Parties and Scenes

The secret to success in either:

Enter late. Leave Early.

You're sitting at your keyboard/typewriter/quill pen/whatever. Ready for the day's writing session. Carol suspects Bob's cheating. Something she found in his sock drawer, perhaps. At any rate, Carol is plenty mad.

Do you start writing....

A) When Carol opens Bob's sock drawer? Perhaps dutifully putting away his laundry, perhaps trying to teach Bob a lesson by shoving the dirty socks he leaves all over the house back in the drawer, or maybe just plain snooping?

B) With Carol, alone in their apartment, drinking and clenching her jaw as afternoon shadows slide across the wall?

C) With Bob entering the apartment, beige walls in the purple twilight, a dark and bristling shape in the center of the room?

D) Somewhere in the middle of dinner: a tense and silent meal punctuated by the clicking of fork on plate?

The only right answer is, as late as possible.

In part, that depends a little on Bob's fidelity. If he's an innocent man accused, you'll want to spend more time building up Carol's fury. We'll get a bigger charge when it's cleared up. Or isn't. Comedy or tragedy, I'd probably start with (B).

If Bob's a cheating dog finally exposed, the emotional flashpoint will be the revelation and Carol's aftermath. Depending on Carol's character (tempestuous or calculating), I'd go (C) or (D).

Notice I wouldn't choose (A). We don't need that setup. If how Carol finds the MacGuffin in Bob's sock drawer is important, let's bring it out in dialogue. After all, innocent or guilty, you can bet Bob will fire back with a few counteraccusations of his own.

Or will he? It's your story.

Do we leave the scene on...

(A) Bob's initial reaction?

(B) That loud slamming door?

(C) Bob's long and lonely night on the couch?

(D) Carol's first breakfast alone in the apartment and the painful, silent hole of Bob's absence?

Again, depends. If Bob's guilty as hell, or Carol just won't believe him, take (A). Yes, that's one very short scene, maybe only a few lines. Bob comes home. Carol's standing there with the McGuffin. Bob's jaw drops open. Carol sees his face and knows.

Notice I used entry (C) there? Part of that is, I'm pretty straight-ahead myself. I understand direct confrontation better than keeping my wrath bottled until halfway through dinner. If Carol is the type to do that, well, that's another story...

But if there's still some hope for this fight, if Carol kind of secretly hopes Bob has a good explanation, or Bob desperately believes his lies might work, or if the MacGuffin that's come out isn't the one Bob *really* fears, we need to stay. We need to stay with that fight.

But AS SOON AS Bob or Carol has what they need from the scene, we. Are. Out of there! No need to stay all the way through the last bitter insult.

For that matter, our entire story should be joined as late as possible, and left as early as practical. The Lord of the Rings has been done; we don't need any more 200+ page denouments.

It works for parties, too. Last night was a Gathering of Clan Dynamo, in celebration of the birthday of Papa Dynamo. A little late, we missed the ceremonial goat-throwing.

And after Elderly Aunt Agatha Dynamo drank that third shandy and decided it would be fun to lift that police car, we knew it was time to go!

Latest Methods

Official Word-o-Meter Day 4 Word Count: 6621 words



As readers of this blog may remember, I was, for a considerable portion of this current WIP, reduced to writing with a quill pen.

Yup. Dip. Scritch scritch scritch. Dip. Scritch, scritchscritch. etc.

Well, the quills are back in the art supplies now were they belong. That drawing in the top right corner was done with a quill. But writing with one? Let's just say, some things are obsolete for a reason...

These days, my method has changed a bit. So far, it's working for me. Finding out it worked 3000 words' worth was a surprise,but a happy one.

My newest method:

I keep a pen and paper with me and 'sketch' out scenes. Quick notes, in present tense to keep me from taking it too seriously and 'binding up' on word choice and language. Sometimes, I hear dialogue, or that telling detail of imagery swims right up. I jot 'em down. Otherwise, I just kind of loosely walk the characters through their conflicts and challenges.

Mostly, I do this at night. But I keep the tools with me, just in case. Yesterday, I sketched out a fine scene while the Tiny Dynamo shopped for shoes. I'd been thinking about it while we were at the supermarket. Basically, no scrap of time goes to waste.

