How-To – Page 3 – Blue Ink Alchemy

Tag: How-To (page 3 of 7)

A Biblical Post

Don’t run, don’t run! I’m not going to talk about religion! I’m going to talk about that whole planning thing I mentioned. Remember that list that I posted, of things to do in order to achieve that level of great success that others will note? Here’s how it looks now:

~~Get plot points vetted.~~
Generate dramatis personae document.
Work out rules of languages & magic.
Write the damn thing (target word count:125k)
Find a publisher.

After some tweaks here and there, all five people with whom I shared my plot points have said, “I’d read this” in one form or another. This means that the project (and that’s what I’m going to call it, at least for now – “The Project”) now has a definite course plotted, and I can set that bit of planning aside. This sort of thing happens when major endeavors are being planned in other forms of media, like television shows. Reference documents like that one are called ‘bibles’.

So my plot points shall hereafter be called the ‘story bible’.

Moving on, next we have the ‘character bible’. What’s in a character bible, you ask? I’m glad you did.

Origins

Everybody comes from somewhere. Parentage, homeland, education – all of these are contributing factors to who the character is when the audience is first introduced to them. Establishing origins before the story begins helps put everybody in a particular place along the plot’s path, like pieces on a chessboard. Though I doubt most characters will move in a completely straight line – that’d be kinda boring.

Personality

The aspects of a character’s personality encompass both good and bad things. A protagonist might be courageous or clever but will also have parts of themselves that they are unaware of, know they must overcome or might not even see as flaws – arrogant people don’t often admit to having failings, after all. Likewise, a villain who is nothing but malevolence and savagery is just boring. Unless his minions are all abysmally stupid or no more intelligent than a vicious dog, they’ll need to have some way of either concealing their villainy or downplaying it with charm or dispassion. This, like a character’s origin, should be established ahead of time.

Goals

We all want something. Some people want to rule the world (not everybody, Tears for Fears. Seriously.), some want to build a better mousetrap and some just want to get laid. If you clearly define a character’s goal before the story begins, it will be easier to keep them on track during the course of the plot. The better the definition of a character’s goals, the better your chances of having that character’s behavior remain consistent throughout, unless you plan to have them change goals. If that’s the case, make sure the change makes sense. Don’t just drop a hat and have it happen. Even if you are dealing with the fantasy genre, as I am, “A wizard did it” can really only get you so far.

Fears

If being around my wife while she plays the Sims has taught me anything, other than her delight at the various affairs of her simulated plaything, it’s that everybody is afraid of something. The fears that should get jotted down in the character bible should be large things, like losing one’s home, the death of a loved one or the ruining of a relationship or career, rather than flubbing a homework assignment or burning the roast. Sometimes these fears will be unrealized in the course of the story, and sometimes these will be major plot points. Which brings me to my final point…

Growth

In conjunction with the story bible, ask yourself how the character is going to change over the course of the story. What goals, if any, will they realize? What fears of theirs will come true? When change comes, will they have new goals, new fears? Will there be any change in their personality? Like the story itself, it may behoove you to plot the course of the character’s own journey.

Of course this is all just part of the procedure I’m attempting to make sure I remain motivated and get this right. Sometimes you might have no plan at all when you sit down to right, just letting the story grow organically out of the fertile grounds of your imagination. That’s okay, too. It just seems to me that the bigger the scope of your project, the more planning should be done before hand. Sort of a ‘measure twice, cut once’ thing. And this project that I’m brewing up? It’s going to be huge.

Seriously.

Huge.

PT: Get Organized

January 21, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 3 Comments

There’s been a lot of Star Trek in my apartment lately. I’ve been introducing my wife to Deep Space 9, playing the open beta of Star Trek Online and bringing up Day Job Orchestra on YouTube when my recent negative moods have needed a little buoying. One thing that’s said quite often in Star Trek is that the ship needs to plot a course somewhere. Coincidentally, so do I, and you might find you need to as well.

