular shifts in supremacy resulting in a climactic final flurry with the clear victor walking away.
The former is not terribly impressive through any medium, although the writer can add to it all manner of meaning that it might otherwise lack, bringing light to the private internal struggle exploding within each combatant. The latter, by contrast, is extremely entertaining to watch, but loses something of its original grace when delivered via the written word.
It comes around to the same old song: that which is visually stunning is not always passable in print. If you're looking for the skillful fight between experienced opponents, the unnaturally orchestrated exchange of blows, then you need to take into consideration a few significant modifications to achieve the same result.
The initial trouble (and the natural lure) are the technical details. If you have a visual imagination or find it easiest to base your scene on what you've seen, you will want to describe each move as it happens:
The hero brings his arm back at its full length before shifting all its new-found momentum into a singular declarative strike at the chin of his reeling opponent. The target of this concentrated malice meanwhile raises his arms in defense, cutting short the deliverance of vengeance and instead levying his own haymaker to the hero's solar plexus.
With the exception of a narrative voice that border on the obscene, the above isn't necessarily all that bad, but break it down: this is about two seconds of action, total. That's thirty words a second. Compared to the rate of film doesn't seem so bad, but film also captures more than just the blow-by-blow.
To keep your fight engaging, you have to involve the environment around them. As the fight moves to new surroundings or the elements in the room become part of the action, you have to ensure that you not only convey what the characters pick up or slam into, but that those objects were there all along. You have to dress the scene as you go, placing Chekhov's fabled guns in each new room they enter.
More words and all the white space between now creates a second problem, this time for your reader: the pacing will shift. Reading "and then he totally kicked him in the junk" takes longer than watching it, if only just. Add in even the slightest poetry to your narrative and the scene starts to stretch like so much silly putty until it becomes too thin to sustain itself.
Both issues also apply to highly technical scenes. When describing intense operations with which the general populace isn't already intimately familiar leaves you with a lot to explain before the reader can have any hope of knowing what's going on without already being a professional in the field.
The more common examples include hacking, military operations, invention (also known as "the entire pull of the MacGuyver series"), bypassing security (or generally being a sneaky thief), piloting and nearly any mechanical operation or maintenance.
In order to truly convey the scene, you have to fill in the missing pieces in your audience's knowledge, and that means straying into the same arena as lecture material and technical manuals, neither of which are exactly flying off the shelves. You're left with selling exclusively to those already in the field or looking for a way to convey what normally takes a six-year degree to understand in half a paragraph.
Thankfully, there are tricks to circumvent all these issues (or at least con your audience into thinking you did).
Addressing pacing: start by throwing out what you were taught in English class. Formal sentence structure and big words can interrupt the flow and kill the rhythm of a fast-paced scene. I don't care of the wounding was egregious, if your reader has to pause to fetch a thesaurus, you're generating the wrong kind of action. Don't get flowery. Flowers have no place in fight scenes, except when in vases hurled at people's heads.
Quick descriptions, short sentences or interwoven run-ons will keep the momentum going. If it doesn't feel like time for a period, blow past it and keep writing. If you reach the end of a page and the closest thing you have to ending a sentence is a misplaced semi-colon, you may way to give the reader a chance or two to breathe. Otherwise, chain away.
As for getting the necessary additives out of the way, there's only so much you can scrunch: without a reliable familiarity with the jargon, you can't boil down a complex process with phrases like "bubble sort" and "electroplating." Instead, look for analogies. Transpose the process you want to describe to something so basic (and, hopefully, poetic) that your readers can connect with it.
For those thinking it's an overdone trope, you're right, but it remains the best method for getting your meaning across without simplifying the process itself and thus risking offending the core readership (i.e. those who actually know the process you're describing).
If you're concerned with appearing unoriginal, bring it within the confines of the fourth wall and let the characters involved in making the analogy comment on it directly. If they're just as baffled by the analogy or recognize it as a "dumbing down" of a situation the other character clearly has a handle on, it gives the reader a chance to laugh at the situation without feeling like the joke's on them.
Barring the easy solution, it's time to think about your end-game: you want to convey to the reader that what's happening is involved, complex, difficult, challenging, fragile or similarly unattainable to those without skill and/or luck in unnaturally high quantities.
Eschew accuracy. Look for ways to convey the same meaning without describing the technical specifics. If you've set one of your characters up as a the resident genius or ace in a given situation, sometimes all it takes is for the other characters to be in awe of the mystery of their machinations as they work to solve the latest crisis impacting the crew.
All you have to describe is the end result, the surface evidence of their very involved underpinnings. If you have the opportunity, mix their actions with another concurrent chain of events that can take the focus off the pilot/hacker/mechanic between their moments of effective brilliance.
Back to the original issue: fight scenes. When you can't squeeze, it's time to truncate. There are dozens of moves and counter-moves in a cinematic duel because that's what it takes for quick punches and flicks of the wrist to fill a solid three minutes of film. In a book, it doesn't take that much combat to fill the pages.
Boil it down to the major turning points. It's rare you're going to impress someone with the mere description of a feat of skill inside a fight scene. If they can't see it, it doesn't have the same allure. All that matters is how close to danger their hero is that second, and how close she might be to overcoming the odds and winning out against her foe.
It all comes down to the same thing: when it comes to writing the things that look better on screen, remove the bits you don't need in order to maintain the pace and pulse rate you're seeking.
Now if only I had a cool graphic of someone drop-kicking the word "egregious" out of the middle of a sentence, I'd be set for life.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Out With the Old, In With the New
The news of late has had me thinking it may be time to brush the boundaries of cultural commentary, so for those of you uninterested in even mild political discussion, this may be a good time to go shopping for cheap champagne.
