Alexandra Sokoloff

Love Story Elements

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:54:00 +0000

Two weeks to V Day! So let's get in the spirit of things and talk about Love Story Elements.

The whole basis of what I teach in my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors books and workshops is that we learn the most when we look at the stories that have had the greatest impact on us, personally — look at them in-depth to really figure out what those storytellers are doing to create that impact. And I teach writing through looking at movies because movies are such a stripped-down form of storytelling that it’s often easier to see structure patterns by analyzing movies than it is to analyze books. Plus, since we’ve seen so many of the same movies, it’s just an easier focus for discussion.

What I am always pushing to my classes and readers is the idea making a list of ten movies and books (at least five movies) that are structurally similar to the book (or script) that you’re writing.

One of the most illuminating AND most fun discoveries you make when you do this list is that you immediately see patterns and key elements of stories in your genre (or cross-genres). And this is invaluable when you’re writing a book, even more when you’re editing a book, because these are the elements your readers unconsciously EXPECT to be in a story like yours; even elements they actually crave, and you can get all kinds of great ideas about what you might be missing in your story.

When I was writing the second book in my Screenwriting Tricks series, Writing Love, I quickly discovered these recurring scenes and setups that are very typical in romance and romantic comedy. The following are just a partial list. I’ve tried to focus mostly on plot points or premises instead of just gags or bits – that is, these are actual story elements that can help you build a story, if you use them wisely. And these elements will often overlap with the key story elements that I’m also always writing about:

Story Elements Checklist

Expanded Story Elements Checklist

that is, the CALL TO ADVENTURE in a love story might be a case of FATE INTERVENES; THE PLAN might be to PRETEND WE’RE MARRIED; THE HERO/INE’S GHOST might show up at the MIDPOINT and radically shift the dynamics of the story, and so on.

Now, any of these love story elements can be done badly and devolve into the worst kind of cliché. Part of the point of knowing the common elements is to be aware they’ve been done before and find your own unique ways of using them, if you’re going to use them.

I’m not going to waste time on the clichés for which there probably is no hope, ever, but just for example of those clunkers, here’s my own partial list, which I’m sure you can add to:

- The hardboiled career woman who needs thawing
- The heroine working as a book or magazine editor (Really? Another one?)
- The heroine loosening up in a drunk scene (and recently, promptly vomiting on the - hero’s shoes. I’m sorry, this is comedy?)
- The hero/ine meeting the love interest by spilling something on them (truly vomit-inducing, usually a pathetic version of Meet Cute)
- The African-American or gay best friend who has no other purpose in life but to support the hero/ine (and of course, show how wonderfully open-minded they are)
- The climactic race to the airport to stop the loved one from leaving

Okay, I’m already nauseous just making that much of a list, but you get the point. Let’s go on to some common elements that are much used, but still useful, used wisely.

MEET CUTE

Okay, I lied. There’s nothing useful about this one. Please, please don’t do it. Instead, why not try thinking about what it really is to meet the One – to see someone for the first time who might just change your entire destiny. Go into your own life, and the lives of everyone around you, and really ask yourself what that moment is. You can dress it up with comedy, that’s totally fine, but find something real and meaningful about it. Otherwise, why even bother?

THE INCITING INCIDENT/CALL TO ADVENTURE

In a love story, while the INCITING INCIDENT that starts off the story action may be a job offer, a wedding invitation, a misbooked hotel room, or any other inciting incident common to any genre, the actual CALL TO ADVENTURE in a love story is very, very often that first look at the beloved. This is why so often that first look seems on the surface to be HATE AT FIRST SIGHT – it’s a variation on the RELUCTANT HERO/INE (or REFUSAL OF THE CALL). When we meet that true love, there’s often as much or more fear and panic involved as joy and relief. Life is never going to be the same.

LOVE INTEREST INTRODUCED AS COMPLETE IDIOT

An example of MISAPPREHENSION, which is a form of MISTAKEN IDENTITY. Bridget Jones’ Diary, New In Town.

THE HERO/INE’S GHOST

In a love story, the Ghost or Wound is most often related to love and attachment, obviously: the heroine’s parents died when she was a child (The Proposal), the hero’s father has had a succession of failed marriages (Made Of Honor, You’ve Got Mail), the heroine’s father was always chasing rainbows, impoverishing the family (Leap Year).

The ghost often comes out deep into the story, in a confessional scene in which the hero/ine reveals to the love interest WHY I’M LIKE THIS (often at the MIDPOINT), but it’s generally better storytelling to dramatize it: In You’ve Got Mail, when Tom Hanks’ father leaves his much younger wife and moves in with Tom in his temporary crash pad (boat) Tom realizes he doesn’t want to be like his father and that he loves Meg (which in this story is THE ACT TWO CLIMAX/REVELATION into the FINAL BATTLE).

HANDCUFF THE COUPLE TOGETHER

In Romancing The Stone, Joan needs Jack to take her out of the jungle and back to Cartagena; Jack needs Joan’s money because he’s just lost all the rare birds he was smuggling. In The Proposal, Margaret needs Andrew to pretend he’s married to her so she won’t be deported and she threatens him with career annihilation if he refuses; Andrew agrees to do it if Margaret promotes him and publishes a book he loves. In Leap Year, Anna needs Declan to take her to Dublin, Declan needs Anna’s money to save his pub from foreclosure. In What Happens In Vegas, a judge orders Cameron Diaz and Aston Kutcher to remain married for six months if they want to split the three million dollar casino payoff they won together. (This story beat is also often an OFFER S/HE CAN’T REFUSE.)

A common variation on Handcuffing The Couple Together is:

FATE (OR THE WEATHER) INTERVENES

It’s amazing how often romantic comedy uses this device. Fate, very often in the form of the weather, prevents the heroine from leaving town (New In Town, Groundhog Day), or deposits them on the opposite side of the country from where they are supposed to be (Leap Year), so that the hero/ine can meet his or her true love.

This is especially well done in Groundhog Day.

THE OFFER S/HE CAN’T REFUSE

A plot point that usually comes early in the first act: the hero/ine is locked into a situation because their boss or family or a judge gives them an ultimatum – eg. in The Proposal, if Margaret does not fake a marriage with Andrew, she will be deported. See New In Town, Leap Year, What Happens In Vegas.

MISTAKEN IDENTITY OR FALSE IDENTITY

False identity was a staple for Shakespeare’s comedies, and is still widely used in romantic comedy, sometimes as a scene or sequence (pretending to be a sister or a fiancée), sometimes as the whole premise of the story: While You Were Sleeping, Tootsie, Mulan).

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

I don’t have to explain this one, do I? It’s the first time the hero and heroine let down their respective guards and start to spill personal information. It’s very often done very badly, as an information dump.

COUPLE FORCED TO PRETEND THEY’RE MARRIED

A staple of romantic comedy; it can be a scene, as in Leap Year where Anna and Declan must pretend to be married in order to get a room for the night at a B & B owned by religiously conservative proprietors, or it can be the whole premise of the story: whether it’s to get an inheritance or some other large chunk of money (What Happens in Vegas) or get a green card (The Proposal, Green Card).

LET’S PRETEND WE’RE MARRIED

A different kind of scene, more spontaneous – in which the couple find themselves digging in a garden or working well together in a kitchen (Leap Year) or one of them talks the other off an emotional ledge (Sally gently calming Harry down after he explodes in front of their best friends in When Harry Met Sally), and we get a glimpse of the well-matched couple they would be.

TICKING CLOCK

A staple of all genres, often used very unconvincingly, so be careful. Some good examples: In Leap Year, Anna needs to get to Dublin by Leap Day to propose to her reluctant boyfriend. In The Proposal, Margaret and Andrew have four days to get to know each other well enough to convincingly pass themselves off as married to a suspicious INS agent. At the climax of When Harry Met Sally, Harry is desperate to get to a New Year’s Eve party in time to kiss Sally at the stroke of midnight, something he utterly failed to do the year before.

THE BET

Can be a scene, or a whole premise, in which the hero/ine bets friends that s/he – usually he – can bed or dump a lover in a certain timeframe. Or some other bet that leads to a romantic entanglement. (My Fair Lady)

EX-SEX

Sometimes the second time is the charm. Or not. Sweet Home Alabama, It’s Complicated.

THE MAGICAL DAY (YEAR, PLACE, HOUR)

The idea that there is a magical day, or hour, or place, that will lead magically to true love and/or marriage. Leap Year has a heroine racing across Ireland in order to propose to her reluctant boyfriend on Leap Day, when traditionally men are obliged to accept any proposal they receive. Four Weddings and A Funeral plays with the idea that a wedding is a magical moment in time in which not only the bridal couple but anyone in attendance can find true love. Groundhog Day – well, it isn’t pretty, but it’s that day, repeated over and over, that changes surly Phil Connor’s life.

WHY THEM?

This is appallingly lacking in most love stories: some indicator of why we’re supposed to want this couple to get together to begin with. I know, love is a hard thing to define, but please, give us something! Some common explanations here:

- Opposites attract (Leap Year, Groundhog Day)
- A shared passion (New In Town)
- In a class by themselves (Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Philadelphia Story)
- They bring out each other’s best selves (Sense And Sensibility)
- They make each other laugh
- They understand and support each other’s most cherished dreams (While You Were Sleeping, Sense And Sensibility)

I’m sure you can think of lots of others – I’d love to hear them!

THE DANCE

One of the most crucial scenes in any romance or romantic subplot, and one that goes a long way toward explaining WHY THEM? The Dance is a scene in which we see that two people are perfect for each other: they have the same rhythm, they work around each other’s flaws, they have the same passion, they complete each other. One of my favorites is the beautiful scene in Sense And Sensibility in which Edward and Elinor coax Elinor’s younger sister Margaret out from where she has been hiding under the library table by pretending ignorance of the source of the Nile. We see that Edward and Elinor are perfectly matched: both intelligent, witty, sensitive, kind, and off-the-wall. They are at their most charming when they’re together, and we are totally committed to the relationship by the end of the short scene. So much more meaningful than “Meet Cute”!

FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE FAMILY

It’s very common to have a scene or sequence where we see the hero/ine falling in love with the loved one’s entire family (While You Were Sleeping, The Proposal). A variation of this is FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE HERO/INE’S FRIENDS (Notting Hill).

OOPS, WRONG BROTHER! (or WRONG SISTER!)

You know this one: the hero/ine thinks s/he’s happily engaged until – uh oh – s/he meets the loved one’s brother or sister (While You Were Sleeping, Holiday).

