Time to Write

How the movie Spotlight covered up its missing plot element

I finally caught up with the film, Spotlight, on a plane trip from Los Angeles to London. It won the 'best picture' Academy Award this year. Sure, the acting was good, the story was important, and it was well directed, but what really impressed me was the way it used sleight of hand.

As you may know, it was about a small group of journalists in Boston who set out to expose the way the Catholic Church protected pedophiles. They start with what seems like an isolated case and gradually discover that the cover-up was worldwide and involved at least 90 priests in the Boston area alone.

NOTHING UP THEIR SLEEVES...

So where does slight of hand come in?

Well, usually in a film the structure follows escalating conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. The problem for this story is that although the church tried to stonewall, to prevent the release of documents, and to exert some social pressure on the journalists, the conflict never really broke out into the open. The level of conflict actually remained pretty static.

Nobody fire-bombed the newspaper's offices, nobody threatened the lives of the journalists, nobody followed through on an implied threat to expose any dirty laundry in the histories of the reporters.

Because this was closely based on a true story, the usual dramatic devices were off limits. 

MISDIRECTION

To replace the expected escalation, the script did a good job of keeping things moving and reminding us of the consequences if the campaign to expose the cover-up failed. For every roadblock the reporters encountered and overcame (sometimes with relatively little trouble), the script quickly produced a new obstacle.

Many of these were rather boring in and of themselves--needing to get a certain document, for instance, but the urgency with which they were all portrayed kept us watching.

THE VANISHING CHARACTER ARC

There's also no character arc to speak of--the Michael Keaton character comes to realize he was no different from the other journalists in the past who failed to pay attention to accusations against a priest, but it's not a big change. But again the script made the most of a rather thin bit of raw material. 

A MODEL PERFORMANCE

If the aftermath of the investigation hadn't been so monumental, the script (by Josh Singer and director Tom McCarthy) would have lacked the weight required and its smoke and mirrors would have been discovered.

As it was, the film wasn't a big success financially, although the gross of $88 million is more than respectable considering the film's budget was only $20 million.

But for any screenwriter stymied by needing to create the illusion of escalating conflict when there's actually very little, it's a great model.

 

Why you should make your characters lose control

A feeling of having no control over a situation has been identified as one of the main sources of stress...which is a good reason to find ways to put your character into situations in which he or she has no control 

As unpleasant as it is in real life (it's also been identified as a trigger for depression), it's an excellent way to increase the stakes for your protagonist. Of course, in real life sometimes people just curl up into a ball when under extreme stress, but that wouldn't make for a very exciting screenplay or novel.

Your protagonists will have to fight to regain control, and the less control they have the harder they will have to fight. The middle part of most novels and screenplays is a back-and-forth battle, with alternating gains and losses. 

I've posted before about a useful structure for this--Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which often is represented by a pyramid with the base being the most basic needs (food, clothing, shelter) and the top being the most abstract and elusive need (self-realization). You can take your poor protagonists down the levels until they're fighting for their very survival. 

I found this useful recently when trying to figure out how to add pressure on my protagonist in the middle of the story, so give it a try if you find the middle of your story sagging, too.

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A thought about ideas (and bad first drafts)

“All good ideas start out as bad ideas, that’s why it takes so long.”

• Stephen Spielberg

To which I would add: if you think your first draft is really, really, really good...oh oh.

When a scene in your novel or screenplay isn't working, try this

Sometimes a scene in a screenplay or novel just sits there, not doing what it's supposed to. It's an experience I've had more than once, and here are three things that I've found helpful.

iMAGINE CUTTING THE SCENE

If you cut this scene, would it affect the progression of the story? If not, it should go.

If you cut this scene, what essential elements would be missing?

Is there a different way to cover those essential elements? One option might be to incorporate them into different scenes.

CHANGE YOUR POV

Usually you're writing the scene implicitly or explicitly from the point of view of one of the characters. Take a few minutes to step into the shoes of each of the other characters in the scene. For each one, ask yourself:

• what do they want in this scene?
  
  
• how does that relate to what they want in general in the story?
  
  
• is their behavior in this scene consistent with the above two?
  
  
• what else might they do in this scene to try to get what they want? How would that change the scene?

Often changing viewpoints gives you new ideas that bring the scene alive.

INTRODUCE AN ADDITIONAL ELEMENT

What would make this scene more dramatic? Brainstorm whether you could add:

• a new emotion (justified by something that happens in the scene, of course)
  
  
• a new action (again, justified)
  
  
• another character whose presence would cause some kind of tension or conflict (make sure they have their own reason to be in the scene)

Give one or more of these a try when you feel stuck, I hope you find them helpful.

