Three Things Kingsman Taught Me About Writing

Last weekend I stopped by one of those "second run" theaters and saw Kingsman: The Secret Service again. Reviews were mixed, but if you don’t mind a little over-the-top, gratuitous violence, it was a pretty enjoyable movie. Think Quentin Tarantino meets James Bond. But regardless of what you thought of the movie, there were three aspects of the movie that stood out to me as a writer.

1. Story Structure is important. Hollywood is known for rigorously adhering to standard story structure and this movie was no exception. The First Plot Point, when the hero (Eggsy) makes the decision to join the Kingsman organization, occurred right at the 20% mark. (The FPP should happen somewhere between 20-25% in books and movies) The midpoint reversal appeared at the halfway point of the movie. And the All-Is-Lost moment, which marks the transition into the third and final act, occurred within four minutes of the expected 75% mark. Classic story structure. Do writers have to hit these marks that closely in our books? Probably not, but we should strive to come as close as we can.

2. Foreshadowing. This movie was chock full of it. There was scarcely a line of dialogue, sight gag, or event that occurred in the first three quarters of the movie that wasn't a setup for something else that happened later. I’m not going to give away any spoilers, but almost everything in this movie was doing double (or triple) duty. You thought a particular line of dialogue was added because it was funny? Think again. That bit of dialogue will come in handy later. Did you think having one of the secondary characters being afraid of heights was done only to make one scene in the middle of the movie more intense? Sorry. Expect that fear to play an even bigger role later when the stakes are higher.

3. Make it personal. When the protagonist is busy saving the world during the story's climax, the goals can often feel a bit distant. Almost impersonal at times. Sure, we know the world’s going to blow up if the hero/heroine doesn’t get to the switch in time, and of course we're rooting for him/her to succeed, but how much do we really care? We don't know any of the hundreds of millions of people who are going to die if he/she fails. So writers often look for ways to make the final battle extra personal for both the protagonist and the audience.

During the final climatic scene in Kingsman, when Eggsy is racing against the clock to stop the bad guy’s plan to destroy the world as we know it, the movie keeps cutting away to scenes of the outside world, showing how it’s collapsing into chaos. The point is clear—millions of people will die if Eggsy fails. But that’s just not personal enough. As we near the final seconds in the countdown, the movie starts showing us glimpses of his baby sister back in London and the imminent danger she'll be in if Eggsy fails. She’s just one more life out of the millions expected to die, but suddenly we’re much more invested in the movie’s outcome because she’s important to Eggsy. Mission accomplished.

I never thought about these kinds of things before I started writing.  Now I can't help but notice them whenever I go to a movie. And when I come home from a movie that's done good job with these techniques, it always fires me up to make my story the best it can be.

How about you?

ChemistKen

Friday Links -- Volume 34

Nothing much going on this week.  I presented a chapter to my local crit group last night and they were mostly underwhelmed.  The problem?  Stilted dialogue.  Oh well, back to the computer for more revisions.

Have a great weekend!
ChemistKen


This week's links:

Why I rejected my publisher

Story Midpoint & Mirror Moment: Using Heroes’ Emotions To Transform Them

Plot and Subplots in a Series of Scenes

A Trick for Keeping Your Plot (and Story) on Target

Frogs, Hot Water, and the Seven Deadly Sins: Making Trouble for Characters

Expand Our Senses and Improve Our Descriptions

Do you actually need that romance?

Everybody Can't Be Right All The Time

A couple of days ago, Jami Gold had a nice post describing her experiences at WanaCon. One of the things she discussed was how to know who to believe when you have receive conflicting opinions about your story—or about writing in general.

As a newbie who has yet to finish his first story, I’m certainly not the most knowledgeable of writers. I still have much to learn, and suspect that will still be the case in twenty years, but after spending the last 3+ years reading books on craft along with writing blogs (a quick check reveals I have over 1300 bookmarked links on writing alone, most of which I’ll probably never get around to rereading), I think I’ve got a bit of a handle on the subject.

And one of the most important things I’ve learned is that not everyone in the world of writing knows what they are talking about. Some bloggers present their personal preferences as rules of writing, despite the plethora of well-received books that ignore these so-called rules. The trick is to listen as much as you can to everyone’s advice and then sit back and decide what works for you.