There are few more dangerous pursuits on the part of a creator than updating something old and beloved to account for a changing era.
Enter the twin giants of Marvel and DC in the world of comics, who have this year come under fire for several choices made which bring minority actors and characters into new light.
While both movements are small and fairly polarized, they've led to a shockwave of milder, overlooked squeamishness in a far wider arc. Even outside of the extremes of racism and other prejudice, audiences generally dislike it when you change anything about an empire they love.
Change is inevitable. We, as a people, are constantly evolving, while much of our art remains frozen in time. While that may never injure the works of Picasso, we've already seen it have a large impact on the unspoken implications of men like JRR Tolkien. While it can take years to happen, there is always a chance that someone, some day, will create a new iteration of the old standby, taking it in a direction the original writer (and his or her adoring fans) never expected.
I bring this to light here for two reasons: there is a wealth of good to be found in releasing an updated version of an older work, and, if you are yourself successful enough, you should be prepared for the sincerest form of flattery.
Giving new life to an old work is a wonderful way for a new writer to get started, or for a seasoned writer to test their chops. As an example: try penning a new version of Oliver Twist using modern-day South Korea as your landscape. The same themes exist today that did centuries ago. Adjusting the setting helps to draw today's eyes in the right direction.
Shifting time and place is one of many ways to update an old beloved classic. Take the landmark success of the play "Wicked," telling the story of Oz from the very positive perspective of the "wicked" witch of the west. Take Seth Grahame-Smith's parody series starting with "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," a delicious spin on Jane Austen's largely unattainable original.
Pearl Harbor, for whatever you make think of the acting, was one of the first World War II films to show the leaders of Japan in a positive light, forced into a no-win situation and taking what they felt was the best option to protect their people. While it's not based on a specific work, I think you'll agree that World War II as a story has been done before, at least once or twice.
If you're looking for inspiration, for a solid backbone on which to place a clever twist or a cultural treasure to help leverage a very pressing modern-day need, using an old story as the basis for new life can be a wonderful place to start. Be careful of how you borrow, of course, but do not rule out the idea just because you feel it's not wholly original. Drawing on a known entity as your baseline to shatter or update pregenerated notions can oftentimes have an even greater impact that an entirely original work.
While it hinges entirely on your purpose, I believe that boldness is the blood of the artist, a word here meaning 'anyone who creates something not real to help show us what we are, what we dream, or what we can be.' To be different, to be remembered, to have an impact on the cultural consciousness requires courage and tenacity of mind.
For that reason, expect others to branch out into new and unexpected areas with your work, as well. If you're a supporter of the Creative Commons model (and if you're not, you may want to consider it), this is all but a given for anything of yours that becomes popular, even if it's just on "that there Internet." So be prepared to see someone else take even your own work in a new direction.
Returning to my opening mention, I want to be clear on one point: I do not mean to compare casting an African American as a Norse god to rewriting Sense and Sensibility as a nautical epic. Frankly, I'm of the opinion that if the man can act, it's entirely moot what color his skin is. The inclusion of Nightrunner is slightly more valid as a creative direction only because of the oft-overlooked political situation in France today.
The overreaction of bigots was not the point I was hoping to draw attention to. I merely hoped to use the ensuing large-scale squirming of those less organized entities as a warning towards anyone hoping to update a beloved classic. While Austen's works in the modern day are a fairly safe bet for anyone who ever snored their way through high school English class, you may be surprised by what people truly love (and will riot to protect).
Although if anyone yells at you for tearing apart the work of James Joyce, their own judgment may be in question.
The masters who penned the classics we adore did so because they wanted to share a story. Whether for entertainment, the hope of change, or just the desperate need we all have to shout from the proverbial hilltop, their voices echo in our hearts and minds many years after they first hit print.
Adding your own take on that historic yell should only ever be seen as a way to help bring the classics we love into a modern reckoning so that that echo may resound forever. So as we brace to face the new year, let the past help us reflect on what we were, understand where we are and predict where we are going.
And let it do so with zombies.
There are few more dangerous pursuits on the part of a creator than updating something old and beloved to account for a changing era.
Enter the twin giants of Marvel and DC in the world of comics, who have this year come under fire for several choices made which bring minority actors and characters into new light.
While both movements are small and fairly polarized, they've led to a shockwave of milder, overlooked squeamishness in a far wider arc. Even outside of the extremes of racism and other prejudice, audiences generally dislike it when you change anything about an empire they love.
Change is inevitable. We, as a people, are constantly evolving, while much of our art remains frozen in time. While that may never injure the works of Picasso, we've already seen it have a large impact on the unspoken implications of men like JRR Tolkien. While it can take years to happen, there is always a chance that someone, some day, will create a new iteration of the old standby, taking it in a direction the original writer (and his or her adoring fans) never expected.
I bring this to light here for two reasons: there is a wealth of good to be found in releasing an updated version of an older work, and, if you are yourself successful enough, you should be prepared for the sincerest form of flattery.
Giving new life to an old work is a wonderful way for a new writer to get started, or for a seasoned writer to test their chops. As an example: try penning a new version of Oliver Twist using modern-day South Korea as your landscape. The same themes exist today that did centuries ago. Adjusting the setting helps to draw today's eyes in the right direction.
Shifting time and place is one of many ways to update an old beloved classic. Take the landmark success of the play "Wicked," telling the story of Oz from the very positive perspective of the "wicked" witch of the west. Take Seth Grahame-Smith's parody series starting with "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," a delicious spin on Jane Austen's largely unattainable original.
Pearl Harbor, for whatever you make think of the acting, was one of the first World War II films to show the leaders of Japan in a positive light, forced into a no-win situation and taking what they felt was the best option to protect their people. While it's not based on a specific work, I think you'll agree that World War II as a story has been done before, at least once or twice.