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One good question to ask about your fictional characters (as well as yourself & others)

There are lots of things you can ask yourself when creating three-dimensional characters for your novel or screenplay, but one of the best was suggested in a New York Times essay on marriage:

We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well. In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on any early dinner date would be: “And how are you crazy?”

The article, titled, Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person, by Alain de Botton, is well worth a read, but I mention it here because "How is your character crazy?" is an excellent question that will help you create a character who comes alive on the page.

What kind of craziness? Botton gives these examples:

Perhaps we have a latent tendency to get furious when someone disagrees with us or can relax only when we are working; perhaps we’re tricky about intimacy after sex or clam up in response to humiliation. Nobody’s perfect.

The number of possible imperfections is almost infinite, as you may have noticed in observing your family and friends (certainly not yourself, of course).

You can warm up by thinking about how the people in your personal life are crazy--what imperfections set them apart? And how are those imperfections occasionally beneficial rather than harmful? 

If you like living dangerously, ask a couple of people to whom you are close how YOU are crazy...but only if you're sure the relationship will survive their obviously mistaken impressions of you.

 

The unsexy part of creativity

What's sexy is new ideas, breakthroughs, innovation. This paragraph from Farnam Street Brain Food newsletter reminded me that maintenance matters, too:

Capitalism excels at innovation but is failing at maintenance, and for most lives it is maintenance that matters more — "We overvalue innovation; we undervalue the routine work that keeps the built world going. Innovation is “only a small piece of what happens with technology”. Most of what happens is repair and maintenance when innovation becomes infrastructure. Just as we celebrate innovators, so we should celebrate maintainers, “those individuals whose work keeps ordinary existence going rather than introducing novel things.”"

I think this applies to individuals as well as to society as a whole. For instance, there are lots of little things you need to do in order to maintain a writing practice, and they're not sexy or new. They include keeping good records, keeping up with what's happening in the field, getting enough sleep, exercising, and remembering to stand up and move every hour or so.

It also applies to continuing to write when you get to the hard parts, avoiding letting your inner critic stop you, and finishing and rewriting what you already have instead of moving on the more appealing choice of starting something new.

We'll never win a prize for doing any of those, but they help pave the way for the possibility that we will create something good.

How to write descriptively

How do you make your writing come alive in the minds of your readers? Here, in a four-minute TED-Ed talk, Nalo Hopkinson shares her thoughts:

 

You look, but do you see?

One of my challenges in writing prose is coming up with good descriptions, because in screenwriting (which has been the bulk of my work) you tend to keep descriptions extremely short and don't get much into how things feel or smell. Before we can describe, we have to see (and smell, and hear, and feel). Visual perception is the topic of this five-minute illustrated TED-Ed talk. 

The speaker is Amy Herman, who teaches, police officers, FBI agents, nurses, medical students and others how to develop their observational skills. Her main tool is art from all over the world.

(The "full" version of this lesson on the TED-Ed site is exactly the same) 

Amy Herman has written a book called Visual Intelligence. The subtitle is "Sharpen your perception, change your life." Well, I guess getting really good at describing characters and settings could change a writer's life. I haven't read the book yet, but I'll return with a review when I have.

Next Post: How to write descriptively - Nalo Hopkinson

 

No matter how small the step, get started writing your book

Advice on how to write a novel, from best-selling author Lisa Jewell

What should you write about in your novel?

In a Daily Mail article about a new contest for first-time writers, best-selling author Lisa Jewell shared this advice:

"Don’t write for the publishers and don’t try to second guess the market; it’s elusive and impossible to pin down.

Just write what’s in your head and what’s in your heart and give the reader a reason to keep turning the pages, whether it’s love for your characters or a need to find out what happened ten years ago or what happens next."

The importance of support when you write

Jewell doesn't mention support explicitly but it's obvious from her account of her own writing history that it played an important role. When she sent out the first chapters of her book, she had nine rejections but the tenth agent wanted to read the whole book. That motivated her to finish it, although it took another year.

She says, "A friend in Australia read my daily output and cheered me on."

That book was Ralph's Party, which got her a six-figure advance for two novels and eventually sold more than 250,000 copies the first year it was out. Her newest novel is The Girls. It will be available from May 6, 2016. 

What if it feels impossible?

Jewell says, "Don't worry if it feels impossible. It's supposed to feel that way." 

The contest for first-time novelists

The contest has a first prize of £20,000 and guaranteed publication, and is free to enter. Details are here. Entries must be received by April 16, 2016, and if your novel isn't finished you must be able to complete it by October 30, 2016. 