WRONG MAN/WRONG WOMAN

Not to be confused with Hitchcock’s “Wrong Man” story, about an innocent falsely accused (or set up). What I mean here is, in a story where the hero/ine is dating or engaged to the wrong person, there are going to be scenes that demonstrate clearly that this is the WRONG MAN, or WRONG WOMAN. I would venture to say these scenes are going to happen in virtually every love story in which there is a rival for the hero/ine’s love interest’s love.

GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS/BOYFRIENDS PAST

Obviously, having an old flame around makes for conflict and sometimes dramatic suspense in a love story, but it also often makes for good comedy. Four Weddings And A Funeral has not just one, but two great examples of this scene: at one wedding dinner Hugh Grant is seated at a table with four of his exes, comically dramatizing his problem of chronic serial monogamy. Then later his love interest Andie McDowell has a great monologue about her exes, all 33 of them.

THE AWFUL TRUTH

The hero or love interest scathes the heroine, or vice-versa, and knowingly or unknowingly hits the nail squarely on the head about what the hero/ine’s problem is. (While You Were Sleeping, and there are several good zingers in Leap Year.)

PRATFALLS

This is of course a visual, but I’m including it for the screenwriters (and some authors do it wonderfully on the page – Helen Fielding being a good example). Since the early screwball comedies, romantic comedy heroines have been falling over. This can be tiresome, but good physical comedians/comediennes can make it sublime – Lucille Ball, Katharine Hepburn, and Meg Ryan perfected the art.

THE REVOLVING DOOR

Another staple of physical comedy, but it’s one you can use on the page. The wrong person shows up at the wrong time and the hero/ine is forced to hide someone in the closet, under the bed, on the windowsill, etc. Another component of this is more people keep showing up to complicate the deception. This is a variation on:

WRONG PLACE, WRONG TIME

Another staple of comedy. In Four Weddings And A Funeral: Charlie gets caught in the bridal suite just as the bridal couple decide to consummate their new marriage.

THE CATCHPHRASE or TAGLINE

While real-life lovers often play word games, the catchphrase is a dangerous thing, not often pulled off. “You had me at hello” from Jerry Maguire is one of the best. The Proposal doesn’t do too badly with “We’re just two people who weren’t supposed to fall in love, but did.” Try a making a Top Ten list for inspiration!

THE RIDDLE

Sometimes the love interest asks a thematic question that the hero/ine finally comes to understand, usually at the climax of the story – an interesting fairy tale touch (Leap Year).

GOSH, S/HE’D MAKE A GREAT PARENT! (or THE YEARNING FOR A FAMILY)

It’s very typical to show the hero/ine looking longingly after children or show the hero/ine noticing how good the hero/ine is with kids: Aston Kutcher coaching Little League in What Happens In Vegas, Meg Ryan reading aloud to preschoolers in You’ve Got Mail. A much funnier scene – Dustin Hoffman as Dorothy being run ragged by Jessica Lange’s baby daughter in Tootsie.

THE MAKEOVER

This can be a terrible cliché, so be careful. For an example of how to do this right, look at Romancing The Stone, which has wonderful fun taking Joan Wilder’s expensive but mousy wardrobe and shredding it until she’s dressed in a good approximation of her romantic alter-ego Angelina’s buckskins and bodices. New in Town and The Proposal realistically depict their heroines’ wardrobes changing from executive stiffness to a more practical and appealing softness.

COUPLE FORCED TO KISS

It’s kind of amazing to me how often a romantic comedy will have a scene like this. Forced to kiss? How do writers come up with these things?

COUPLE FORCED TO SHARE A BED

Look at that! This hotel room has only one bed!

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

The couple is forced to stay overnight in an isolated place. There a nice variation on this one in Romancing The Stone, where the “cabin” is the wreck of an airplane that crashed in the jungle – carrying a cargo of marijuana. Which Jack promptly uses to build a fire…

SEX AT SIXTY

All of the above often leads to this – that’s sex at 60 minutes in a movie, or the Midpoint, meaning it’s around page 200 in a 400-page book. This is common to find in all genres, even more common in romantic comedy. Yes, it can be almost sex at sixty. If there is actual sex at sixty, it usually crashes the relationship immediately.

THE CONFESSION SCENE

This is different from the DECLARATION below. The confession is where the hero or heroine or both open up about their childhood, ghosts, fears, hopes – their INNER DESIRES opposed to their OUTER DESIRES. It often occurs at the MIDPOINT.

YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE WHO UNDERSTANDS

Often during the confession scene, the hero and heroine will express a long-held, secret dream (Jack’s is to own a boat in Romancing The Stone. In While You Were Sleeping another Jack’s is to start his own business. In Sense And Sensibility Edward’s is to be the vicar of a small parsonage) and the loved one totally gets it and supports it, when no one else (usually the hero’s family) ever has. I don’t think it’s accidental that I’ve listed a bunch of male secret dreams that the heroines support; women have a long history of being better supporters that way.

This beat is separate from:

ONLY YOU

The scene where the hero and heroine bond over some song or piece of poetry or dog or combination of foods that only the loved one could ever understand. (This kind of improbably works in The Proposal.)

GET THE COUPLE TO SOMEONE ELSE’S WEDDING

Many romances have a scene or whole sequence at someone else’s wedding – throwing the hero and/or heroine right into that crucible to show their reactions to the whole idea in general. Not just romantic comedies, but romantic suspense will do this; see Sea Of Love.

CINDERELLA GOES TO THE BALL

Another version of going to a wedding, and usually involves a MAKEOVER. The original Arthur does this well, with John Gielgud as the world’s most charming (in a deadpan way) fairy godmother.

INTERRUPTING THE WEDDING

This is usually done by mistake, for comic effect (and it’s often not funny at all, be careful). But sometimes it’s a deliberate act, as in:

I’M GOING TO BREAK UP THAT WEDDING IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO

Can be one scene, but it can also be the whole premise of the story, as in Philadelphia Story and My Best Friend’s Wedding, or Made Of Honor.

“IF ANYONE KNOWS OF ANY REASON…”

Speaking of interrupting weddings - very often once the couple is at someone else’s wedding, some kind of disturbance will occur just at this critical juncture in the ceremony. Often it turns into a plot point (in the climax of Four Weddings And A Funeral).

THE PROMISE or DEATHBED PROMISE scene, or DYING WORDS scene.

In Four Weddings And A Funeral – one of the last things Gareth says to his circle of friends before he dies of a heart attack is: “I want to see you all married. Go forth and find husbands and wives.” Of course Hugh Grant takes that to heart…

THE LOVER MAKES A STAND

This scene seems almost always to come in the very last part of Act II:2, but sometimes in Act III. Basically, it’s the crux of Sequence Six or Sequence Seven. In this scene the Lover, the one who loves most deeply, says to the Loved One, “I’m not going to take your bullshit any more. Make up your mind. Either commit to me or don’t, but if you don’t, I’m out of here.” It’s often the ALL IS LOST MOMENT.

It’s Complicated: Steve Martin tells Meryl Streep that she’s not done with Alec yet, and he doesn’t want to see her while she’s still emotionally involved with him. Notting Hill: Hugh Grant tells Julia Roberts in the bookstore that between her “foul temper” and his far more inexperienced heart, he doesn’t think he would recover from being discarded again, and turns down her offer to date. When Harry Met Sally: Sally refuses Harry’s offer to go to the New Year’s party as a friendly date because “I’m not your consolation prize, Harry.”

In all of the above scenes, the Lover’s Stand forces the Loved One to step up and commit just as deeply as the Lover is committed. But it seems that very, very, very often, it’s one character, the Lover, who has to force the issue. And that finally leads to another scene:

THE DECLARATION

Yes, it’s essential to have a well-written declaration of love, it’s one of the biggest payoffs of the genre. I suggest you make a Top Ten List of your favorites for inspiration: try Julia Roberts’ “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy” in Notting Hill, Hugh Grant stammering through “I think I love you” in Four Weddings And A Funeral, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie: “I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was with a woman as a man;” Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally: “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start right now;” Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire: “You complete me.”

In a love story, the declaration very often is the FINAL BATTLE. And, oh, right – it’s very often a PROPOSAL.

It is also often a public declaration, in front of as many people can be crowded into the scene. But that’s become so much of a cliché I would really suggest avoiding it, if at all possible.

And remember, if the lover has behaved particularly badly, the audience or reader probably wants to see a little GROVELING.

THE KISS

I don’t really need to explain this one, do I? Well, let me just say: in love stories there are usually two key kisses: one someplace around the MIDPOINT, or at the Midpoint, where the couple have a first kiss and both suddenly realize, usually separately, that they’re in deep trouble. This is often the COUPLE FORCED TO KISS scene.

Then the very end of the movie or book, or the Act III climax, is the prolonged, never coming up for air, make the audience or reader really feel it kiss. Unfortunately in lesser stories this often substitutes for a real ending.

And then of course there’s the INTERRUPTED KISS, a way of building sexual tension before that first real kiss.

NEW WAY OF LIFE

This is truly an essential beat to get right in a romance, and nothing beats Romancing The Stone for this moment – wouldn’t anyone want the life Joan and Jack are sailing off to? And somehow it’s much more delicious because the yacht is not on the ocean, but parked on that Manhattan street. It’s the ultimate romantic gesture by a bad boy with a wicked sense of humor.

I also love seeing Hugh Grant shyly hitting the red carpet in Notting Hill, and the flip side of their life, the payoff of the two sprawled on that inscribed garden bench.

But yes, sometimes a kiss will do it, too, especially if it’s Colin Firth doing the kissing, as in Bridget Jones’ Diary.

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As you may have guessed, I’ve made up a lot of those names for the above elements. You can call those scenes, moments and setups something else entirely, and hopefully you’ll be adding lots of observations of your own to an ever-growing list.

So what have I left out? And/or what are examples of movies and books that do some of these elements particularly well?

- Alex

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Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

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Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshops 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:36:00 +0000

Yes, I will have a new craft post up this week, possibly later this afternoon, but people have been asking about what Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshops are going to be happening this year and where, so I'm posting the list so far.

February 25, 2012 - Long Beach, CA
Passion and Prose
The Westin, Long Beach
Saturday, 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM

This is not a Screenwriting Tricks workshop per se, but many of the authors attending this great first time event are scheduling little adjunct meetings and chats (in the bar, of course!) at the conference, so I'm happy to do a brainstorming session with anyone registered at the event who wants to talk about their WIPs. Just drop me an a mail at alex AT alexandrasokoloff DOT com and let me know you're attending.

Hosted by the wonderful Mysterious Galaxy Books!

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LEFT COAST CRIME

March 29-April 1: Sacramento, California

Left Coast Crime has asked me to do a 2-hour Screenwriting Tricks workshop for their Thursday craft conference in Sacramento. Details here.