If you're looking for inspiration, for a solid backbone on which to place a clever twist or a cultural treasure to help leverage a very pressing modern-day need, using an old story as the basis for new life can be a wonderful place to start. Be careful of how you borrow, of course, but do not rule out the idea just because you feel it's not wholly original. Drawing on a known entity as your baseline to shatter or update pregenerated notions can oftentimes have an even greater impact that an entirely original work.
While it hinges entirely on your purpose, I believe that boldness is the blood of the artist, a word here meaning 'anyone who creates something not real to help show us what we are, what we dream, or what we can be.' To be different, to be remembered, to have an impact on the cultural consciousness requires courage and tenacity of mind.
For that reason, expect others to branch out into new and unexpected areas with your work, as well. If you're a supporter of the Creative Commons model (and if you're not, you may want to consider it), this is all but a given for anything of yours that becomes popular, even if it's just on "that there Internet." So be prepared to see someone else take even your own work in a new direction.
Returning to my opening mention, I want to be clear on one point: I do not mean to compare casting an African American as a Norse god to rewriting Sense and Sensibility as a nautical epic. Frankly, I'm of the opinion that if the man can act, it's entirely moot what color his skin is. The inclusion of Nightrunner is slightly more valid as a creative direction only because of the oft-overlooked political situation in France today.
The overreaction of bigots was not the point I was hoping to draw attention to. I merely hoped to use the ensuing large-scale squirming of those less organized entities as a warning towards anyone hoping to update a beloved classic. While Austen's works in the modern day are a fairly safe bet for anyone who ever snored their way through high school English class, you may be surprised by what people truly love (and will riot to protect).
Although if anyone yells at you for tearing apart the work of James Joyce, their own judgment may be in question.
The masters who penned the classics we adore did so because they wanted to share a story. Whether for entertainment, the hope of change, or just the desperate need we all have to shout from the proverbial hilltop, their voices echo in our hearts and minds many years after they first hit print.
Adding your own take on that historic yell should only ever be seen as a way to help bring the classics we love into a modern reckoning so that that echo may resound forever. So as we brace to face the new year, let the past help us reflect on what we were, understand where we are and predict where we are going.
And let it do so with zombies.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Creep Must Flow
Creep is a subject that's been on my mind for a number of years, but never more so than it has been these past few weeks.
To be clear, "creep" is the habit of a work to grow, and grow, and grow, like a mold behind the sheet rock of your mind. What starts as a simple half-novella balloons, one scene at a time, into a Jordan-esque gargantua before you even realize what's happening.
Creep is wonderful, and it is awful, and it is painful and beautiful and puzzling all at once. Those of us who write with our feet moving are by far the most susceptible, though I imagine it catches the odd whole-draft writer often enough when they're not looking. You begin to see small changes, little edits, new lines you want to give your characters the excuse to say, and you update your outline accordingly.
It's just one little wafer-thin piece. What harm could it do?
Each little vignette, each new minor addition is benign in its own right, but together they form a veritable Destructor of new content that can throw off any predictions you might have had about when the work will be complete, to say nothing of the half-dozen tweaks you'll no doubt think up in the window of your newly extended deadline.
Creep likes to attack in the wee hours, in that delicate space between sleeping and waking when fantasy reigns supreme and magic mingles with mystery inside our minds. It preys upon the unsuspecting scrap paper and moonlight scribbles of the author's bedside. It lurks in the dark corners of every serendipitous discourse that startles the stagnant embers of creativity. Creep craves the chaotic collisions of a caffeinated cranium.
Crazy, right?
Creep can be a beautiful thing. It's through creep that we are reminded of the life of a work, the life of a world. Creep exists because we are never finished. No scene is ever complete. Rather, scenes are confined by soft borders; thin cellophane screens that no more hold them back than a reed halts a summer storm.
Naturally, we have to stop somewhere. Every draft chooses the lines where the scene ends, where the experiment stops, where the worth runs out; but those lines are no more set in the immalleable memory of the collective consciousness than the borders of a Russian sub-state.
...Too soon?
Creep means that there is always more to be added, there is always something more we crave about a world, a character, a scene, a moment in fictional time that must be seen, shared and savored before we can call ourselves complete.
Limitless possibilities: wonderful to ponder, aggravating to execute.
The Order, once a 230-page poser-paperback flapping in the wind has now crept across 390 total pages, with what looks to be almost 200 pages still to come before even the core arc of the story will reach its full. The creative mold has overtaken my mind entirely at this point, branching into entirely new evolutionary strains resistant to any and all attempts to remove them safely from the brain.
Suffice it to say, creep is very close to my heart, having traveled southbound from the cerebellum. For those similarly afflicted, consider writing in stages:
To be clear, "creep" is the habit of a work to grow, and grow, and grow, like a mold behind the sheet rock of your mind. What starts as a simple half-novella balloons, one scene at a time, into a Jordan-esque gargantua before you even realize what's happening.
Creep is wonderful, and it is awful, and it is painful and beautiful and puzzling all at once. Those of us who write with our feet moving are by far the most susceptible, though I imagine it catches the odd whole-draft writer often enough when they're not looking. You begin to see small changes, little edits, new lines you want to give your characters the excuse to say, and you update your outline accordingly.
It's just one little wafer-thin piece. What harm could it do?
Each little vignette, each new minor addition is benign in its own right, but together they form a veritable Destructor of new content that can throw off any predictions you might have had about when the work will be complete, to say nothing of the half-dozen tweaks you'll no doubt think up in the window of your newly extended deadline.