The following four topics are areas that I find cause the most confusion.

1. Story structure. Very important subject, although I notice a lot of confusion amongst bloggers on the differences between the Hook, the Inciting Incident, and the First Plot Point—all of which are different and all of which have very specific purposes.
Hook – Meant to grab your attention long enough for you to get involved in the story. Example (Star Wars - THE ORIGINAL): The opening sequence. Space battles. Really big ships. Droids. You have no idea what the story is about yet, but you’re willing to wait long enough to find out.
Inciting Incident – The point at which the story or character leaves the “normal world.” May or may not have much to do with the eventual story problem. Example: when R2-D2 convinces Luke to remove a restraining bolt and then runs off, prompting Luke to chase after the little bugger. You still don’t know what the overall story is about yet, but this is definitely not a normal day for Luke.
First Plot Point – Happens at the 25% point in the story. A point of no return where the character either makes a decision or is forced into a decision. Either way, nothing is the same after that point. Example: When Luke returns to find his aunt and uncle dead, and decides he’s going to leave everything behind and join the rebellion.

2. Passive voice versus passive sentences. We’re talking pet peeve here, so bear with me. Passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is being acted upon instead of doing the acting. That’s it. No more, no less.

Example: "The ball was thrown by the boy."

The ball isn’t doing the throwing; the boy is, so this is passive voice. No argument there.

How about: "The ball was rolling down the street."

This is not passive voice, no matter how many people will try and tell you it is. The ball is performing the action so it is active voice. Period. End of story. That’s not to say the sentence construction isn’t passive (read: boring). It would be better written as "The ball rolled down the street." But that’s the difference between passive voice and passive sentences.

How about: "The present was unwrapped."

Passive voice or active voice? The answer is: it depends. If the author meant that the present is being unwrapped as in “The present was unwrapped by the boy,” then it is passive voice. If the author is describing a state of being, as in “the present was dusty” or “the pizza was cold,” then it is not considered passive voice, at least according to Strunk and White. Of course, state of being verbs are also considered a sign of passive sentence construction and should be avoided when possible.

Am I nitpicking here? Perhaps, but I’ve seen so many bloggers confuse passive sentences and passive voice, I just had to say something. And ranting is good for the soul.

3. Showing vs telling. Some authors like to show everything and preach that everyone else should do the same. My advice is to thank them for their advice and then ignore them. Whenever I read a book where the author shows everything, I tend to throw the book across the room long before the end. (Well, not so much now that I have a Kindle) And I know other readers who feel the same way. Don’t believe me? Do a Google search for blog posts discussing why telling isn’t so bad (there are more of them out there than you might think) and scan the comments. You’ll find all sorts of comments about how much of a slog it is to get through “too showy” books.

Showing, within reason, is good. Telling, in moderation, is good too. Too much showing makes you sound like a politician, always skirting around what you’re trying to say instead of just coming out and telling us what’s going on.

4. Deep POV. Some authors swear by it. And that’s fine—as long as they (and you) understand that deep POV is a personal preference and not a rule of writing. I’ve come across far too many blogs and books that suggest if you aren’t using deep POV, you’re doing it wrong. Perhaps that’s true in certain genres, (although I doubt it) but certainly not in sci-fi and fantasy, where deep POV is more the rarity. It’s hard enough to describe the fantasy world you’ve created without handicapping yourself with the use of deep POV. So if you don’t enjoy writing in deep POV, disregard anyone who attempts to convince you otherwise.

Edit:  After reading a nice post on deep POV, it occurred to me to be a bit more specific.  I'm all for getting rid of filter words like felt, thought, and heard; or limiting the instances in which the character thinks of himself by name, along with the other tricks that move the POV deeper inside a character's head.  But not all writers have the same definition of deep POV. Some writers would consider:  "The principal shook his hand." as an example of being too distant to be considered deep POV and would replace it with "  The principal's hand enveloped his." because that's how the character would supposedly experience it.  That's when I have a problem with deep POV.

Of course, these are all just my personal opinions, which means you’re free to pick and choose what you agree with.

And that’s the whole point of this post.

What aspects of writing do you find to have the most conflicting advice?  I'd been interested to know.