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CLEVELAND ROCKS ROMANCE CONFERENCE

May 11-12, Strongsville, Ohio

An all-day and half the night Screenwriting Tricks Workshop for my awesome friend Erin McCarthy's RWA Chapter; non-chapter members welcome to sign up for the conference as well.

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WEST TEXAS WRITERS ACADEMY

June 17-22, 2012: Canyon, Texas

For anyone looking for a writing intensive with lots of hands-on, personal feedback, this is the one. Class size limited to 15.

I did this workshop last year and loved it; I think it's the most successful workshop I've ever taught because the entire class got so intensely involved with everyone else's stories - you could see improvement in everyone's storylines by the hour.

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RWA NATIONAL CONFERENCE

July 25: Anaheim, CA

Romance Writers of America has asked me to do a 2-hour Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshop with a special Young Adult focus at their YA craft conference on Wednesday, July 25.

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RWAustralia NATIONAL CONFERENCE

August 16-20: Queensland, Australia

And I'm very excited to be going to Australia in August (that's winter in Australia!) to do a full-day Screenwriting Tricks workshop at the Romance Writers of Australia national conference in Queensland.

- Full-day Story Structure workshop: August 17
- Panels and signings
- plus 2-hour Screenwriting Tricks Workshop TBA

QT Hotel, Gold Coast
Queensland, Australia

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For the most up-to-date information on workshops, you can always check my website appearances page.

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And if you can't attend a conference,Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

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So what is a Sequence, really?

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:59:00 +0000

I got a great question in the comments a couple of weeks ago and wanted to expand on it in a post.

I don't completely understand what a sequence is. I can tell you its climax will have a setpiece, will deliver on the premise, will be a genre scene, has a beginning, middle, and end, there are eight of them in a movie . . . But I don't understand EXACTLY what is a sequence. I understand an Act, I understand a scene. Can you help me understand the difference between sequence and scene (besides that a sequence is series of scenes)?

Well, I think I know exactly what is confusing you about sequences, and the reason is because it's confusing.

The confusion is because we're talking about two different kinds of sequences.

1. When I talk about the "Eight Sequence Structure", that's a term very specific to movies (that I think is useful to understand and work with when writing novels). See full explanation here:

BUT --

2. The term "sequence"actually is more often used to mean something different, which is - "a collection of scenes focused on a single central action (and sometimes taking place in the same location, in real time) with a beginning, middle and end."

Really, when I'm talking about the eight sequences of a movie, a better term would be SEGMENT. Because Sequence One, or Segment One, of a movie might be just one SEQUENCE, as I defined in #2 above, but more often it will be composed of two or three SEQUENCES as defined in #2.

For example, Sequence One (or Segment One) of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which you could call the South America sequence, or the Cave sequence, is also a complete SEQUENCE unto itself. It is composed of several scenes all focused on one central action (stealing the gold idol), taking place in approximately the same location and in a discrete time frame. (That is, there is unity of time, space and action, which I really should do a whole other post about, but if you’re not familiar with this concept, check out what Aristotle had to say about it.) There’s the approach to the cave, finding the cave, the perils inside the cave, the snatching of the idol, the escape from the cave, the reversal that rival Belloq and the warriors take the idol away from Indy, and the escape from the warriors and departure in the plane. It’s all continuous action with one particular goal (that turns to simple survival in the end.) (My breakdown is here ).

But more often what is called Sequence One of a movie (or book), that is, the first segment, will not be as unified and cohesive as that; instead of being one unified sequence as in the example from Raiders above, it will ramble through different scenes you could loosely call the SET UP, which will usually end with a twist or revelation that will take the action in another direction.

In fact, I would start calling the eight sequences eight SEGMENTS here for clarity, but it's never a good idea to mess around with such an entrenched vocabulary. I'm just going to have to be more clear about it in subsequent posts.

There are very few movies or books in which each of the eight Sequences (or Segments) are actually discrete sequences, too, but some come close (usually classic movies, which tended to have more defined sequences partly because they were shot almost entirely on sets. A set goes a long way toward imposing unity of action.).

For example, Four Weddings and a Funeral has very clear sequences, with each Act actually marked off by the wedding invitation cards announcing the bride and groom of each wedding (as you look more critically at films, you’ll see that filmmakers LOVE to find that kind of visual act curtain; you see it at work in all kinds of movies: The Sting, Chinatown, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Professional, Collateral – and that’s just off the top of my head.) In Four Weddings each quarter of the movie (Act 1, Act 2:1, Act 2:2, Act 3) takes place at a different wedding, and each wedding is divided into the same basic parts: The wedding itself, the reception, then the love plot between Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell as they leave the reception to go tryst. This is a great structural pattern to follow because it’s so like real life. The wedding is a completely different experience than the reception/party that follows the wedding, and the party after the party is even better, a lot of the time. Although sometimes not.

You’ll see that three-part pattern happens twice, in Act One and Act II:1, then Act II:2 is divided into a wedding and a reception, then a funeral and its aftermath, and then Act III is divided into pre-wedding, the interrupted wedding, and the aftermath (and the wonderful wrap-up in the closing credits).

It’s great if you can find that clear of a structure in your own story, but YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE THAT PRECISE! Please don’t kill yourself trying to find a perfect mathematical structure for your story; we writers have enough OCD issues already. However, as you get more attuned to how other storytellers use sequences, you will find that especially when you do rewrites, you will be able to craft scenes into more coherent sequences that give more of a flow and urgency to your story. And the idea of the eight-sequence structure can help you find the logical breaking points for sequences.

If you’re struggling with the idea of sequences, in either sense of the word, my suggestion as always is to take several of your favorite movies and watch them specifically looking for how the filmmakers are using sequences. You'll soon catch on to how sequences keep the action flowing and the interest high, and that will keep you on the lookout for ways to combine more of your scenes into sequences.

I hope that’s a little more clear, but if it’s not, I’m happy to answer questions about it and discuss more examples.

- Alex

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If you're looking for examples of the Three-Act, Eight-Sequence Structure in action, I strongly recommend that you watch at least one and much better, three of the films I break down in the workbooks, following along with my notes.

I do full breakdowns of Chinatown, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Romancing the Stone, and The Mist, and act breakdowns of You've Got Mail, Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, Raiders of the Lost Ark in Screenwriting Tricks For Authors.

I do full breakdowns of The Proposal, Groundhog Day, Sense and Sensibility, Romancing the Stone, Leap Year, Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sea of Love, While You Were Sleeping and New in Town in Writing Love.

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Rage Against the Night

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:44:00 +0000

One of the things no one ever tells you about being an author is that people ask you to write short stories. Anthology editors, other authors, publishers, blogmates. To which my usual response is - Are you KIDDING ME? Do you KNOW how hard it is to write a short story?

But the thing I've discovered about short stories is that, just like novels, and unlike screenplays, once you get through the hell of writing them -- I mean, once those stories exist —— they're forever, and they have value. You can even donate them to worthy causes, hopefully to do some good.

Well, some good is what's needed, here.

I know I have some horror readers and writers here. Others of you are - not. So I want to introduce you to someone that anyone in the horror community knows, and everyone else should know.

Rocky Wood is the current president of the Horror Writers Association, and the author of Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished, Stephen King: The Non-Fiction, Stephen King: A Literary Companion, and Horrors: Great Stories of Fear and Their Creators.

Rocky is a born New Zealander, current Australian, and believe me, Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe have nothing on him. They so very seldom make men like this anymore, it’s tragic. If there’s any point of cloning at all it should be to make more of these.

First of all, there’s that accent. But that’s just window dressing, really.

He is charming in the way that the most charismatic movie stars I’ve met, and I've met a few, are charming. He is totally present and focused in exactly the moment he is in, and on the person or group he is with. He has an aura that is sexy and smart and just beyond what you see in the real world.

You are drawn to the accent and his intensity, first, and the charisma, and then you very quickly start to realize that this is a wonderful person. An exceptional person. That whatever you thought you were rushing off to do can wait, possibly forever, because you really need to be right here and just find out who this person is.

A purely good person.

All right, here comes the hard part. And if you’re not sitting down, maybe you should, because when I say hard, I mean hard.

Rocky was diagnosed last year with ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, or Motor Neurone disease. It is an evil, insidious thing. It paralyzes the body entire while the mind remains fully functioning. There is at present no cure.

The news of this, this year, made me want to take whatever pills that would get me out of this life as fast as I could exit it. It made me wonder what was the point of anything at all.

Horrible things happen to good people all the time. No one can tell me that there is not actual evil in the world.

But this is one of those – THE PERSON WHO LEAST DESERVES THIS SCOURGE – events.

So what is anyone to make of something like this?

Believe it or not, I’m not going to be dark about it. I had that phase a while ago. I’ve moved on, to two basic thoughts. Which actually might be in opposition, but here they are anyway.

1. The perfect cure can happen instantly, tomorrow, this afternoon, this second. Miracles happen. Not consistently, but they happen. As I wrote in THE PRICE, and as I believe (on good days): “If one miracle has ever happened in the world, why not this one, for you?”

2. Another, and possibly the more important point is that: this world is only illusion. What you feel, what you can touch, right now, it’s only illusion. There is a better state we pass on to, which to me is—pure energy. Without the heaviness of a body. Without the agony of what people do to each other on the earth plane.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my body, it gives me great pleasure, and I’m happy to know that it gives other people great pleasure. But it’s so very heavy. I have to think that there is a lighter kind of existence, and that it’s a much better existence. I do enough yoga to believe that, with every cell and neuron in me.

And if this is true, there is something beyond the horror of a fatal disease. Anything that is what the Hindus call Moksha: liberation, release from the earth plane, is ultimately a blessing.

But since we’re still on this plane, and these things have real world consequences, a bunch of Rocky’s friends, who happen to be pretty incredibly great writers, have contributed a passel of short stories to a collection called RAGE AGAINST THE NIGHT, edited by Shane Jiraiya Cummings, with short stories by some of my all-time favorite dark writers: Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, F. Paul Wilson, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Sarah Langan, Scott Nicholson, and many more. My story, The Edge of Seventeen, is reprinted in the book, too. You may be especially interested in a story by Stephen King, which details a deal with the devil that Rocky would never make: passing this kind of illness on to another human being.

The price is $3.99, and all proceeds go to buying Rocky an eye gaze machine, a miraculous device that allows which allows the severely physically impaired to communicate via eye movements.

Rocky has already made arrangements to pass the machine on to another family that needs it, because that’s the kind of man he is.

No one knows what will happen tomorrow. I may drop dead long before Rocky does. Any one of us could. What I do know is that anyone who has not known this man is the poorer for it. I hope this post will go a small way toward correcting that.