Creep likes to attack in the wee hours, in that delicate space between sleeping and waking when fantasy reigns supreme and magic mingles with mystery inside our minds. It preys upon the unsuspecting scrap paper and moonlight scribbles of the author's bedside. It lurks in the dark corners of every serendipitous discourse that startles the stagnant embers of creativity. Creep craves the chaotic collisions of a caffeinated cranium.
Crazy, right?
Creep can be a beautiful thing. It's through creep that we are reminded of the life of a work, the life of a world. Creep exists because we are never finished. No scene is ever complete. Rather, scenes are confined by soft borders; thin cellophane screens that no more hold them back than a reed halts a summer storm.
Naturally, we have to stop somewhere. Every draft chooses the lines where the scene ends, where the experiment stops, where the worth runs out; but those lines are no more set in the immalleable memory of the collective consciousness than the borders of a Russian sub-state.
...Too soon?
Creep means that there is always more to be added, there is always something more we crave about a world, a character, a scene, a moment in fictional time that must be seen, shared and savored before we can call ourselves complete.
Limitless possibilities: wonderful to ponder, aggravating to execute.
The Order, once a 230-page poser-paperback flapping in the wind has now crept across 390 total pages, with what looks to be almost 200 pages still to come before even the core arc of the story will reach its full. The creative mold has overtaken my mind entirely at this point, branching into entirely new evolutionary strains resistant to any and all attempts to remove them safely from the brain.
Suffice it to say, creep is very close to my heart, having traveled southbound from the cerebellum. For those similarly afflicted, consider writing in stages:
- Stage one: Core scenes only. Write only what you need to survive. Record any ideas for additional scenes in brief, store for later use.
- Stage two: Pen added scenes ad hoc, individually. Modular. Insert into core plotline and note the page numbers before and after.
- Stage three: Re-read complete draft with added scenes added in. Remove any that feel awkward or out of place. Store the rejects somewhere safe, just in case. Potentially insert into future works with similar situations, characters or settings.
- Stage four: Pie. Get you some.
Friday, December 17, 2010
9 to 5 to 9 - Writing With a Day Job
Writing would be so much easier to get done if it weren't for that pesky need to eat.
If you're like nearly any burgeoning writer, you know that a few half-edited short stories don't exactly pay the bills. And by "don't exactly" I mean "ahaha, HAHA, haaa, No." Meaning, in short, that a large portion of us work a large portion of each day for a large portion of the week on something other than writing. When you consider the number of hours that go into a full-length novel, trying to squeeze it in between a workday and anything remotely resembling a social life becomes an experiment in non-Euclidian geometry.
Mind you, there are folks out there who make quite a good living writing, and not just the novelists. Pieces of periodicals may not pay through the nose, but when your target is about 2000 words, the sky's the limit. That said, until you've honed your writing ethic and sharpened your wit on the grindstone of failed experiments, it's difficult to guarantee yourself a reliable paycheck unless you happen to strike gold right out of the box.
Professional writing is honestly a lot like professional sports that way: for every success story you see, there are tens of thousands of hopefuls who have gone wanting. Even many who eventually succeed in the craft started their work while employed full-time as something entirely different. Personally, I find it a lot easier to write when I'm not being interrupted every few minutes by a stomach crying out for a meal that consists of more than Japanese noodles.
The trouble is that work so often leaves you little room left to get any actual writing done. It's rare that a job provides you with the space and tools to write; rarer still that it provide you with the time. Waiting until your shift is up means cramming writing time in between the commute, a meal, and the time you need to be in bed so you can wake up tomorrow and do it all again.
It's a little like working while still in school: you have two things you need to do every day, and you have to keep at them both to be successful and sustained. Work is the thing that lets you keep paying to go to school, so given the choice, work always wins. But sometimes it's worth it to risk coming in a few minutes late after spending an extra hour or two the night before preparing for your final.
School is the thing that gets you to bigger and brighter things one day. Work is the thing that keeps you fed in the here-and-now. It's the same way when it comes to writing.
If you're working, writing, and in school, god bless you, and what the hell are you doing wasting time online? There's work to be done!
Time isn't the only limiting factor: even a job that doesn't force you to work after hours can leave you exhausted half the time, or distracted enough with ongoing projects not to be able to focus on that next scene you have to sort out. Add to this that you may, occasionally, want to talk to or even see other people, and your writing time has dried up to a pittance before it even began.
Often, the trick is to find a job that will either let you write during the day, or one that makes up for the difference in worth. Working in customer service won't exactly give you hours of time for writing, but the number of colorful personalities you'll encounter form a ready mosaic to draw your character quirks from later, and there is a certain sense of justice in carving to stone the rank displeasure of those you least like dealing with, laid bare for generations to enjoy.
Even jobs that won't let you write on the clock (because, let's face it, you shouldn't. Sure, it beats stealing office supplies, but the fact remains: you were hired to do a job, and it should take precedence over that one fight scene that's been giving you so much trouble all week) will often allow you enough time at lunch to get in a page or two.
Eating alone rarely requires an hour's time. Bring the food back to your desk or take a steno pad somewhere quiet and rattle off half a scene. Do it every day for a month and you have about 15-20 thousand words without ever picking up a pen after hours. That roughly equates to two novels a year. On your lunch hour.
If you get vacation time, use it to take a writing day now and then. Since your writing follows your schedule, you can take a day off in the middle of the season when everyone else is staying in the office because it's "just another week." One good solid 9-to-5 day of writing can be the miracle that saves your deadline. Don't be afraid to take a day when you need it. If all goes well, one day you'll be in the habit of 8-hour writing days like these all year long.
In the meantime, don't quit your day job.