I mentioned Tuesday that I have a to-do list for my largest current writing project. In case you missed it, here it is again:

Get plot points vetted.
Generate dramatis personae document.
Work out rules of languages & magic.
Write the damn thing (target word count:125k)
Find ~~an agent~~ a publisher.

I was linked an article written by Stephen King which said that finding an agent for your first novel is often an exercise in futility. Agents work on commission, after all, and 10% of nothing is… well, nothing. That’s why the last point changed. But the fact I want to highlight here is that I have points. There’s a plan here.

The general premise of this story is something that’s been kicking around since I wrote it out as a short work some years ago. Some of the concepts are the same, but as I’ve changed as a writer, so has the story. If I’m going to go with it as my primary long-term project as described over at Terrible Minds, I want to make sure I have a plan for taking it from beginning to end. But at the same time, I know all the planning in the world won’t help me unless I know at what point to stop planning and start writing.

You will learn by the numbers! I will teach you!

So, by all means, plan your story. Lay out a course for the plot from the opening scene to the final line. Sketch out your characters and locations. Set the stakes for the characters and know when they’ll be raised. Figure out what your story’s going to be about…

…But at some point you have to stop.

It’s hard to say when the time will be right for you to shift from planning to writing. The more you plan, the more smooth the writing process should be. But plan too much, and you’ll get caught up in the planning, which presents obstacles to writing ranging from always feeling you have more to plan to finding snags or holes in the plot that may appear insurmountable that torpedo the work before you even really get started on it.

Don’t forget that the end goal, here, is to write something for other people to read. Nobody’s going to be interested in reams of notes for a story that never got off the ground, unless you’re J.R.R. Tolkein or Frank Herbert. When you plan to write, be sure to work writing into your plan.

But now we’re getting into planning your plan, and I’m going to quit before my brain starts to hurt.

About The Audience

January 7, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 1 Comment

“It’s a work of fiction. It’s a metaphor.”

This is, apparently, what George Lucas says to people who criticize his work. When they bring up Jar Jar Binks, nuking the fridge or the complete dehumanization of Star Wars, he tells them something along those lines. And somewhere between his lips and my ears, the words change to have the following meaning:

“I don’t care what you think. It’s my story and I can tell it any way I want, and people like you will pay for it, so you’re the dumbass here, not me.”

This seems to be almost common among storytellers & directors these days. Look no further than the likes of Michael Bay and Uwe Boll. There are people out there getting paid embarassing amounts of money to tell bad stories who don’t care about the people in those stories or their intended audience. This sort of ties back into my musings on what a story should be about, but it occured to me that a major problem with a lot of the productions out there is that the creators are concerned about their creation, and not the audience.

Chuck (not Magic Talking Beardman Chuck, but sfdebris Chuck) said once that “the worst feeling when doing comedy is when you tell a joke and nobody laughs.” Stand-up comedy can keep a performer honest because you get feedback, be it good or bad, right away. The same goes for music, especially when a band is first starting out. If you think you’re awesome and you get up to play only to find beer bottles getting thrown at your head, and it happens more than once, something is probably wrong on your side of the stage. This has been true for quite a long time, back when the folks in the cheap seats in a theater would toss raw or rotten veggies at somebody they didn’t like up on stage.

Stand-up comedians, musicians and stage actors are all entertainers. When you tell a story, be it in a verbal, written or audio/visual format, you are entertaining. And if that presentation is being put together to be seen by somebody other than yourself, you are intending to entertain an audience.

It makes sense, at least to me, that you should care about that audience.

It is illogical to assume that you are good at what you do if you get no feedback. In order to get that feedback, you need to show your work to others. The other people who witness you work are your audience. And you can’t just stop at family & close friends, either. That’s the problem with George Lucas from what I’ve seen, because during the production of the Star Wars prequels he was surrounded by people who are either his friends or were told by his friends not to challenge him.

People you haven’t met need to see your work, and tell you what they think. How else are you going to improve, and more to the point, know you’re improving? If you’re only going to show your product to someone who’s going to tell you it’s great no matter how much it might suck, you might as well show it to your dog. I’d say ‘show it to your cat,’ as I’m a cat owner at this point, but your cat will treat you with disdain despite the quality of your product and wonder when you’re going to feed them again.