Thank you for reading.

- Alex

RAGE AGAINST THE NIGHT:

E book now available for $3.99 from:

- Amazon (Kindle)

- Smashwords (multi-format ebook)

- Amazon.uk

In the coming weeks, the anthology will be available at all good online retailers, and the print version will be available this month (January).

Synopsis:

Under the onslaught of supernatural evil, the acts of good people can seem insignificant, but a courageous few stand apart. These brave men and women stand up to the darkness, stare it right in the eye, and give it the finger. These are the stories of those who rage against the night, stories of triumph, sacrifice, and bravery in the face of overwhelming evil.

Table of Contents (in order of appearance):

· The Gunner's Love Song—Joe McKinney

· Keeping Watch—Nate Kenyon

· Like Part of the Family—Jonathan Maberry

· The Edge of Seventeen—Alexandra Sokoloff

· The View from the Top—Bev Vincent

· Afterward, There Will Be a Hallway—Gary A. Braunbeck

· Following Marla—John R. Little

· Magic Numbers—Gene O'Neill

· Tail the Barney—Stephen M. Irwin

· The Nightmare Dimension—David Conyers

· Roadside Memorials—Joseph Nassise

· Dat Tay Vao—F. Paul Wilson

· Constitution—Scott Nicholson

· Mr. Aickman's Air Rifle—Peter Straub

· Agatha's Ghost—Ramsey Campbell

· Blue Heeler—Weston Ochse

· Sarah's Visions—Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

· More Than Words—David Niall Wilson

· Chillers—Lisa Morton

· Changed—Nancy Holder

· Dead Air—Gary Kemble

· Two Fish to Feed the Masses—Daniel G. Keohane

· Fenstad's End—Sarah Langan

· Fair Extension—Stephen King

· Rocky Wood, Skeleton Killer—Jeff Strand

Edited by Shane Jiraiya Cummings.

New Year’s Resolutions/Writing One Day at a Time

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 20:50:00 +0000

I was going to do another post on rewriting today, but WHO AM I KIDDING? No one in the free world has a brain cell left after last week. The powers that be, bless them, decided that we need an extra day of holiday today, which means no one is doing anything whatsoever of use.

So pass me the champagne and chocolate, while I continue my British crime TV binge. I’ve worked my way through – well, I started with THE WALKING DEAD, not British but created by Frank Darabont, brilliant, then moved on to SURVIVORS, SHERLOCK (God, WHY do I always fall for the crazy ones?) and am now catching up on WIRE IN THE BLOOD, with a short detour into Robson Green starring in a younger crazy detective incarnation: TOUCHING EVIL.

Amazingly, I have not had any nightmares, though there have been a few apocalyptic settings in my recent dream life.

Anyway, the New Year. Writing. All that.

One good thing is about writing a blog is that it makes one – well, me, anyway – more inclined to make public resolutions. I’m not actually sure how useful a list ever is. When it comes down to it, we all have kind of the same resolutions every year. Basically. Write more books and be a better person, right?

But this year I wanted to do a list, mostly because 2011 was so hard it’s amazing just that I survived it.

I complain about the abject agony of writing all the time, but this year writing has been lifesaving, just to have one familiar thing to do every day, in the face of what, bluntly, has been a lot of death. My father, a beloved aunt, my cat of 19 years, and the fatal illness of a cherished friend. Not fun. In many ways, maybe in spite of appearances, I’ve been pretty effectively shut down.

But things are getting better. I’m feeling that I could move beyond survival to actually enjoying myself again.

So resolutions make sense, because they imply there IS a future, at least until the world ends next December. JUST KIDDING.

First, the standard ones:

Working out. This is one I don’t have to worry about. Exercise has been periodically too much of an obsession; I’m one who more often needs to say, “You don’t REALLY need to take that two-hour Boot Camp class today.” I know if I don’t work out every day I become a rabid animal within 48 hours; it’s my version of antidepressants. But these days I’m more balanced about it. I take mostly dance classes, which is the way I most like to move and it’s so easy it’s never a big deal to get myself to class to do it. So dance four or five times a week and one killer ab/ass class on top of that, not as much fun as dancing but the results are so immediate and visual, it’s addictive. No, I mean, it’s good.

Eating. Pretty good about this, too. I don’t eat too much, I eat mostly the right things, I know how to combine proteins, and I don’t keep anything like ice cream or Cheetos or macadamia nuts in the house, period. One thing here - I am going to try to eat more Superfoods next year – why not, right? Salmon, blueberries, pomegranates, almonds, yams, dark greens; I love all that stuff anyway.

Getting out more. Well, with my conference schedule this year I don’t have to worry about a social life, even though I have the typical author problem of feast or famine in this department. You live like a hermit while you’re writing, and party till you drop at the conferences. These days I’m mostly paid to go, a big perk of the job. But I am resolved to say yes more than no to social events.

Giving more. I am grateful to be feeling financially stable, and am glad to plug my favorite charities at the beginning of the year: Children of the Night, Kiva, Equality Now, Equality California. And don’t forget Wikipedia – you KNOW you use it.

- Children of the Night - Rescues teenagers from prostitution.
- Kiva You can pledge $25 or more as a microloan to small businesswomen in developing countries, the loan will be paid back and you can loan again to someone else.
- Equality Now Ending violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world.
- Equality California - Advocates for civil and legal rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Californians.

Writing more? Not possible without brain meltdown.

My problem here is not that I’m not writing enough, but that I have too many concurrent projects. But I had a really productive December and am on track to finish my latest paranormal by my deadline at the end of January, which will make me less frantic about my contractual obligations. And I am closing in on finishing the thriller that I’ve been working on this year, sometimes just a few minutes a day, in between all the death. But five minutes a day for a year equals a book.

Did you catch that? I’ll say it again. Five minutes of writing a day for a year equals a book.

Which is what I really wanted to write about today, because I don’t think it’s said often enough that you CAN write a novel (or a script, or a TV pilot....) in whatever time you have. Even if that’s only five minutes a day. If you have kids, if you have the day job from hell, if you are clinically depressed – whatever is going on in your life, if you have five minutes a day, as long as you write EVERY DAY, to the best of your ability, you can write a novel that way.

I don’t know if I’ve posted this here before, but I wrote my first novel, The Harrowing, by writing just five minutes per day.

My day job was screenwriting, at the time, and yes, it was a writing job, but it had turned into the day job from hell.

But fury is a wonderful motivator and at the end of the day, every day, I was so pissed off at the producers I was working for that I would make myself write five minutes a day on the novel EVERY NIGHT, just out of spite.

Okay, the trick to this is – that if you write five minutes a day, you will write more than five minutes a day, sometimes a whole hell of a lot more than five minutes a day most days. But it’s the first five minutes that are the hardest. And that often ended up happening. Sometimes I was so tired that all I could manage was a sentence, but I would sit down at my desk and write that one sentence. But some days I’d tell myself all I needed to write was a sentence, and I’d end up writing three pages.

It’s just like the first five minutes of exercise, something I learned a long time ago. As long as I can drag myself to class and endure that first five minutes of the workout, and I give myself permission to leave after five minutes if I want to, I will generally take the whole hour and a half class, and usually end up loving it. (There are these wonderful things called endorphins, you see, and they kick in after a certain amount of exposure to pain...)

The trick to writing, and exercise, is – it is STARTING that is hard.

I have been writing professionally for . . . well, never mind how many years. But even after all those many years—every single day, I have to trick myself into writing. I will do anything – scrub toilets, clean the cat box, do my taxes, do my mother’s taxes – rather than sit down to write. It’s absurd. I mean, what’s so hard about writing, besides everything?

But I know this just like I know it about exercise. If you can just start, and commit to just that five minutes, those five minutes will turn into ten, and those ten minutes will turn into pages, and one page a day for a year is a book.

Think about it.

Or better yet, write for five minutes, right now. Then pass the champagne and chocolate.

Happy New Year, everyone!

- Alex

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

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E books for your Kindle!

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:15:00 +0000

Did you get that Kindle Fire for Christmas?

If you're in the mood for something spooky (hey, I know it's the holidays, but I just watched thirteen episodes of The Walking Dead back to back. Not all of us are in the Miracle on 34th Street mood)...

THE HARROWING, THE PRICE, and BOOK OF SHADOWS are now available as e books in various territories.

(Remember, you don't need a Kindle; you can download a free Kindle reader to your PC or Mac or i pad or phone).

For more information about all the books, and links to order, see below.

And Merry Merry Happy Happy everything to all!

- Alex

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BOOK OF SHADOWS

Synopsis:

Homicide detective Adam Garrett is already a rising star in the Boston police department when he and his cynical partner, Carl Landauer, catch a horrifying case that could make their careers: the ritualistic murder of a wealthy college girl that appears to have Satanic elements.

The partners make a quick arrest when all evidence points to another student, a troubled musician in a Goth band who was either dating or stalking the murdered girl. But Garrett’s case is turned upside down when beautiful, mysterious Tanith Cabarrus, a practicing witch from nearby Salem, walks into the homicide bureau and insists that the real perpetrator is still at large. Tanith claims to have had psychic visions that the killer has ritually sacrificed other teenagers in his attempts to summon a powerful, ancient demon.

All Garrett's beliefs about the nature of reality will be tested as he is forced to team up with a woman he is fiercely attracted to but cannot trust, in a race to uncover a psychotic killer before he strikes again.

Reviews:

“A wonderfully dark thriller with amazing is-it-isn't-it suspense all the way to the end. Highly recommended.”---Lee Child

"Compelling, frightening and exceptionally well-written, Book of Shadows is destined to become another hit for acclaimed horror and suspense writer Sokoloff. The incredibly tense plot and mysterious characters will keep readers up late at night, jumping at every sound, and turning the pages until they've devoured the book." --- Romantic Times Book Reviews, 4 1/2 stars

"Sokoloff successfully melds a classic murder-mystery/whodunit with supernatural occult undertones." --- Library Journal

"The discovery in a landfill of the mutilated corpse of Erin Carmody, the 18-year-old daughter of a prominent Boston businessman, presents homicide detective Adam Garrett with a particularly sensitive case. Marks on the body suggest the killer was conducting Satanic rituals. When Adam and his partner, Carl Landauer, question the prime suspect, Jason Moncrief, a college friend of Erin's, Jason chants the name of the demon Choronzon, then assaults Carl. Despite what appears to be an open-and-shut case, Adam can't discount the claim that Jason is innocent made by Tanith Cabarrus, an attractive witch who comes to police headquarters to report that she dreamed of other murders—and who believes that supernatural forces are behind the slaughter. As usual, Sokoloff (The Unseen) does a good job keeping the reader guessing whether a supernatural agency is really at work." - Publishers Weekly

(Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

BOOK OF SHADOWS is now available on as an e book in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain: just £2.14 on Amazon.uk, and €2.99 on Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it, and Amazon.es.