If you're like nearly any burgeoning writer, you know that a few half-edited short stories don't exactly pay the bills. And by "don't exactly" I mean "ahaha, HAHA, haaa, No." Meaning, in short, that a large portion of us work a large portion of each day for a large portion of the week on something other than writing. When you consider the number of hours that go into a full-length novel, trying to squeeze it in between a workday and anything remotely resembling a social life becomes an experiment in non-Euclidian geometry.
Mind you, there are folks out there who make quite a good living writing, and not just the novelists. Pieces of periodicals may not pay through the nose, but when your target is about 2000 words, the sky's the limit. That said, until you've honed your writing ethic and sharpened your wit on the grindstone of failed experiments, it's difficult to guarantee yourself a reliable paycheck unless you happen to strike gold right out of the box.
Professional writing is honestly a lot like professional sports that way: for every success story you see, there are tens of thousands of hopefuls who have gone wanting. Even many who eventually succeed in the craft started their work while employed full-time as something entirely different. Personally, I find it a lot easier to write when I'm not being interrupted every few minutes by a stomach crying out for a meal that consists of more than Japanese noodles.
The trouble is that work so often leaves you little room left to get any actual writing done. It's rare that a job provides you with the space and tools to write; rarer still that it provide you with the time. Waiting until your shift is up means cramming writing time in between the commute, a meal, and the time you need to be in bed so you can wake up tomorrow and do it all again.
It's a little like working while still in school: you have two things you need to do every day, and you have to keep at them both to be successful and sustained. Work is the thing that lets you keep paying to go to school, so given the choice, work always wins. But sometimes it's worth it to risk coming in a few minutes late after spending an extra hour or two the night before preparing for your final.
School is the thing that gets you to bigger and brighter things one day. Work is the thing that keeps you fed in the here-and-now. It's the same way when it comes to writing.
If you're working, writing, and in school, god bless you, and what the hell are you doing wasting time online? There's work to be done!
Time isn't the only limiting factor: even a job that doesn't force you to work after hours can leave you exhausted half the time, or distracted enough with ongoing projects not to be able to focus on that next scene you have to sort out. Add to this that you may, occasionally, want to talk to or even see other people, and your writing time has dried up to a pittance before it even began.
Often, the trick is to find a job that will either let you write during the day, or one that makes up for the difference in worth. Working in customer service won't exactly give you hours of time for writing, but the number of colorful personalities you'll encounter form a ready mosaic to draw your character quirks from later, and there is a certain sense of justice in carving to stone the rank displeasure of those you least like dealing with, laid bare for generations to enjoy.
Even jobs that won't let you write on the clock (because, let's face it, you shouldn't. Sure, it beats stealing office supplies, but the fact remains: you were hired to do a job, and it should take precedence over that one fight scene that's been giving you so much trouble all week) will often allow you enough time at lunch to get in a page or two.
Eating alone rarely requires an hour's time. Bring the food back to your desk or take a steno pad somewhere quiet and rattle off half a scene. Do it every day for a month and you have about 15-20 thousand words without ever picking up a pen after hours. That roughly equates to two novels a year. On your lunch hour.
If you get vacation time, use it to take a writing day now and then. Since your writing follows your schedule, you can take a day off in the middle of the season when everyone else is staying in the office because it's "just another week." One good solid 9-to-5 day of writing can be the miracle that saves your deadline. Don't be afraid to take a day when you need it. If all goes well, one day you'll be in the habit of 8-hour writing days like these all year long.
In the meantime, don't quit your day job.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Action Items
If there's one thing movies may always hold over books, it's that action scenes are usually much harder to write than they are to simply...do.
It doesn't help that the words share a common meaning. Actors acting out an action scene are often limited only by the expense of wire-fighting equipment and swiftly changing camera angles. When all you have to work with is words, it's easy to find yourself desperately searching for a key grip somewhere in the wings.
It only takes a handful of muscles to punch someone in the jaw. By contrast, it takes entirely too much precision to describe the punch, the jaw, and the flight of the poor bastard on the receiving end as he ricochets off the bar, spills two drinks and finally crashes, chin-first, into a nearby table, upsetting a polite game of poker played by some rather nice gentlemen who are happy to join in the scuffle now that their wagers have all been sent skyward.
Case in point.
Writing action scenes isn't always necessary: plenty of beloved books don't have a single one. However, even books that don't center on action may need at least a scene or two to evoke the desired blood-pumping pace in their readers before the end.
Action scenes appear in places you might not even expect: romantic comedies often involve a sprint to the finish as the one lover realizes their mistake and must race to catch the other before their plane/train/taxi/burro carries them out of reach. Political thrillers often rely on brief, potent moments of action to signify the very real threat of otherwise very cerebral notions. Action isn't just the cotton candy of a writer's repertoire, it's a genuine tool that can trigger the emotions you as a writer desire to create.
Action doesn't just mean fight scenes, either. Any sort of fast-paced, low-dialogue sequence wherein your characters are pressed for time or survival gets at the same nerve as any barroom brawl. Between your main character's moment of epiphany and the final peak of triumph is a long road best taken at a heady pace. Endangering the character or the people they care about along the way is also a great way to get your readers clawing at the pages between the two.
But the actual mechanics of writing action can be tricky to master. It's difficult to know just how much detail to include and what points to gloss over. If you stray too poetic, the reader can get lost as to who's doing what, but err on the bulky side and you may overburden or even bore the reader with the minutia; the exact opposite effect of what you're hoping for.
The first step is to put the movies and the comic books aside. "Biff," "Pow" and "Crash" really only work in the DC world and Adam West's private laser tag arena. You're going to have to think about how things react to fill in all the pieces at the edge of the room.
Look back at the example above: a man throws a punch. His opponent slams into a bar, bounces off, into a table, which in turn sends chips flying and angers three men. They, in turn, may stand up in reaction, knocking their chairs to the floor in the path of a fleeing waiter. It's a lot to account for, and you want to have it all clear in your head before you start typing.