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse, here, but I hope I’m being understood in how important I consider it for thought to go into your work, and to try and make it about something other that sex and violence. When you show it to others, and they don’t like it, don’t just dismiss them out of hand. Ask them why. Find the weaknesses in the work, and make them better. Not only will you be glad you did, your audience will too.

PT: The Fine Art of Subtlety

January 6, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 1 Comment

All right, nuggets, on your feet! We’re going to talk about something near and dear to my black little heart today, and I expect it’s a subject some of you have touched on before. I know I’ve been guilty of this, very recently in fact, so let me begin with an example.

In my current long-term writing project, there’s a reveal that happens at about the halfway mark. Our heroine’s been trotting along, doing her thing and generally being awesome, when she runs headlong into an adversarial brick wall and nearly gets herself killed. When she wakes up, she’s in an unfamiliar environment and made aware of some facts relevant to her situation that had previously been unknown to her. Once she gets over the shock, she’s pretty pissed about it.

When I originally envisioned the scene, it had about, oh, this much subtlety:

It’s an old familiar trap. I have a cool idea in my head, and I want to get it out in front of people as soon as possible to say “SEE, THIS IS COOL!” and have them all agree. But they might not, since their heads are throbbing from the abrupt noise and some of them are picking glass out of their faces. Apparently they ignored the notice about the people in the first couple rows possibly suffering grievous bodily harm.

Anyway, it should go without saying that you shouldn’t do this. How boring would it be if we knew right from the outset that the evil armor-wearing asthmatic overlord is really our hero’s father? Or that the quiet, patient and empathetic psychiatrist we’ve been following has been dead all along? Or the planet on which the hero’s crashed that’s populated by damn dirty apes isn’t an alien world, but our own Earth?

The aforementioned stories (now RUINED FOREVER for some I’m sure, sorry about that) work because the big reveal comes not only at the right time during the story but also in the right way. The secrets and cool moments of a story should, like the action and growth of characters, grow organically from the story’s plot and theme. As our characters grow and change, an earth-shaking revelation should be hard-hitting, but not blatant. It’s a balancing act, and will only come with practice.

While we’re on the subject of character growth, I’d like to touch on something while we’re discussing subtlety. Truly effective and lasting characters are ones that grow and change over time, rather than springing fully-formed of awesomeness from the head of the creator. I mean, sure, it’s cool to imagine yourself as the new kid on the block with killer guns akimbo skills and the sort of smile that’d make the opposite sex fall over themselves to get at you (or members of the same sex, or both) but how is that interesting for other people?

It’s something I’ve mentioned in the course of preparing myself for Star Trek Online, and Classholes Anonymous covered the subject better than I could. The only thing I have to add is this: Not only does a half-Vulcan, half-Romulan, half-Klingon, half-Caitian former Borg drone with powers of the Q who’s also Kirk’s half-grandchild piss people off, it’s thoroughly uninteresting. Not to mention there’s a failure at math somewhere in there.

Be subtle, nuggets. Maintain the mystery. The less you give away, the more people will want to get from you. And, ideally, they’ll be willing to pay for it.

What’s It All About, Then?

January 5, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 6 Comments

This might be my inexperience with Hollywood talking, but I think a lot of pitches to studio execs or producers go in this direction:

“So check out my new script, for the next Adventures of Captain Spanky! Captain Spanky flies out to meet the Naughticans, a race of hot alien babes bent on subjugating the galaxy! It’s full of space battles, intergalactic sex and plenty of jokes to keep people laughing!”

“Awesome! Here’s $100 million for your movie! Don’t spend it all in one place, now! Just let me know when it’s done, I’ll be sitting here chomping on my cigar.”

I’d like to think that, on occasion, it goes more like this:

“Sounds fun. What’s it about?”

“Um… it’s about the hero blowing things up and having sex with space babes?”