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THE HARROWING

Synopsis:

Baird College's Mendenhall echoes with the footsteps of the last home-bound students heading off for Thanksgiving break, and Robin Stone swears she can feel the creepy, hundred-year-old residence hall breathe a sigh of relief for its long-awaited solitude. Or perhaps it's only gathering itself for the coming weekend.

As a massive storm dumps rain on the isolated campus, four other lonely students reveal themselves: Patrick, a handsome jock; Lisa, a manipulative tease; Cain, a brooding musician; and finally Martin, a scholarly eccentric. Each has forsaken a long weekend at home for their own secret reasons.

The five unlikely companions establish a tentative rapport, but they soon become aware of a sixth presence disturbing the ominous silence that pervades the building. Are they the victims of a simple college prank taken way too far, or is the unusual energy evidence of something genuine---and intent on using the five students for its own terrifying ends? It's only Thursday afternoon, and they have three long days and dark nights before the rest of the world returns to find out what's become of them. But for now it's just the darkness keeping company with five students nobody wants and no one will miss.

Reviews:

'Absolutely gripping...It is easy to imagine this as a film...Once started, you won't want to stop reading'
---London Times

"Poltergeist meets The Breakfast Club as five college students tangle with an ancient evil presence. Plenty of sexual tension... quick pace and engaging plot."
--- Kirkus Reviews

'Sokoloff's debut novel is an eerie ghost story that captivates readers from page one. The author creates an element of suspense that builds until the chillingly believable conclusion."'
--Romantic Times

What better thing could strangers isolated in a big, near-deserted building while a raging storm takes out the electricity and compels the use of flickering candles possibly discover than an ancient, charred Ouija board? The previously unacquainted in question are five students sitting out Thanksgiving weekend in a 100-year-old residence hall. And that Ouija board turns wicked, of course, when it manifests a ghost named Zachary, who turns the place into a chaotic battleground for the forces of evil versus cosmic goodness and light. What seemed a sick joke one of the five was playing on the others has morphed into a situation in which no one can be trusted. Sokoloff sustains pace and suspense while encouraging the reader to identify with Robin, a young woman from a poor, alcohol-ravaged family, who yearns for acceptance. Will she get it from the all-American jock she lusts for; the slutty tease; the quiet, intellectual rabbi's son; and the brooding musician who are her companions for this scary ordeal? Good, engrossing fun.
--- Booklist, Whitney Scott
(Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved)

"The Harrowing is a real page-turner, a first novel of unusual promise."
---Ira Levin

"The Harrowing is a find: fast, original, and genuinely creepy."
---F. Paul Wilson,

"Alexandra Sokoloff conjures up a demon older than time and humanity and yet rooted in modern psychology. She brings all her skills as a screenwriter to a tale of supernatural terror as swift as a film."
---Ramsey Campbell

"Sokoloff's debut novel is a furiously paced, deftly plotted joy, bursting at the seams with disquieting imagery and carrying a disturbingly dark undercurrent. It gave me a nightmareÂ…and that's rare."
---Tim Lebbon

THE HARROWING is now available on as an e book in various countries, just €2.99 on Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it, and Amazon.es.
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THE PRICE

Boston District Attorney Will Sullivan dreams of becoming the next governor of Massachusetts. With his beautiful wife, Joanna, and adorable daughter, Sydney, Will seems destined for greatness…until Sydney becomes seriously ill. Now both parents resolve to do anything to save their daughter’s life.

But in the twilight world of Briarwood Medical Center, nothing is as it seems. Patients on the brink of death are not only surviving but thriving, while others wither away…and the recoveries all revolve around the ministerings of a mysterious counselor, who takes an unsettling interest in Joanna. When Sydney’s health miraculously improves, Will suspects that Joanna has made a terrible bargain to save their child. Now Will must face a powerful, unknown evil before he loses... everything.

Reviews:

"Some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre."
—The New York Times Book Review

“A heartbreakingly eerie page turner…”
—Library Journal

"Sokoloff is simply amazing"
—Bookreporter.com

"A sublime second novel . . . Her gooseflesh-inducing imagery jumps right off the pages, and her rich, graceful prose calls to mind names like King, Saul, and Levin."
—Dark Scribe Magazine

“A medical thriller of the highest order... a stunning, riveting journey into terror and suspense.”—Michael Palmer

"Beyond stunning. It is harrowing in the true sense of real art.” —Ken Bruen

"A psychological rollercoaster that keeps the reader on edge with bone-chilling thrills throughout. I couldn't put it down." —Heather Graham

THE PRICE is now available on as an e book in various countries, just €2.99 on Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it, and Amazon.es.

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THE SPACE BETWEEN

Sixteen-year old Anna Sullivan is having terrible dreams of a massacre at her school. Anna’s father is a mentally unstable veteran, her mother vanished when Anna was five, and Anna might just chalk the dreams up to a reflection of her crazy waking life — except that Tyler Marsh, the most popular guy at the school and Anna’s secret crush, is having the exact same dream.

Despite the gulf between them in social status, Anna and Tyler connect, first in the dream and then in reality. As the dreams reveal more, with clues from the school social structure, quantum physics, probability, and Anna's own past, Anna becomes convinced that they are being shown the future so they can prevent the shooting…

If they can survive the shooter — and the dream.

Based on the short story "The Edge of Seventeen," winner of the ITW Thriller award.

"Filled with vivid images, mystery, and a strong atmosphere of danger... Sokoloff interlaces psychological elements, quantum physics and the idea of multiple dimensions and parallel universes into her storyline; this definitely adds something different and original from other teen horror novels in the market today. Highly recommended."
-- Seattle Post Intelligencer

THE PRICE is available on as an e book, just $ 2.99 on Kindle, £2.14 on Amazon.uk, and €2.99 on Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it, and Amazon.es.

Amazon/Kindle
Amazon UK
Amazon DE
Free in Kindle lending library!

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Rewriting: Expanding on Key Story Elements

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:08:00 +0000

There’s a saying in Hollywood that “If you have six great scenes, you have a movie.” Well, very often these six great scenes are off that list I gave you of the Key Story Elements. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Scenes like The Call To Adventure and Crossing the Threshold are magical moments: they change the world of the main character for all time, and as storytellers we want our readers or audiences to experience that profound, soul-shattering change right along with the character. These are numinous events, and we crave scenes that are worthy of them.

And I think it’s useful to study the more blatant examples — the way these scenes are depicted in fantasies like Harry Potter and The Wizard of Oz — so you get the full-on, literally magical experience of a Call To Adventure or Crossing the Threshold scene first, and then start looking for more subtle variations in less fantastical stories.

Just as filmmakers consciously design some of these key story scenes for maximum emotional and visual impact, we as novelists can be doing the same thing on the page for our readers — making the most of critical scenes such as ESTABLISHING THE HERO/INE’S GHOST, THE CALL TO ADVENTURE, CROSSING THE THRESHOLD, ESTABLISHING THE PLAN, and so on.

So a very effective rewriting pass is to take a look at all of your key scenes and see if you're doing those moments justice.

In the next few posts I want to look more closely at a few of those key story elements (and that’s key to ALL genres) and detail some examples of how filmmakers create these beats as setpiece scenes.

And of course, these key scenes are very often used as act climaxes or sequence climaxes — we’ll talk about which elements are generally used as which act climaxes.

Let's start at the very beginning.

OPENING IMAGE

In a film you have an opening image by default, whether you put any planning into it or not. It’s the first thing you see in the film. But good filmmakers will very consciously design that opening image to establish all kinds of things about the story: mood, tone, location, and especially theme. There can be more than just one image or shot at work, too; sometimes it’s more like a whole opening scene.

Well, novelists, instead of (or in addition to) killing yourselves trying to concoct a great first line which will just as likely annoy a reader into throwing your book against the wall as make them keep reading, how about giving some thought to what your opening scene looks like? It takes a lot of the pressure off that first page anxiety — because you're focused on conveying a powerful image that will intrigue and entice the reader into the book.

What do we see? How does it make us feel? How might it even be a miniature code of what the whole story is about?

Take a look at a few of the films on your master list and see what they do with the opening image. Again, bear in mind that the opening image may be more of an opening scene — and the key image may not be the very first thing we see. For example, in Casino, the film starts with DeNiro walking out to his car, with narration over. Then as he gets in, the car explodes in flame — and the credits sequence begins, the visual underneath which is a long, long take on a cut-out of a man falling slowly through flame: a descent into hell. That falling through flame, with the blinking neon of the casino all around, would be the opening image, what Scorsese has chosen to fix in the audience’s mind — it is exactly what the story is about.

One of my favorite opening images/sequences is the credits scene of The Shining. I don’t think there’s a creepier opening to be found anywhere in film. It’s all aerial camerawork of those vast, foreboding mountains as that tiny little car drives up, up, up toward what turns out to be the Overlook Hotel. It’s vertiginous, it’s ominous, it emphasizes the utter isolation of the hotel and the circumstances, and somehow, through the music and the visuals and the constant movement, Kubrick establishes a sense of huge, vast, and malevolent natural forces. As a thriller writer (or whatever you want to call me), I am constantly looking for ways to convey all those things — that experience — on the page. Mo Hayder’s The Treatment is one of my favorite recent examples … when she focuses on a murder of crows strutting on the grass of a crime scene, evil just rolls off the page, and you start to wonder if you really want to keep reading the book. (It’s worth every shudder, but don’t say I didn’t warn you).

Here’s another great film technique to be aware of: The opening image will sometimes —often — set up a location that will return in the final battle scene or in the resolution scene of the story — only at the end there will be a big visual contrast to show how much the hero/ine has changed. A fantastic recent example of this is in the truly lovely animated film How to Train Your Dragon. It opens with a long aerial swoop down into the Viking village. It’s dark, torchlit, forbidding … and then smashes into the opening attack by dragons, a scene of chaos and violence. And we hear young protagonist Hiccup’s wry narration over it.

In the RESOLUTION, we see the same aerial swoop into the village, but now it’s daylight, sunshine, flowers — and instead of attacking, the dragons are flying with their new — well, not owners, but partners: the same Vikings who were fighting them in the beginning. And Hiccup’s wry final narration is the same as his opening narration, with only a few key words changed. The whole village has been transformed by Hiccup’s personal journey; it’s a magnificent visual of not just character arc, but also of the change in philosophy of the whole Viking society.