BTW, if you know anyone else who feels as confused as I do about all the conflicting information we writers receive, feel free to pass this post on to them.

How I Impressed My Wife With Story Structure

Think story structure is just for writers? Guess again.

Recently, my daughter was assigned to watch a movie for her 7th grade theater class. The movie was “Newsies,” a musical based on the New York City newsboy strike of 1899. So my wife picked up a copy of the DVD at the local library and brought it home for the family to watch. We popped some popcorn, snuggled into our sofa, turned out the lights, and started the movie. Although I had some reservations about watching a musical, it turned out to be pretty good, although I could have done without the singing. But that’s just me.

Anyway, we were somewhere past the halfway point of the movie when my wife turned to me and asked when I thought the movie would end. Turned out she had to leave for an appointment in thirty five minutes, and if she was going to have to leave just before before the movie ended, she would rather stop the movie right then and have us finish it later.

According to the DVD jacket, the movie was 121 minutes long, but as we hadn’t noticed when we’d started, that wasn't much of a help. It’s possible, maybe even likely, there was some way of having the DVD player tell us how much time had elapsed, but none of us knew how to do that, so my wife was ready to press the stop button, much to the dismay of our daughter.

Then I suddenly realized the movie was in the middle of the “All is Lost Moment.” For those of you unfamiliar with story structure, the AILM is that point in a movie or book where it appears the hero is about to lose. In this case, the MC had been arrested, the evil newspapermen had threatened the father of the MC’s best friend, and the strike was falling apart. Classic AILM.

The AILM comes at the end of the second act, just before the second plot point, and according to story structure, should occur at the three quarter mark of a book or movie. And according to Larry Brooks (Story Engineering) and Blake Snyder (Save The Cat), Hollywood takes the timing of these milestones very seriously. For a 121 minute movie, therefore, there should have been only thirty minutes left before the end. So I told my wife the movie would end at 8:17. She was skeptical, but agreed to let the movie continue.

The movie ended at 8:19. Booyah!
The wife was much impressed.

I may struggle with putting my thoughts into words on paper. I may have trouble with showing versus telling. But dammit, I understand story structure.

Thanks guys.

Links worth checking out.

Story Engineering

Save The Cat

Plot and Structure

Are You a Plotter, Pantser, Or Something Else?

We’re half way through NaNo and, as expected, I’m behind on my word count. No surprise there – I’m a slow writer – but changing the plot five days into NaNo didn’t help either.

What’s more important is that I’ve learned something about my writing process. In my first book (which is still a work in progress, BTW), the plot, subplots, and characters changed over and over again during the first couple of years. I figured this was probably just a natural consequence of having never written a story before, along with the fact that I hadn’t bothered to plot anything out beforehand.

One thing I did learn during those two years of revisions was that I was a plotter at heart. Story structure makes so much sense to me these days, I can’t write without it. So for my NaNo story, I outlined the whole thing ahead of time. Plot points, the midpoint reversal, the “all is lost” moment – yep, it was all right there. None of this “I’ll worry about that stuff later” attitude. So when November 1st rolled around, I was sure the writing process would go more smoothly this time.

Yeah, right.

After five days of writing I was ready to change the plot…
and some of the characters…
and most of the scenes.

Just like my first book. Arrrg!

So what have I learned in the last two weeks? That no matter how carefully I outline a story beforehand, the real story ideas don’t occur to me until I’m actually putting words down on paper. I may begin a project as a plotter, but I have to switch to pantser mode when I’m write. Then, after all these new ideas come pouring in, I have to switch back to plotter mode in order to fit them into the story. And then I switch back to pantser mode again and continue to write. Back and forth. Over and over again.

I feel like Jekyll and Hyde. I’m not a plotter or a pantser. I’m a plotser.

So which one are you?

I Know What My Scene Is About -- Do You?

First off, let me apologize for not posting Fridays Links last week. I was sick (along with my daughter) and didn’t feel like it. Sorry. Now on to the post.

Yesterday I came across a post entitled “What is the scene ABOUT?” over at Edittorrent, (a site I heartily recommend, BTW) and was reminded of the dramatic change I made in the way I approached my story.  A change that helped tighten up my chapters.