When it's 'writing time', I sit down with the laptop in my, well, lap and my sketched notes in front of me. Now, I'm listening to imagery and language and what, exactly, is going on in the scene.

This: Kane up early. Not too rested after uncomfortable top bunk:

lights on & off

snoring, loud & wet

vomit smells

1 person sick again

He picks up some overpriced food & walks up into the hills.

Back of the mountain, hawks circle.

Becomes:

Kane was up with the dawn. Hostel dorm beds were the same the world over. Thin mattress and squeaking bedsprings, other backpackers turning lights on and off or stumbling drunken in the dark. Between the loud wet snoring and the faint smells of vomit from the bunk below him, Kane’s sleep was fitful.
Finally, he quit trying. Kane climbed down from his bunk, took his pack out of its locker and dressed in the dark. At a small market on Frankton Road, he paid too much for apples and cheese, nuts and french bread and a bottle of water. The mountain air was still watery and gray when Kane walked into the hills.

Midmorning, Kane stopped. He took his rest on a flat rock, warm in the sun and sheltered from the wind. The cheese was sharp and strong, the apples crisp and tart. Overhead, hawks circled, riding the thermals, hunting.

After a time, Kane moved deeper into the autumn forest. Leaves were turning all around him: yellow and gold and orange and brown and splashes of deep brilliant red. He hit a path and followed it. Bright leaves and dappled trunks gave way to stunted alpine scrub and harsh cold sunlight.

Faint scallops were visible in the grass. Deer, passing through. Past the ridgeline, the tracks descended into the forest shadows.

Kane felt at peace.

Now, careful readers might notice this scene breaks one of my own main rules: there's no conflict. Fair cop, guv. Guilty as charged. But I feel this scene is necessary for three reasons:

1. Pacing: We need a little rest between to high-tension plot points.

2. Characterization: Kane's a solitary man. One of the best quick and dirty shortcuts to charcterization is to put your character in a fitting environment and say 'he's like this place'.

3. Foreshadowing: I'm not sure how this story ends, but I do know that Kane needs to be comfortable outdoors, and a decent tracker, too.

And, this is the first draft. Before this thing is done, I may well have a scene that does all three of these things *and* throws in some conflict too!

Constant Conflict

So I'm writing along, a variation on stranger-comes-to-town. I've got these six characters, each with his or her own agenda and all on a collision course. There's been one terrible crime 'out front' where we all see it, and others happening in the background, where even I'm not entirely sure. Before long, there'll be blood on the walls...

One reason I write 'full throttle' is that I really, really want to find out what's going to happen. What sorta sucks about writing is that I HAVE TO write my way, one word at a freakin time, up to the end.

Yesterday I wrote a phone call. Yup, a phone call.

My hero on this one's a bit of a drifter, so there's not a lot of point in him carrying a cell phone. He needed to reach out to another character, and it seemed worthwhile to show that he needs a landline. I know, I'm yawning already.

But I followed my golden rule:

Nothing, nothing without conflict.

My hero went in to the bar where he's working. I put the relief tender (ten words in a previous chapter) behind the bar, still on from the night before because the morning guy never showed. The low-key stoner stuck on a double shift wanted the hero to clock in. The hero wanted to use the phone and get the hell out.

The character he was calling saw the work number on her cell. She's pretending to be sick to keep from covering that shift too. I got a nice bit of three-way conflict out of that one phone call.

Somehow, I doubt that call will end up in the final draft. But I did learn a couple things about my characters by watching them handle this situation, and writing it got me through to the next scene. I also got to add in the extra layer of tension when the relief tender mentions that the cops are asking about what happened behind the bar last night...

Now, the hero and his coworker are having lunch. They've got conflict on several levels:

Overt: She has information he wants. She doesn't want to give it to him.

Covert: She's making like she has his best interests at heart. He's not sure he trusts her.

And deeper: She wants something bigger from him, and it makes him wary. I'm not even sure that she's being honest about what she wants.

And further: There's a three way love triangle going on as well. That way, just the fact of these two being alone together is a move against the woman who isn't there. And the two women hate, hate, HATE each other, for reasons I can only suspect.

One thing about this story: my characters aren't telling me much. My heroes usually don't. Male or female, I gravitate to quiet, tough characters who don't see a lot of point talking about their pasts. They're action-oriented for a reason, and that's as it should be.