Here are some more romance-friendly examples:

The opening image of Romancing the Stone is a small, stuffy cabin — which quickly opens up to a classic, gorgeous Western landscape of magnificent buttes in a desert setting; the heroine of the opening scene is a voluptuous buckskin-clad heroine straight from the old bodice-rippers. It’s adventure and romance, which the voice-over narration also establishes as comic and tongue-in-cheek. It’s a great miniature of the whole story — this is protagonist Joan Wilder’s fantasy, which quickly becomes her not-so-appealing reality.

The opening image(s) of Notting Hill is a montage of movie star Anna Scott’s career: newspaper headlines, magazine spreads, photo shoots, paparazzi tailing her at premieres and the Oscars. This montage sets up this story’s unusual antagonist; it’s Anna’s fame that is the constant opposition to Will and Anna’s love, and the storytellers make that fame concrete and vivid in these images.

The opening image of New in Town is a frozen, wintry landscape, symbolizing the heroine’s frozen emotions, and then the first scene shows a group of three women scrapbooking and talking about the fate of the new plant manager, a scene that brings to mind the three Norns, or Fates, of Scandinavian myth.

Now, look, I’m not at all saying that an opening scene has to be visual to work. I had a student in a workshop recently who opened her romantic comedy with a series of dueling press releases. It was hilarious and perfect for her very funny book. As authors we have the luxury of not having to convey things purely visually. I’m just saying, if you’re struggling with an opening, this could be a technique that might help you pull it all together. It works wonders for me. And thinking of the opening visually instantly solves the problem that I’ve become increasingly aware of in the opening chapters of newer writers: they fail to set up the visual in any way, which leaves the reader floundering to figure out where the hell they are. Not an auspicious way to begin, let me tell you.

As human beings, we are primarily visual creatures (and no, I don’t just mean men. All of us.). So? Use it.

1. Make a list. Visual or not visual — what are some of your favorite book and movie openings of all time?

2. Now look at your own opening pages. Are they visual? Do we know where we are? Can you make that location, and the things we see in it, thematically meaningful?

- Alex

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

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Rewriting: the Genre Pass

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:37:00 +0000

An overview of Rewriting, if you haven't read it yet.

I’m sure you regular readers have already gotten this message, but I’ll say it again anyway: whatever genre you are writing in, your JOB as a writer is to deliver the promise of that genre, the EXPERIENCE of it, to your readers/audience: comedy in a comedy, action in an actioner or action thriller, romance and sex in a romance, romance and sex and comedy in a romantic comedy, romance and sex and comedy and action in a romantic comedy/adventure (see ROMANCING THE STONE for an excellent example of delivering all the promises of those genres in one seamless gem of a movie).

So today we're going to talk about the Genre Pass.

Of course, for my money, your first step is always to make a master list – ten movies and books in the genre you’re writing that you can look at to see how the master storytellers deliver on the promise in the genre.

A great exercise is to go through a movie or book minute by minute, or page by page, and literally count the genre scenes. List each one and how many minutes, seconds or pages there are between each genre scene or moment. At the end of this exercise you should be able to say with confidence, for example, in GROUNDHOG DAY, there is a laugh-out loud moment every 4 minutes (or however many minutes it is) Seriously. This is a great way to internalize the rhythm of a particular genre.

I must confess, I personally believe that if you’re not a comedian right here, right now, you’re never going to be a comedian. BUT – if you are not a born comedian but are writing a romantic comedy, and you know need to get more laughs in, this a great way to do that. Other genres are, I believe, more forgiving than comedy and easier to learn how to do.

Another good method is to lay out your story on index cards or Post Its again, and this time use a particular color of card or Post It to signify a comedy (action, sex, suspense) scene. If when you step back and survey your story board and you see a long sequence of scenes with none of that color, that’s a good indication that you need to work that sequence and those scenes to layer in genre elements.

The other thing that is essential to look at is how the act and sequence climaxes in a good movie or book are almost always genre scenes. In a love story, these turning points are emotional or sexual. In an action story, they are action scenes, with the essential revelations occurring within the action (Think of the climax of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK – Darth Vader didn’t reveal Luke’s parenthood to him while they were washing dishes, now, did he?). Even if you don’t quite pull off every single act climax and sequence climax as a rip-roaring genre scene, it’s not a bad idea to shoot for that, because then at the very least you will know that you have eight scenes that deliver on your genre promise, and that’s a really solid foundation for a successful story. And when you get yourself to think specifically in terms of genre scenes, your mind will be automatically looking for other places to insert genre moments.

While we’re on Act Climaxes, I just wanted to mention the concept of multiple climaxes (in storytelling; hopefully we’re all experts at the other). Some people make themselves crazy looking for the exact scene that is the Act Climax. Well, if it’s not obvious, then chances are you’ve got multiple climaxes, or what I like to call a “rolling climax”. ROMANCING THE STONE’s Act I climax is a perfect example of several different scenes that fulfill the genre promises of comedy, action, romance and sex, which all work togther to make up the act break – take a look at the discussion here:

And here are some posts to help you with identifying Act Climaxes:

- Identifying Act Climaxes

- Raiders of the Lost Ark - Act Climaxes

The good news here is that – you don’t have to get all of this into your first draft! These are rewriting tricks. Write out the bones of your scenes and the story, first, and then start to layer in these genre elements. Take a look at where you might combine two completely different scenes so that you get a big revelation or plot twist inside of a comic or fight scene, or in the middle of sex.

This is the fun part of writing – everything after the first draft is icing. So enjoy!

- Alex

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=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Nanowrimo Now What? - Rewriting

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 01:34:00 +0000

Okay now, remember, if you just finished your draft on Nov. 30, taking time off from it before you jump into revisions is far more important than anything else I’m going to say here today.

But once you have taken the time off… how the hell do you proceed with the second draft?

Well, first you have to read the first draft. All the way through. Not necessarily in one sitting (if that’s even possible to begin with!); I usually do this in chunks of 50 pages or 100 pages a day – anything else makes my brain sore.

(And yes, if you’ve been paying attention (The Three Act Structure and The Eight Sequence Structure), that would mean I’m either reading one sequence or two sequences a day).

I picked up a tip from some book or article a long time ago about reading for revisions, and I wish I could remember who said it to credit them, because it’s great advice. Grab yourself a colored pen or pencil (or all kinds of colors, glitter pens - go wild) and sit down with a stack of freshly printed pages (sorry, it’s ungreen, but I can’t do a first revision on a screen. I need a hard copy). Then read through and make brief notes where necessary, but DO NOT start rewriting, and PUT THE PEN DOWN as soon as you’ve made a note. You want to read the first time through for story, not for stupid details that will interrupt your experience of the story as a whole. You want to get the big picture – especially – you want to see if you actually have a book (or film, if that’s what you’re writing).

If your drafts are anything like mine, there will be large chunks of absolute shit. That’s pretty much my definition of what a first draft is. X them out on the spot if you have to, but resist the temptation to stop and rewrite. Well, if you REALLY are hot to write a scene, I guess, okay, but really, unless you are totally, fanatically inspired, it’s better just to make brief notes.

When you’ve finished reading there should - hopefully! - be the feeling that even though you probably still have massive amounts of work yet to do, there is a book there. (I love that feeling…)

Once I’ve read through the entire thing, I make notes about my impressions, and then usually I will do a re-card (see The Index Card Method). I will have made many scribbled notes on the draft to the effect of “This scene doesn’t work here!” In some of my first drafts, whole sections don’t work at all. This is my chance to find the right places for things. And, of course, throw stuff out.

I will go through the entire book again – going back and forth between my pages and the cards on my story grid - and see where the story elements fall. There is no script or book I’ve ever written that didn’t benefit from a careful overview once again identifying act breaks, sequence climaxes, and key story elements like: The Call to Adventure; Stating the Theme; identifying the Central Question; Central Action and Plan; Crossing the Threshold; Meeting the Mentor; the Dark Night of the Soul - once the first draft is actually finished. A lot of your outline may have changed, and you will be able to pull your story into line much more effectively if you check your structural elements again and continually be thinking of how you can make those key scenes more significant, more magical.

(For a quick refresher on Story Elements, skip down to #10 at the bottom of this post, and the links at the end for more in-depth discussion.)

Also, be very aware of what your sequences are. If a scene isn’t working, but you know you need to have it, it’s probably in the wrong sequence, and if you look at your story overall and at what each sequence is doing, you’ll probably be able to see immediately where stray scenes need to go. That’s why re-carding and re-sequencing is such a great thing to do when you start a revision.

Now, the next steps can be taken in whatever order is useful to you, but here again are the Top Ten Things I Know About Editing.

1. Cut, cut, cut.

When you first start writing, you are reluctant to cut anything. Believe me, I remember. But the truth is, beginning writers very, very, VERY often duplicate scenes, and characters, too. And dialogue, oh man, do inexperienced writers duplicate dialogue! The same things happen over and over again, are said over and over again. It will be less painful for you to cut if you learn to look for and start to recognize when you’re duplicating scenes, actions, characters and dialogue. Those are the obvious places to cut and combine.

Some very wise writer (unfortunately I have no idea who) said, “If it occurs to you to cut, do so.” This seems harsh and scary, I know. Often I’ll flag something in a manuscript as “Could cut”, and leave it in my draft for several passes until I finally bite the bullet and get rid of it. So, you know, that’s fine. Allow yourself to CONSIDER cutting something, first. No commitment! Then if you do, fine. But once you’ve considered cutting, you almost always will. It's okay if you bitch about it all the way to the trash file, too - I always do.

2. Find a great critique group.

This is easier said than done, but you NEED a group, or a series of readers, who will commit themselves to making your work the best it can be, just as you commit the same to their work. Editors don’t edit the way they used to and publishing houses expect their authors to find friends to do that kind of intensive editing. Really.

3. Do several passes.

Finish your first draft, no matter how rough it is. Then give yourself a break — a week is good, two weeks is better, three weeks is better than that — as time permits. Then read, cut, polish, put in notes. Repeat. And repeat again. Always give yourself time off between reads if you can. The closer your book is to done, the more uncomfortable the unwieldy sections will seem to you, and you will be more and more okay with getting rid of them. Read on for the specific kinds of passes I recommend doing.

4. Whatever your genre is, do a dedicated pass focusing on that crucial genre element.

For a thriller: thrills and suspense. For a mystery: clues and misdirection and suspense. For a comedy: a comedic pass. For a romance: a sex pass. Or “emotional” pass, if you must call it that. For horror… well, you get it.