When I first started writing my story about further events at Hogwarts, I had little concept of how chapters or scenes should be constructed. My strategy was to just let things happen in chronological order until a natural break occurred and then start a new chapter. After doing it this way for a while, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea for organizing the book. Since lots of wild and crazy things happen at the school throughout the course of the story (most of them only tangentially related to the plot), I decided that each of these events would become the basis for a chapter. Then I would shoehorn the necessary plot points or dialogue (or whatever) into whichever chapter seemed most appropriate.

Surprisingly enough, this actually worked a few times (mostly by accident), but most of the time it failed miserably. The plot moved in fits and starts. And the book lacked cohesiveness. After an embarrassingly long period of time, I realized a book should be organized around the plot and so I rearranged everything appropriately. The book improved significantly, but many of the chapters still seemed bloated, with no sense of focus. It took me another year and a half, but I finally figured out what I was doing wrong. I had no clue what the scene (or chapter) was about. I was packing so many different events and unrelated plotlines into my chapters they were falling apart under their own weight.

So, similar to Theresa’s post above, I went through my manuscript and determined what the purpose of every scene and chapter should be. I would write a one sentence description for each scene and perhaps two or three sentences for each chapter. For example, “The MC learns about a clue and proceeds to investigate.” And then I ruthlessly went through each scene and tossed out everything that didn’t further that goal. I’ll admit it was a painful exercise. I have no assurance that the many paragraphs I removed will ever find a home somewhere else in the story, and I will shed a tear for them if they don’t, but the chapters are much tighter now. And that has made all the difference.

Do any of you have trouble keeping your chapters focused?

Should Scenes Always End in Disasters?

Some time back, I ran across a blog post describing the author's routine for developing scenes. She would work out the scene goal, the conflict, the setting, the character’s motivation, the dialogue beats she would use to set the tone, and the end of scene disaster. And it’s that last item I want to discuss.

One of the unwritten rules I've found for writing fiction is that every scene has to end on a disaster. The MC goes into a scene with a goal and the scene ends when the MC fails to meet that goal. Alternatively, the MC might attain the goal, but then discovers the resulting consequences have pushed their ultimate story ending goal even farther away. In other words, the MC has taken a step back.

I don’t always agree with this rule.

Now I'm not saying you shouldn't have end of scene disasters. They're a useful technique for keeping the tension and stakes high enough to make the reader turn pages. My beef is with the idea that “every” scene has to end in a disaster. In my opinion, unless you’re writing some sort of non-stop action thriller, you'll wear out your reader if you do this every time. Occasional successes by the MC, without the subsequent “oops, I guess this wasn't the best thing after all” moment, in my opinion, are good for the reader. It allows them to catch their breath.

Consider the first Harry Potter book, “The Sorceror's Stone.” In chapter eleven, we find Harry approaching his first Quidditch match, and his goal is to not embarrass himself or cause his team to lose. His team wins the match, of course, due to Harry's successful snagging of the Snitch, and the chapter ends with no ill effects. In fact, on the very last page, Hagrid accidentally reveals a clue that’s been eluding Harry for the last several chapters. A win-win all around, with no hint of a disaster. (Although Hagrid might have disagreed.)

The scene works because it ends on a promise. A promise that the stalled investigation is about to make some headway. And that's the most important thing when ending a scene. Leaving a new question in the reader's mind. What’s going to happen next? It doesn’t have to be a disaster to keep the reader interested.

To be honest, many authors get around this problem by defining “disaster” rather loosely -- considering anything that adds tension at the end of a scene to be a disaster, even if it’s good for the MC. Fine. I can live with that.  My problem is with those authors who insist that the MC should always be worse off when the scene ends.

What's your opinion on end of scene disasters?

The Insecure Writer - Part II

Today is my December's contribution to Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Support Group.






What makes me an insecure writer this month?

Reading.

Yes. Reading.

We’re all told that to be good writers, we need to be good readers. Read as many books as you can, they say. It’s good for you. See how published writers write. It will make you a better writer.

Perhaps. But it also makes me a depressed writer.

I read books on story structure and discover how poorly my story is structured.

I read books on the do’s and don’ts of fiction writing and find my story is chock full of don’ts.

I read fiction and discover how much more fluid everyone else’s writing is compared to mine.