Naturally, the danger becomes too much detail. With a whole room to describe, how can you keep the reader focused on the action at the center? Remember to obey the rule of Chekhov's guns: if you describe something in the room, make sure it matters.
When the man's chin hits the table, the wagers are described as flying, not the cards. The wagers only matter because it gives a reason why the men at the table are now getting into the fray themselves. If they were all just sitting around eating bar peanuts, the men and what's on the table start to matter a lot less.
Pare down anything that doesn't have an impact on the scene or immediately add to the worth of the impact at hand. Hitting a table at full force with your chin is a lot more painful to think about than landing on your shoulder. If the injury becomes important later (e.g. the main character has a vocal audition in the morning), all the better, but sometimes it's worth it just for the 'oof' sound your readers will be making.
When your core action at the center is where all the detail lies, it may be time to start grouping smaller actions into broader terms. Think of it like a watercolor: keep your hands moving in quick, broad strokes and the picture will become clear on its own. If you stop to focus in on the details, you risk muddying the waters and losing the overall image.
The bigger danger with action scenes is repetition. The average fight involves ten to twelve attempted haymakers, a word for which there are only so many synonyms. A chase scene is a lot of harrowing turns and fruit stands when you get right down to details. You have to use the landscape to keep things interesting. There's a reason so many chase scenes are filmed in southern California...
When the foreground gets boring, keep the background interesting. Move your foot race to the rooftops and you can add skylights and clotheslines to your scenery. Make your fights mobile, and bring everything in the room into the fray. Chekhov's guns can also be Chekhov's beer bottles, end-tables, vases, framed pictures and common housecats.
Another thing to watch for when writing action is purely grammatical. There are two styles that consume many writers in their early days: sentences that end too soon, and sentences that never seem to end at all. Action tends to throw both styles into their respective death-blossom modes. Short sentences become microscopic tidbits containing only the bare minimum structure required to keep calling themselves sentences, while my fellow clause-monsters and I begin dipping deep into the comma reserves.
Whatever your style is naturally, when you get to an action scene, compare it back to some of your less action-packed writing. Once you're a few paragraphs in, start counting the number of words between periods. If it's spiked or dropped suddenly, you may want to look into carving up or gluing together the descriptive bits you're working with.
Lastly, dialogue. Dialogue can be a wonderful way to break up the monotony of even a creative action scene if it starts to go on too long, or if you want to add a humorous element to an otherwise frightening ordeal. There are a number of good examples when it comes to splicing commentary into moments of high action, but there are far more and far louder bad examples out there drowning them out.
Dialogue in the middle of an action sequence always risks straying into the campy variety. Crossing the Ian Fleming line into outright parody is disturbingly close to where many writers start, but adding "Guess he lost his head" to the end of a scene of outright gore is a habit best left to the one man who could get away with a villain named Pussy Galore.
Even without the awful puns, a lot of mid-action dialogue will come off as clunky and awkward unless it's handled carefully. Anyone who's watched even one anime has likely run across the worst of it. characters who spend as much (or more) time bantering, threatening and generally wasting time than actually doing anything of interest to the audience.
The best method is to keep it quick. A short line, even if it doesn't add anything to the meat of the scene, can be just the right dash of spice. A line as simple as "That worked?!" in the midst of fixing the engines to get yourselves to safety can be all you need to turn the corner in the middle of a serious scene. It helps to think of it less as a dialogue between characters and more as a character addressing the scene itself. When the gun that keeps jamming is the other person in the conversation, it can keep you from going on too long talking and forgetting to unjam the damn thing and get back to firing.
If you need the characters to have a real heart-to-heart in the middle of their duel, consider giving them a moment to actually pause. Cover in the middle of a fight is a great solution. Gunmen duck out of sight when they pause to reload, sword fighters can lose track of each other in the scuffle over uneven terrain or in a heavily shadowed arena. Once the forces stop fighting and catch their breath, it's a great time for a short chat before they launch at each other again to finish things once and for all.
Feeling breathless? Don't sweat it: action scenes in print aren't all that different from action scenes in the movies. Start with what you know and what you've seen, keep the strokes wide and broad so that you don't risk getting too scientific and, as always, find someone to read it when you're done. In the same room, preferably, so you can see whether they're checking the clock or leaving claw marks in the cover.
If you're able to get someone to read the scene under scrutiny, count the number of times they look away from the page for anything other than a smoke alarm going off. Each time their attention drifts to anything but your words, that's one more read-through of the scene to search for what you can improve. If you catch them rolling their eyes or groaning, it's possible you've crossed the Fleming line by mistake.
Shocking, that.
It doesn't help that the words share a common meaning. Actors acting out an action scene are often limited only by the expense of wire-fighting equipment and swiftly changing camera angles. When all you have to work with is words, it's easy to find yourself desperately searching for a key grip somewhere in the wings.
It only takes a handful of muscles to punch someone in the jaw. By contrast, it takes entirely too much precision to describe the punch, the jaw, and the flight of the poor bastard on the receiving end as he ricochets off the bar, spills two drinks and finally crashes, chin-first, into a nearby table, upsetting a polite game of poker played by some rather nice gentlemen who are happy to join in the scuffle now that their wagers have all been sent skyward.
Case in point.
Writing action scenes isn't always necessary: plenty of beloved books don't have a single one. However, even books that don't center on action may need at least a scene or two to evoke the desired blood-pumping pace in their readers before the end.