I write suspense. So after I’ve written that first agonizing bash-through draft of a book or script, and probably a second or third draft just to make it readable, I will at some point do a dedicated pass just to amp up the suspense, and I highly recommend trying it, because it’s amazing how many great ideas you will come up with for suspense scenes (or comic scenes, or romantic scenes) if you are going through your story JUST focused on how to inject and layer in suspense, or horror, or comedy, or romance. It’s your JOB to deliver the genre you’re writing in. It’s worth a dedicated pass to make sure you’re giving your readers what they’re buying the book for.

5. Know your Three Act Structure.

If something in your story is sagging, it is amazing how quickly you can pull your narrative into line by looking at the scene or sequence you have around page 100 (or whatever page is ¼ way through the book), page 200, (or whatever page is ½ way through the book), page 300 (or whatever page is ¾ through the book) and your climax. Each of those scenes should be huge, pivotal, devastating, game-changing scenes or sequences (even if it’s just emotional devastation). Those four points are the tentpoles of your story.

6. Do a dedicated DESIRE LINE pass in which you ask yourself for every scene: “What does this character WANT? Who is opposing her/him in this scene? Who WINS in the scene? What will they do now?”

7. Do a dedicated EMOTIONAL pass, in which you ask yourself in every chapter, every scene, what do I want my readers to FEEL in this moment?

8. Do a dedicated SENSORY pass, in which you make sure you’re covering what you want the reader to see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and sense.

9. Read your book aloud. All of it. Cover to cover.

I wouldn’t recommend doing this with a first draft unless you feel it’s very close to the final product, but when you’re further along, the best thing I know to do to edit a book — or script — is read it aloud. The whole thing. I know, this takes several days, and you will lose your voice. Get some good cough drops. But there is no better way to find errors — spelling, grammar, continuity, and rhythmic errors. Try it, you’ll be amazed.

10. Finally, and this is a big one: steal from film structure to pull your story into dramatic line.

Some of you are already well aware that I’ve compiled a checklist of story elements that I use both when I’m brainstorming a story on index cards, and again when I’m starting to revise. I find it invaluable to go through my first draft and make sure I’m hitting all of these points, so here it is again, for those just finding this post.

STORY ELEMENTS CHECKLIST

ACT ONE

* Opening image
* Meet the hero or heroine
* Hero/ine’s inner and outer desire.
* Hero/ine’s problem
* Hero/ine’s ghost or wound
* Hero/ine’s arc
* Inciting Incident/Call to Adventure
* Meet the antagonist (and/or introduce a mystery, which is what you do when you’re going to keep your antagonist hidden to reveal at the end)
* State the theme/what’s the story about?
* Allies
* Mentor (possibly. May not have one or may be revealed later in the story).
* Love interest
* Plant/Reveal (or: Setups and Payoffs)
* Hope/Fear (and Stakes)
* Time Clock (possibly. May not have one or may be revealed later in the story)
* Sequence One climax
* Central Question
* Central Story Action
* Plan (Hero/ine's)
* Villain's Plan
* Act One climax

___________________________

ACT TWO

* Crossing the Threshold/ Into the Special World (may occur in Act One)
* Threshold Guardian (maybe)
* Hero/ine’s Plan
* Antagonist’s Plan
* Training Sequence
* Series of Tests
* Picking up new Allies
* Assembling the Team
* Attacks by the Antagonist (whether or not the Hero/ine recognizes these as being from the antagonist)
* In a detective story, questioning witnesses, lining up and eliminating suspects, following clues.

THE MIDPOINT

* Completely changes the game
* Locks the hero/ine into a situation or action
* Can be a huge revelation
* Can be a huge defeat
* Can be a “now it’s personal” loss
* Can be sex at 60 — the lovers finally get together, only to open up a whole new world of problems

______________________________
ACT TWO, PART TWO

* Recalibrating — after the shock or defeat of the game-changer in the Midpoint, the hero/ine must Revamp The Plan and try a New Mode of Attack.
* Escalating Actions/ Obsessive Drive
* Hard Choices and Crossing The Line (immoral actions by the main character to get what s/he wants)
* Loss of Key Allies (possibly because of the hero/ine’s obsessive actions, possibly through death or injury by the antagonist).
* A Ticking Clock (can happen anywhere in the story)
* Reversals and Revelations/Twists. (Hmm, that clearly should have its own post, now, shouldn't it?)
* The Long Dark Night of the Soul and/or Visit to Death (aka All Is Lost)

THE SECOND ACT CLIMAX

* Often can be a final revelation before the end game: the knowledge of who the opponent really is
* Answers the Central Question

_______________________________

ACT THREE

The third act is basically the Final Battle and Resolution. It can often be one continuous sequence — the chase and confrontation, or confrontation and chase. There may be a final preparation for battle, or it might be done on the fly. Either here or in the last part of the second act the hero will make a new, FINAL PLAN, based on the new information and revelations of the second act.

The essence of a third act is the final showdown between protagonist and antagonist. It is often divided into two sequences:

1. Getting there (storming the castle)
2. The final battle itself

* Thematic Location — often a visual and literal representation of the Hero/ine’s Greatest Nightmare
* The protagonist’s character change
* The antagonist’s character change (if any)
* Possibly allies’ character changes and/or gaining of desire
* Could be one last huge reveal or twist, or series of reveals and twists, or series of final payoffs you've been saving (as in BACK TO THE FUTURE and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE).

* RESOLUTION: A glimpse into the New Way of Life that the hero/ine will be living after this whole ordeal and all s/he’s learned from it.

If these story elements are new to you, you’ll want to read:

Elements of Act One

Elements of Act Two, Part 1

Elements of Act Two, Part 2

Elements of Act Three

Elements of Act Three: Elevate Your Ending

Elements of Act Three: What Makes a Great Climax?

Act Climaxes and Turning Points

Part 1:

Part 2:

And I'll be posting more about how to do different kinds of passes for particular effect.

- Alex

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Nanowrimo Now What?

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:20:00 +0000

Okay, so you survived! Or maybe I shouldn’t make any assumptions, there.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say you survived and now have a rough draft (maybe very, very, very rough draft) of about 50,000 words.

What next?

Well, first of all, did you write to “The End”? Because if not, then you may have survived, but you’re not done. You must get through to The End, no matter how rough it is (rough meaning the process AND the pages…). If you did not get to The End, I would strongly urge that you NOT take a break, no matter how tired you are (well, maybe a day). You can slow down your schedule, set a lower per-day word or page count, but do not stop. Write every day, or every other day if that’s your schedule, but get the sucker done.

You may end up throwing away most of what you write, but it is a really, really, really bad idea not to get all the way through a story. That is how most books, scripts and probably most all other things in life worth doing are abandoned.

Conversely, if you DID get all the way to “The End”, then definitely, take a break. As long a break as possible. You should keep to a writing schedule, start brainstorming the next project, maybe do some random collaging to see what images come up that might lead to something fantastic - but if you have a completed draft, then what you need right now is SPACE from it. You are going to need fresh eyes to do the read-through that is going to take you to the next level, and the only way for you to get those fresh eyes is to leave the story alone for a while.

I am tempted to jump write in and post the blog I am thinking about on a process for reading and revising, but I will resist, at least for today, so that you really absorb what I’m saying.

1. Keep going if you’re not done –

OR -

2. Take a good long break if you have a whole first draft, and start thinking about another project.

And in the meantime, I’d love to hear how you all who were Nanoing did.

Me? I had my usual Nano, which is to say I was working on multiple projects, one in a later draft so page counts were useless or impossible, and then the order of two of my contracted books got switched in the middle of the month so I ended up starting TWO first drafts of different projects this month (!!!) but I am MUCH happier with the new order one of those. But I did get a ton of editing done on my new crime thriller, and am loving the new paranormal thriller, and I got final edits for three e books done. And I survived that incredible So Cal windstorm, too. A good month, I'd say.

- Alex

Nanowrimo: the third quarter drop-dead

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:26:00 +0000

Home stretch!

Well, theoretically, anyway. But I find that right about now is when people tend to start dropping during Nano. First of all there's, well, Thanksgiving. Which even though it's a holiday, involves family, and family is never conducive to marathon writing. (They don't like to lose us to a book, it's just the truth. It brings up all kinds of feelings of abandonment and inadequacy. So - pretend you're going shopping and go to a cafe to write, that's what they're for.)

But also, let's face it, it's EASY to write a first act. It's new, it's fresh, it's exciting, it's like the first flush of being in love. You're so high you don't stop to think, and that means you don't get in your own way.

It can even be not so hard to get through Act II, part 1 to the Midpoint. But it's that third quarter where things get murky. You feel like you're not getting anywhere. In fact, you have no freaking clue where you are, or why in the hell you're wherever the hell you are to begin with, and you just want to give up and sleep for a week, or eat turkey and chocolate for a week, or all of the above.

I had a friend in movie development who called it "the third-quarter drop dead."

Well, here's an interesting thing. Structurally, this is EXACTLY the point in your story that your hero/ine is feeling those exact same things. In other words, it's the BLACK MOMENT, or ALL IS LOST MOMENT, or the VISIT TO DEATH, which almost always ends up as the climax or just before the climax of Act II.

It's as if we as authors have to work ourselves into the exact same hopeless despair as our characters, as if nothing good will ever come out of this situation and we might as well give up right now - in order to convey that emotion on the page and feel that exhilaration when the character SOLVES the problem and gets that final revelation and makes that final plan.

So if you find yourself in this situation, you might want to review the elements of Act II: Part 2, and take a look at some of these questions to see if they might help you find your way.

ACT II:2

In a 2-hour movie this section starts at about 60 minutes, and ends at about 90 minutes.

In a 400-page book, this section starts at about p. 300 and ends toward the end of the book.

Now, remember, at the end of Act II, part 1, there is a MIDPOINT CLIMAX, which I'll review briefly because it's so important.

In movies the midpoint is usually a big SETPIECE scene, where the filmmakers really show off their expertise with a special effects sequence (as in HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON and HARRY POTTER, 1), or a big action scene (JAWS), or in breathtaking psychological cat-and-mouse dialogue (in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS). It might be a sex scene or a comedy scene, or both in a romantic comedy. Whatever the Midpoint is, it is most likely going to be specific to the promise of the genre.

And I strongly encourage you as authors to pay as much attention to your midpoint as filmmakers do with theirs.

THE MIDPOINT –

- Completely changes the game
- Locks the hero/ine into a situation or action
- Is a point of no return
- Can be a huge revelation
- Can be a huge defeat
- Can be a huge win
- Can be a “now it’s personal” loss
- Can be sex at 60 – the lovers finally get together, only to open up a whole new world of problems

(More on MIDPOINT).

Act II, part 2 will almost always have these elements:

* RECALIBRATING– after the shock or defeat of the game-changer in the midpoint, the hero/ine must REVAMP THE PLAN and try a NEW MODE OF ATTACK.

What’s the new plan?