“That’s the plot, but what is the story about?“

At this point the ‘screenwriter’ tries to figure out what the script is actually about and ends up going home to nurse a bottle of cheap vodka or takes his script to the first producer I mentioned. Then again, maybe that’s just my imagination running away with me. In any event, making sure something you write is actually about something tends to make it more powerful, better realized and, in the end, successful.

Themes

Moby-Dick is, on it’s surface, about a whaling ship. But Melville wasn’t just writing about a bunch of guys trapped on a boat at sea dealing with a giant white sperm whale. He writes about obsession, religion, racism, sanity and politics, just to name a few. There’s a reason a long work about whales is considered a classic – there’s more to it than whales and harpoons. Obviously, not every story is going to be Moby-Dick. And some stories might be a little heavy-handed in how they convey their theme or message. District 9 was pretty blatant in its treatment of South Africa’s apartheid, but showed us that humans are still as xenophobic as ever. I haven’t seen Avatar but I hear it couldn’t be a more obvious pastiche of previously tread ground if it were fully animated and called Pocahontas. OH WAIT.

Anyway, what I’m driving at here is that under the dialog and action in stories like these are themes that work as both foundation and soil for the story. The theme shores up the other elements of the story by ensuring they’re connected, and it also allows the characters, action and drama to grow organically from it, rather than appearing out of nowhere.

Characters

Sometimes a story can get away without having a major overarching or underlying theme. Sometimes, instead of the characters growing from the theme, the theme grows from the characters. If they are interesting, smart or funny enough, ideally a combination of all three, the themes manifest themselves as the characters develop.

The legend of Faust tells the tale of a man who makes a deal with the devil to gain knowledge. This story can go any number of ways based on which direction you want to take the character. The theme or themes, be they damnation or redemption or victory over a conniving supernatural force, come out of the character’s growth rather than existing from the beginning. Iron Man, as a more modern example, doesn’t start out with a major theme, but rather with a character: Tony Stark. Eventually we see the themes of responsibility, redemption and innovation come into play over the course of the story, but it begins with Tony sitting in the back of a Hummer, listening to AC/DC and nursing his scotch. You won’t always come up with a strong central theme in this manner. 2009’s Star Trek does deal on some levels with young men overcoming the adversity of their pasts, but for the most part is a study of established characters in an altered situation. As these characters are rich and nuanced in and of themselves, their presence and interplay can drive a story without needing to focus on a central theme. However, a theme does add strength to a character driven story. I can’t think of a better example in Star Trek than Wrath of Khan, which ties back into my Moby-Dick reference.

See what I did there? Underlying theme.

Spectacle

Unfortunately, not every writer is looking for either a strong theme or interesting characters. Sometimes you just want a vehicle to follow a trend or attract an audience with shiny things. I tend to rag on Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer a great deal. Sure, Dan Brown’s books can be entertaining and Ms. Meyer’s popularity rivals that of J.K. Rowling a few years ago. But monster truck rallies are entertaining too, and they’re not ‘about’ anything other than big vehicles smashing little ones. Dan Brown’s work is a lot like an intellectual monster truck rally, in point of fact: take Fibonacci, cryptography, speculative historical tales and pseudo-scientific terms, paint them on the sides of wrecked cars, then drive over the cars with a truck bearing huge wheels and a big banner on either side saying THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS EVIL. Ms. Meyer’s is more like a normal track race, in that the pretty Bella Swan car is getting chased round and round by the sparkle-ridden Edward car and the fur-covered Jacob car for lap after lap until one of them spins out of control and the whole thing collapses into a twisted wreck.

Sure, it’s fun to watch. But what is it about?

Tag: How-To (page 3 of 7)

A Biblical Post

Origins

Personality

Goals

Fears

Growth

PT: Get Organized

About The Audience

PT: The Fine Art of Subtlety

What’s It All About, Then?

Themes

Characters

Spectacle

Buy This Book!

Search the Blog

Recent Posts

Getcher Updates!

Works

Legal Stuff

Categories

Archives