This time though, everyone around the hero is dodgy. They tell me their motivations, and I don't believe them. Where the hero just isn't talking, these people are actively hiding and lying.

Just like the eventual readers, I have to look at what they're doing to see them with any honesty at all. It's maddening, intriguing, and kind of fun!

In other news, Butler Dynamo continues to help. Here he can be seen turning his hand to literary criticism...

I thought the book was more interesting than that!

Conflict & Lying Pipe

status: 11,600 and climbing

In the last post I mentioned in passing that every scene I write has conflict at its heart. I didn't invent this guideline, just found it somewhere and like any good magpie, added it to my box of tricks.

"Laying pipe" is a TV writer term for putting unrealistic dialogue in a character's mouth to get the exposition out there. You know: "Wow, I can't believe we're going to be selling lemonade at the State Fair." Like the guy standing at the booth didn't know how he got there.

It's not that Fred and Daphne need Velma to tell them where they're going (Fred's doing the driving, after all); it's that Velma needs to tell us.

TV can maybe be forgiven for laying pipe. They've got 22 or 48 minutes to tell a story, and the less time wasted getting the setting down the better. Pipe-laying is an artificial mannerism that TV audiences have learned to overlook. In its way, a half hour or hour of TV is as strictly mannered a performance as Kabuki or opera.

Or professional wrestling or Springer.

(Do they still do Springer in the US? It's been so long since I've lived there that Clinton was president at the time!)

Anyway, TV writers, pipe away. Have at it. We novelists aren't so lucky. Or so cursed.

A novel is free of those weird time constraints. We can let a story develop more organically. That's a strength that can also be a weakness.

One pitfall I have to watch out for in my work is the rambling. I write by the seat of my pants and explore the characters as I go. It's tempting to do pages and pages of two guys in a car talking about stuff, that sort of thing. It goes quick and easy, and I can point to a big old word count and pretend I'm doing great.

Thing is, it's not progress. These guys have talked in the car for six pages and the story's gone NOWHERE.

Cut, cut, cut.

Here's the other big pitfall for me: Put those same two guys back in the car, still shooting the shit, but now they're also dropping little bits of information, telling the reader what's what. The dialogue flows along, and the story's moving, right? I mean, there they are, telling us all this useful stuff.

Problem is, it creaks. These days we call it ASYKB (short for As-you-know-Bob), and the device is so old it needed oiling back in Grandpa's day (and one of my Grandfathers was born in the 1880's, about the last time this was acceptable). Back when he was a baby it was still the norm for two servants to appear at the start of the story and lay pipe all over the place as part of a 'conversation'.

I won't say I never do it, but every time I do, it's a failure. The key to success?

Conflict.

Every scene where a character appears - major or minor - that character wants something they're not immediately able to get. It can be big or small, but it needs a goal and an obstacle, preferably another character with a cross-purpose.

For instance, last night Sarah, my hero, needed to find out that the villain had robbed an armored car (There are fuck-all firearms here in New Zealand, except in the hands of farmers and criminals. The dramatic possibilities abound).

I could have had Sarah show up and look siliently at the scene, a little internal monologue dropping the facts on us, and out. Dead boring. even if she stands in some rain or fog or something.

I could have had her ask a uniform on the scene. He could give her the facts, ma'am.

Meh.

What I did was have another detective (Mark) catch the call for the armored car and bring Sarah in when the connection was made to her case. This other detective is a muscly ex-jock with a bit of a Short Man Complex. He acts cocky to get the world to overlook his height.

Sarah's five inches taller with a higher close-rate. Mark's desire to be the big man has an obstacle in its way, and will have every time these two meet. He can't just give up and be humble around Sarah, so he's always looking for ways to one-up her.

Sarah's a woman in a man's world, and a misfit anywhere. If she gives these boys an inch, they'll walk all over her. She demands, and gets, respect. No way Sarah's going to let Mark act like something he's not.

These two like each other, but that tension is there in every encounter. And their gamesmanship makes it easy to drop in a few facts abot an armored car robbery without anyone yawning.

At least, it will when it's gone through a couple of edits. At this stage in the game, I'm just spewing the scenes out as fast as I can type them. Later, I'll go back and look at what I've done, pick out themes and symbols, decide what to amplify and what to drop. Right now, I need to turn off all of my inner critics and just GO!!!