Action scenes appear in places you might not even expect: romantic comedies often involve a sprint to the finish as the one lover realizes their mistake and must race to catch the other before their plane/train/taxi/burro carries them out of reach. Political thrillers often rely on brief, potent moments of action to signify the very real threat of otherwise very cerebral notions. Action isn't just the cotton candy of a writer's repertoire, it's a genuine tool that can trigger the emotions you as a writer desire to create.
Action doesn't just mean fight scenes, either. Any sort of fast-paced, low-dialogue sequence wherein your characters are pressed for time or survival gets at the same nerve as any barroom brawl. Between your main character's moment of epiphany and the final peak of triumph is a long road best taken at a heady pace. Endangering the character or the people they care about along the way is also a great way to get your readers clawing at the pages between the two.
But the actual mechanics of writing action can be tricky to master. It's difficult to know just how much detail to include and what points to gloss over. If you stray too poetic, the reader can get lost as to who's doing what, but err on the bulky side and you may overburden or even bore the reader with the minutia; the exact opposite effect of what you're hoping for.
The first step is to put the movies and the comic books aside. "Biff," "Pow" and "Crash" really only work in the DC world and Adam West's private laser tag arena. You're going to have to think about how things react to fill in all the pieces at the edge of the room.
Look back at the example above: a man throws a punch. His opponent slams into a bar, bounces off, into a table, which in turn sends chips flying and angers three men. They, in turn, may stand up in reaction, knocking their chairs to the floor in the path of a fleeing waiter. It's a lot to account for, and you want to have it all clear in your head before you start typing.
Naturally, the danger becomes too much detail. With a whole room to describe, how can you keep the reader focused on the action at the center? Remember to obey the rule of Chekhov's guns: if you describe something in the room, make sure it matters.
When the man's chin hits the table, the wagers are described as flying, not the cards. The wagers only matter because it gives a reason why the men at the table are now getting into the fray themselves. If they were all just sitting around eating bar peanuts, the men and what's on the table start to matter a lot less.
Pare down anything that doesn't have an impact on the scene or immediately add to the worth of the impact at hand. Hitting a table at full force with your chin is a lot more painful to think about than landing on your shoulder. If the injury becomes important later (e.g. the main character has a vocal audition in the morning), all the better, but sometimes it's worth it just for the 'oof' sound your readers will be making.
When your core action at the center is where all the detail lies, it may be time to start grouping smaller actions into broader terms. Think of it like a watercolor: keep your hands moving in quick, broad strokes and the picture will become clear on its own. If you stop to focus in on the details, you risk muddying the waters and losing the overall image.
The bigger danger with action scenes is repetition. The average fight involves ten to twelve attempted haymakers, a word for which there are only so many synonyms. A chase scene is a lot of harrowing turns and fruit stands when you get right down to details. You have to use the landscape to keep things interesting. There's a reason so many chase scenes are filmed in southern California...
When the foreground gets boring, keep the background interesting. Move your foot race to the rooftops and you can add skylights and clotheslines to your scenery. Make your fights mobile, and bring everything in the room into the fray. Chekhov's guns can also be Chekhov's beer bottles, end-tables, vases, framed pictures and common housecats.
Another thing to watch for when writing action is purely grammatical. There are two styles that consume many writers in their early days: sentences that end too soon, and sentences that never seem to end at all. Action tends to throw both styles into their respective death-blossom modes. Short sentences become microscopic tidbits containing only the bare minimum structure required to keep calling themselves sentences, while my fellow clause-monsters and I begin dipping deep into the comma reserves.
Whatever your style is naturally, when you get to an action scene, compare it back to some of your less action-packed writing. Once you're a few paragraphs in, start counting the number of words between periods. If it's spiked or dropped suddenly, you may want to look into carving up or gluing together the descriptive bits you're working with.
Lastly, dialogue. Dialogue can be a wonderful way to break up the monotony of even a creative action scene if it starts to go on too long, or if you want to add a humorous element to an otherwise frightening ordeal. There are a number of good examples when it comes to splicing commentary into moments of high action, but there are far more and far louder bad examples out there drowning them out.
Dialogue in the middle of an action sequence always risks straying into the campy variety. Crossing the Ian Fleming line into outright parody is disturbingly close to where many writers start, but adding "Guess he lost his head" to the end of a scene of outright gore is a habit best left to the one man who could get away with a villain named Pussy Galore.
Even without the awful puns, a lot of mid-action dialogue will come off as clunky and awkward unless it's handled carefully. Anyone who's watched even one anime has likely run across the worst of it. characters who spend as much (or more) time bantering, threatening and generally wasting time than actually doing anything of interest to the audience.
The best method is to keep it quick. A short line, even if it doesn't add anything to the meat of the scene, can be just the right dash of spice. A line as simple as "That worked?!" in the midst of fixing the engines to get yourselves to safety can be all you need to turn the corner in the middle of a serious scene. It helps to think of it less as a dialogue between characters and more as a character addressing the scene itself. When the gun that keeps jamming is the other person in the conversation, it can keep you from going on too long talking and forgetting to unjam the damn thing and get back to firing.
If you need the characters to have a real heart-to-heart in the middle of their duel, consider giving them a moment to actually pause. Cover in the middle of a fight is a great solution. Gunmen duck out of sight when they pause to reload, sword fighters can lose track of each other in the scuffle over uneven terrain or in a heavily shadowed arena. Once the forces stop fighting and catch their breath, it's a great time for a short chat before they launch at each other again to finish things once and for all.
Feeling breathless? Don't sweat it: action scenes in print aren't all that different from action scenes in the movies. Start with what you know and what you've seen, keep the strokes wide and broad so that you don't risk getting too scientific and, as always, find someone to read it when you're done. In the same room, preferably, so you can see whether they're checking the clock or leaving claw marks in the cover.