The first two problems I can handle. It may take lots of practice, and oodles of time revising, but for the most part, everything I’ve read on how fiction works makes sense to me. I believe I can put together an interesting plot. I believe I can arrange my story so that I hit all the proper beats at the appropriate times. I’m confident I have an active enough imagination so that I’ll never run out of ideas about which to write.

It’s the last problem that keeps me up at night. Almost every time I read fiction, I’m reminded of how much better everyone else is at wielding words. Even in books that I find flawed (poor structure, too many dialogue tags, large wads of backstory, etc.), the authors still have a way with words that makes me envious. And I have no reason to assume that I’ll ever be able to do anything about it – no matter how much I practice.

So please forgive me if I don’t read any other fiction this month. I'll be much happier for it in 2012.

P.S. But I'll still keeping reading the writing how-to books.

On Revising Too Early

Several weeks ago I mentioned how I had stopped working on the current chapter of my first draft to go back and revise some earlier chapters. I know you’re not supposed to do this, but after battling a chapter for a while and not seeing much progress, I find that going back to those earlier chapters (which are usually in much better shape) helps reenergize me again.

The question, of course, is what happens when you go back to an earlier chapter and discover that it’s just as wretched as the chapter you abandoned? So much for reenergizing.

And that’s what I’ve been struggling with the past two weeks. Chapters 10, 11, and 13 were fine. They still need a lot of work, but I could show them to someone and they’d be able to figure out what was going on. Chapters 12 and 14 were steaming piles of crap. It was quite the shock.

Why were these chapters so much worse than I remembered? Simple. Back when I wrote them, I hadn’t yet begun reading about scenes and structure. Now that I’ve read James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure, along with a good heaping of blog posts on the subject, I realize I have a lot of revising to do.

That’s the problem with learning while you write.

Question: What writing technique have you learned in the middle of a manuscript that made you want to go back and do it all over?

The Innocence of the Non-Writer

I’ve read several websites that suggest that one good method for learning about plot and structure is the technique of watching movies and tracking how and when various plot points happen. Kristen Lamb has used the movie “Finding Nemo” for just such a purpose on her website. Here is just one of many examples. Up until last night, I’ve never tried this technique – at least not consciously – but in the last week I’ve suddenly started figuring out plot twists on television because I recognized the writer’s attempts to divert my attention elsewhere.

Last night, my wife brought “The Lincoln Lawyer” home from the library. It’s a decent film, starring Matthew McConaughey, which tells the story of a lawyer who discovers his client is guilty of the crime of which he is accused, but is prohibited from doing anything about it. There’s more, but you’ll have to watch the movie to find out.

Suffice it to say, five minutes into the movie it occurred to me to watch for various plot points and record when they happened. Along the way, I felt it necessary to point some of these things out to my wife, including:

1. How the openings scenes were there to set up the “normal world,”
2. How the purpose of the first major scene was to show us the MC in action and help us relate to him before the “real” plot started,
3. Exactly when the inciting incident occurred,
4. Announcing that the first plot point (the point of no return, when the MC has to make a choice) would happen at the 40 minute mark(assuming the film followed standard structure.)

I’m sure this probably annoyed my wife to no end, but she let me talk anyway.

Turns out the first plot point was way off, not occurring until the midpoint of the film. Oh well. Maybe that’s why I’d never heard of the film?

Anyway, I bring this up because during one of the slower parts of the movie, it suddenly dawned on me that the first major scene, the one whose purpose was to introduce us to the MC, had gone on for too long and been more complicated than it had needed to be. And in that moment of realization, I knew that the secondary purpose of the scene was to introduce us to the biker gang that was going to show up later in the movie and solve some kind of problem. When they showed up at the end of the movie and… wait for it… solved a big problem, I leaped off the couch, shouted “I knew it!” and did a happy dance in the family room.

The wife only wept for a few minutes. She's getting better about this kind of thing.

So, now that I’m seeing movies in this new light, can books be far behind? And will my quest to learn about plot and structure eventually doom me to being unable to watch a movie without spotting clues or upcoming twists too easily?

This is all Kristen’s (among others) fault.

But would I give up writing fiction to regain the innocence of being a non-writer again?

Nah.