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James Patterson's advice on how to succeed as a novelist

The key to success as a novelist

In a Daily Mail article about a new contest for first-time novelists, best-selling author James Patterson shared this advice:

"Obviously, and I know this from experience, perseverance is the key to making it as a writer. You have to be able to accept rejection and keep doing. If you know it's what you want to do, then you need to make it happen. No one else will make it happen for you."

It's all about the story--and the surprises

Patterson writes, "In my novels it’s all about the story. I don’t try to be a great prose stylist; I try to be a great storyteller. I like to imagine the reader is sitting opposite me and I’m telling the story directly to them.

I don’t want that person to get up until I’m finished. I want to keep their attention with continual surprises and twists so they’re not bored for a single moment."

The hardest part of writing a novel

I think most writers would say it's the middle of the story that's the toughest, but Patterson says for him it's the ending. He says, "Expectation has been built up through the course of the novel and you need to deliver a conclusion that fulfils it. If you can do that, you’ll have a satisfied reader."

If you want to check out how he does it, Patterson's latest novel is Truth or Die, published in paperback by Arrow.

The contest for first-time novelists

The contest has a first prize of £20,000 and guaranteed publication, and is free to enter. Details are here. Entries must be received by April 16, 2016, and if your novel isn't finished you must be able to complete it by October 30, 2016. 

Publisher Selina Walker's advice for writing an outstanding novel

How to attract a publisher for your novel

In a Daily Mail article about a new contest for first-time novelists, Selina Walker, Publisher of Century and Arrow at Penguin Random House UK, shared this advice:

"It should be a story that asks questions of the reader; that takes us from our known world and plunges us into another; it should be filled with believable characters who we care about; and it should have a narrative with a beginning, middle and an end that draws all the different strands together in a satisfying way."

What's the dramatic question of your novel?

As an example of a gripping story she cites Harlan Coben's new novel, Fool Me Once. She says, "This is a thriller that quite early on asks a single dramatic question: if you think your husband is dead (and you were with him when he was murdered), why can you now see him on the nanny cam in your daughter’s bedroom? Impossible to put down, you just have to find out what happens next."

That's a good example of a high-concept story--I'm working on an online course in how to come up with high-concept ideas for films and the same methods work for high-concept novels. I'll let you know on this blog when that course is ready.

The contest for first-time novelists

The contest has a first prize of £20,000 and guaranteed publication, and is free to enter. Details are here. Entries must be received by April 16, 2016, and if your novel isn't finished you must be able to complete it by October 30, 2016. 

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Agent Luigi Bonomi's tips for writing a novel agents will love

How to attract a literary agent

In an article about a new contest for first-time novelists, agent Luigi Bonomi shared this advice:

BEGIN THE FIRST PAGE WITH A GREAT SENTENCE that pulls the reader in. Your first important reader is likely to be an agent (if you're looking for representation), and Bonomi says, "If the first page is well written, captivating, intriguing with the promise of a great plot to come, then the agent will continue reading. After just a few pages, they will get a sense of whether this is a story for them."

As an example, he cites the opening sentence of Coming Home, a psychological thriller by Annabel Kantaria: "I was making bechamel sauce for lasagna when I found out that my father had died."

His other tips for winning over an agent:

• Open mid-scene, so the reader is interested immediately in the story. You can go back later and fill in what happened before that scene, if necessary.
  
  
• Provide the agent with a 2-3 page synopsis of about 600 words that includes the ending.
  
  
• Double space your manuscript and proofread it carefully.

The contest for first-time novelists

The details of the contest, which has a £20,000 first prize and is free to enter, are here. Entries must be received by April 16, 2016, and if your novel isn't finished you must be able to complete it by October 30, 2016. 

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Why I want more rejections of my novel

I admit it. My YA novel, Reptile Nation, has been rejected a mere 14 times so far, but I'm hoping for more.

There are only two good stories about rejections:

"My novel was accepted by the first agent or publisher I sent it to."

or

"My novel had 99 rejections before it was accepted by an agent or publisher." (Admittedly, this one is good only if the book then turns out to be a success, but let's be optimistic.)

Since I missed the first one, I'm going for the second. 

Could writing more slowly increase the quality of what you write?

A study suggests that typing more slowly increases the quality of your writing. Study participants who typed with only one hand produced essays of a higher quality than when they used both hands.

The study is published in the British Journal of Psychology under the sexy title, "Effects of Disfluency in Writing."

The study's authors suggest that slowing done your writing makes it less likely that you'll go with the first word that occurs to you. Instead, you have time to consider alternatives and use the best one.

Some writers have found the same effect when they do their first draft in handwriting. I've found it to be true when I've used long airplane trips for writing something by hand.

Especially if you find it difficult to reconsider your word choice when doing a second draft, slowing down when you write the first one could be useful.

In any event, it's a useful reminder that faster is not always better.