If you're able to get someone to read the scene under scrutiny, count the number of times they look away from the page for anything other than a smoke alarm going off. Each time their attention drifts to anything but your words, that's one more read-through of the scene to search for what you can improve. If you catch them rolling their eyes or groaning, it's possible you've crossed the Fleming line by mistake.
Shocking, that.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Death of an Age (Snippet)
"Do you really think the world is ending?" Sira asked, staring out at the receding fog drawing away from all corners of what was once the tainted plain.
Captain Chang adjusted his armor over the missing stump that had been his arm, chuckling to himself at the look of it. "Ending?" he laughed, clapping the younger soldier on the back hard enough to make him stagger forward. "Son, the world is just now getting started..." He seemed about to say more, but a racking cough interceded. Sira reached out a hand in aid, but the captain merely swatted it away, bent double to let the fit see itself out.
Sira sighed, placing a hand idly on the man's back as he gazed back out on the world beyond the wall. A great victory had been won today, there was no denying that, and while he felt like a puppet in a larger play, he had at least been given the chance to sit upon the same stage with the true players behind this great shift.
But, as was so often true here on the wall, the victory had come with a price. Much of the world had been rent asunder in the battle for dominance. What remained was so scarred and scored it hardly resembled its former self. Mankind had won its freedom from one enemy, but scarcity was quickly drawing the battle lines on an entirely new conflict.
Chang coughed out the last of his fit and righted himself again, still standing a good foot shorter and about a foot wider than his comrade from the small township nearby. He set his remaining hand on his hip, nodding to himself as he looked out on the retreating mists. The war was over; a war that started long before his grandfather joined the fight; a war that ended now under his watch. The swelling pride he couldn't help but feel was kept tempered in part by years of cautious optimism. He had told the men often what dangers lay in hope. Even so, there was no denying that for the first time in his surprisingly long years, Captain Chang felt at ease.
"Well, I suppose we'd better go help with the graves," he said, marching off with a bounce in his step. Sira raised an eyebrow, still growing accustomed to Chang's peculiar ways. Twenty-seven years on the wall, he reminded himself, were likely to have some manner of effect on the brain. The man's casual love for the macabre had become a legend all their own. Still, Sira knew there was greater leader on this unforgiving vigil than the short, round man now skipping down the tower steps, muttering to himself about what he would do now that the demons were "running like pigs from thunder."
Another sigh passed the young man's lips as he returned his eyes to the field now laid plain by the vanishing fog. The land was weak and barren, in need of much tending, but the disease, at last, was gone. All that remained now was for the resolve of good men to outlast their penchant to imitate the very demons their efforts had helped to banish.
With a deep breath of clean, rich air, the soldier straightened up and marched off in the wake of the older captain to lend a hand or two to their dark-but-necessary efforts. It seemed only fitting that the land be propped up on the backs of the young men and women who had died to see it made free. He could only pray their spirits would safeguard the newcomers to this broken plain the way their bodies had guarded the wall of the old.
What remained of the world was far from lost, he told himself, rounding the crumbling planks of the tower steps. He only hoped that, before his feet reached the bottom, perhaps he would start believing it.
Captain Chang adjusted his armor over the missing stump that had been his arm, chuckling to himself at the look of it. "Ending?" he laughed, clapping the younger soldier on the back hard enough to make him stagger forward. "Son, the world is just now getting started..." He seemed about to say more, but a racking cough interceded. Sira reached out a hand in aid, but the captain merely swatted it away, bent double to let the fit see itself out.
Sira sighed, placing a hand idly on the man's back as he gazed back out on the world beyond the wall. A great victory had been won today, there was no denying that, and while he felt like a puppet in a larger play, he had at least been given the chance to sit upon the same stage with the true players behind this great shift.
But, as was so often true here on the wall, the victory had come with a price. Much of the world had been rent asunder in the battle for dominance. What remained was so scarred and scored it hardly resembled its former self. Mankind had won its freedom from one enemy, but scarcity was quickly drawing the battle lines on an entirely new conflict.
Chang coughed out the last of his fit and righted himself again, still standing a good foot shorter and about a foot wider than his comrade from the small township nearby. He set his remaining hand on his hip, nodding to himself as he looked out on the retreating mists. The war was over; a war that started long before his grandfather joined the fight; a war that ended now under his watch. The swelling pride he couldn't help but feel was kept tempered in part by years of cautious optimism. He had told the men often what dangers lay in hope. Even so, there was no denying that for the first time in his surprisingly long years, Captain Chang felt at ease.
"Well, I suppose we'd better go help with the graves," he said, marching off with a bounce in his step. Sira raised an eyebrow, still growing accustomed to Chang's peculiar ways. Twenty-seven years on the wall, he reminded himself, were likely to have some manner of effect on the brain. The man's casual love for the macabre had become a legend all their own. Still, Sira knew there was greater leader on this unforgiving vigil than the short, round man now skipping down the tower steps, muttering to himself about what he would do now that the demons were "running like pigs from thunder."
Another sigh passed the young man's lips as he returned his eyes to the field now laid plain by the vanishing fog. The land was weak and barren, in need of much tending, but the disease, at last, was gone. All that remained now was for the resolve of good men to outlast their penchant to imitate the very demons their efforts had helped to banish.
With a deep breath of clean, rich air, the soldier straightened up and marched off in the wake of the older captain to lend a hand or two to their dark-but-necessary efforts. It seemed only fitting that the land be propped up on the backs of the young men and women who had died to see it made free. He could only pray their spirits would safeguard the newcomers to this broken plain the way their bodies had guarded the wall of the old.
What remained of the world was far from lost, he told himself, rounding the crumbling planks of the tower steps. He only hoped that, before his feet reached the bottom, perhaps he would start believing it.
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