* STAKES

A good story will always be clear about the stakes. Characters often speak the stakes aloud. How have the stakes changed? Do we have new hopes or fears about what the protagonist will do and what will happen to him or her?

* ESCALATING ACTIONS/OBSESSIVE DRIVE

Little actions by the hero/ine to get what s/he wants have not cut it, so the actions become bigger and usually more desperate.

Do we see a new level of commitment in the hero/ine?

How are the hero/ine’s actions becoming more desperate?

* It’s also worth noting that while the hero/ine is generally (but not always!) winning in Act II:1, s/he generally begins to lose in Act II:2. Often this is where everything starts to unravel and spiral out of control.

* INCREASED ATTACKS BY ANTAGONIST

Just as the hero/ine is becoming more desperate to get what s/he wants, the antagonist also has failed to get what s/he wants and becomes more desperate and takes riskier actions.

* HARD CHOICES AND CROSSING THE LINE (IMMORAL ACTIONS by the main character to get what s/he wants)

Do we see the hero/ine crossing the line and doing immoral things to get what s/he wants?

* LOSS OF KEY ALLIES (possibly because of the hero/ine’s obsessive actions, possibly through death or injury by the antagonist).

Do any allies walk out on the hero/ine or get killed or injured?

* A TICKING CLOCK (can happen anywhere in the story, or there may not be one.)

* REVERSALS AND REVELATIONS/TWISTS

* THE LONG DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL and/or VISIT TO DEATH (also known as: ALL IS LOST).

There is always a moment in a story where the hero/ine seems to have lost everything, and it is almost always right before the Second Act Climax, or it IS the Second Act Climax.

What is the All Is Lost scene?

* In a romance or romantic comedy, the All Is Lost moment is often a THE LOVER MAKES A STAND scene, where s/he tells the loved one – “Enough of this bullshit waffling, either commit to me or don’t, but if you don’t, I’m out of here.” This can be the hero/ine or the love interest making this stand.

THE SECOND ACT CLIMAX

* Often will be a final revelation before the end game: often the knowledge of who the opponent really is, that will propel the hero/ine into the FINAL BATTLE.

* Often will be another devastating loss, the ALL IS LOST scene. In a mythic structure or Chosen One story or mentor story this is almost ALWAYS where the mentor dies or is otherwise taken out of the action, so the hero/ine must go into the final battle alone.

* Answers the Central Question – and often the answer is “no” – so that the hero/ine again must come up with a whole new plan.

* Often is a SETPIECE.

More discussion on Elements Of Act II:2

And here are the elements and questions for Act Three:

ACT THREE

The third act is basically the Final Battle and Resolution. It can often be one continuous sequence – the chase and confrontation, or confrontation and chase. There may be a final preparation for battle, or it might be done on the fly. Either here or in the last part of the second act the hero will make a new, FINAL PLAN, based on the new information and revelations of the second act.

The essence of a third act is the final showdown between protagonist and antagonist. It is often divided into two sequences:

1. Getting there (Storming the Castle) (Sequence 7).

2. The final battle itself (Sequence 8)

* In addition to the FINAL PLAN, there may be another GATHERING OF THE TEAM, and a brief TRANING SEQUENCE.

• There may well be DEFEATS OF SECONDARY OPPONENTS (each one of which should be given a satisfying end or comeuppance. (This may also happen earlier, in Act II:2).

* Thematic Location - often a visual and literal representation of the Hero/ine’s Greatest Nightmare
-
* The protagonist’s character change
-
* The antagonist’s character change (if any)

* Possibly ally/allies’ character change (s) and/or gaining of desire (s)

* Possibly a huge final reversal or reveal (twist), or even a whole series of payoffs that you’ve been saving (as in Back to the Future and It’s A Wonderful Life)

* RESOLUTION: A glimpse into the New Way of Life that the hero/ine will be living after this whole ordeal and all s/he’s learned from it.

• Possibly a sense of coming FULL CIRCLE – returning to the opening image or scene and showing how much things have changed, or how the hero/ine has changed inside, causing her or him to deal with the same place and situation in a whole different way.

* Closing Image

More on Act Three:

Elements of Act Three

What Makes a Great Climax?

Elevate Your Ending

Now, I'd also like to remind everyone that this is a basic, GENERAL list. There are story elements specific to whatever kind of story you're writing, and the best way to get familiar with what those are is to do (or take a look at story breakdowns on three (at least) movies or books that are similar to the KIND of story you're writing.

What KIND Of Story Is It?

I hope that there's something there to get you through that third quarter, but I'll post a few more brainstorming tricks this week.

In the meantime, good luck with the family! I mean, Happy Thanksgiving!

- Alex

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

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Nanowrimo: Best writing advice

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 02:52:00 +0000

Okay, this has probably been going on forever and I’m just catching on. But I just discovered that the Amazon pages of my books are continually compiling the most highlighted quotes from my books.

To explain for those of you who might not have an e reader - yet - you can highlight passages of books that you read on your Kindle to refer back to at your leisure. Whether or not you, the reader, know that this information is being compiled online is a different question. Some books you might not want to have those special passages highlighted, if you see what I mean.

But the Big Brother aspect is a different post. This highlighted quotes feature is actually totally EXCELLENT news for me because it means today,instead of a long blog post on what I think is important advice, I can just give you a pithy list of what readers think is the best advice in my Screenwriting Tricks books. and you all know how much I love lists.

So here you go:

Top Ten highlighted quotes from Screenwriting Tricks for Authors.

On LOGLINES/PREMISES --

- The premise sentence should give you a sense of the entire story: the character of the protagonist, the character of the antagonist, the conflict, the setting, the tone, the genre.

- All of these premises contain a defined protagonist, a powerful antagonist, a sense of the setting, conflict and stakes, and a sense of how the action will play out.

- Write a one-sentence premise that contains all these story elements: protagonist, antagonist, conflict, stakes, setting, atmosphere and genre.

On a character’s GHOST or WOUND

- We all unconsciously seek out people, events and situations that duplicate our core trauma(s), in the hope of eventually triumphing over the situation that so wounded us.

On CHARACTER ARC:

- The arc of the character is what the character learns during the course of the story, and how s/he changes because of it. It could be said that the arc of a character is almost always about the character realizing that s/he's been obsessed with an outer goal or desire, when what she really needs to be whole, fulfilled, and lovable is _______ (fill in the blank).

On HOPE and FEAR

- Our fear for the character should be the absolute worst case scenario:

- The lesson here is - spend some quality time figuring out how to bring your hero/ine's greatest nightmare to life: in setting, set decoration, characters involved, actions taken. If you know your hero/ine's ghost and greatest fear, then you should be able to come up with a great setting (for the climax/final battle) that will be unique, resonant, and entirely specific to that protagonist (and often to the villain as well.)

On PLAN (and ACT II)

- This continual opposition of the protagonist's and antagonist's plans is the main underlying structure of the second act.

ON CONFLICT/ANTAGONISM

- STACK THE ODDS AGAINST YOUR PROTAGONIST. It's just ingrained in us to love an underdog.

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- Top ten highlighted quotes from Writing Love

- “Every genre has its own game that it’s playing with the audience.”

- The game in the romance genre is often to show, through the hero and heroine, how we are almost always our own worst enemies in love, and how we throw up all kinds of obstacles in our own paths to keep ourselves from getting what we want.

- A great, emotionally effective technique within the final battle is to have the hero/ine LOSE THE BATTLE TO WIN THE WAR.

- This continual opposition of the protagonist’s and antagonist’s plans is the main underlying structure of the second act.

- I’m a firm believer that just ASKING the questions will prompt your creative brain to leap into overdrive and come up with the right scenes. Our minds and souls long to be creative, they just need us to stop stalling and get our asses in gear.

- So once you’ve got your initial plan, you need to be constantly blocking that plan, either with your antagonist, or the hero/ine’s own inner conflict, or outside forces beyond her or his control.

- Very often in the second act we will see a battle before the final battle in which the hero/ine fails because of some weakness, so the suspense is even greater when s/he goes into the final battle (climax) in the third act.

- The final battle (climax) is also a chance to PAY OFF ALL YOUR SETUPS AND PLANTS. Very often you will have set up a weakness for your hero/ine. That weakness that has caused him or her to fail repeatedly in previous tests, and in the final battle (climax) the hero/ine’s great weakness will be tested.

- “Get the hero up a tree. Throw rocks at him. Get him down.”

- After I’ve finished that grueling, hellish first draft, the fun starts. I do layer after layer after layer: different drafts for suspense, for character; sensory drafts, emotional drafts, each concentrating on a different aspect that I want to hone in the story, until the clock runs out and I have to turn the whole thing in.

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And that happens to be the step I'm on right now, pass after pass after pass. But it's coming together! How's everyone's Nano going?

- Alex

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Ready, Set, Nano!

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:29:00 +0000

It's here - the big day. Big month. Big everything.

The queen of suspense, Mary Higgins Clark, said about first drafts:

Writing a first draft is like clawing my way through a mountain of concrete with my bare hands.

Isn't that the truth?

Well, the point of Nano is to write so fast that you - sometimes - forget that your hands are dripping blood. It's a stellar way of turning off your censor (we all have one of those little suckers) and just get those pages out.

I'll be posting Nano prompts throughout the month, but here's a list of helpful hints if you find yourself stuck.

1. Keep moving forward – DO NOT go back and endlessly revise your first chapters. You may end up throwing them out anyway. Just move forward. If you’re stuck on a scene, just write down vaguely what might happen in it or where it might happen as a place marker and move on to a scene you know better. The first draft can be just a sketch – the important thing is to get it all down, from beginning to end. Then you can start to layer in all the other stuff.

2. Keep the story elements checklist close at hand for easy reference.

- Story Elements Checklist for Generating Index Cards

Or if you prefer the elements in a narrative:

Narrative Structure Cheat Sheet

3. Review the elements of the act you're stuck on.

- Elements of Act One

- Elements of Act Two, Part 1

- Elements of Act Two, Part 2

- Elements of Act Three

- What Makes A Great Climax?

- Elevate Your Ending

- Creating Character

4. As you're writing, you will find out more about your story. Write the premise again, and make sure you have identified and understand the Plan and Central Story Action.

- Plan, Central Question, Central Story Action

- What's the Plan?

- Plan, Central Question, Central Story Action, part 2

5. When you’re stuck - make a list.

- Stuck? Make A List.

6. Do word lists of visual and thematic elements for your story to build your image systems. Start a collage book or online clip file of images if that appeals to you.

- Thematic Image Systems

7. Remember that the first draft is always going to suck.

- Your First Draft Is Always Going To Suck

8. You can always watch movies and do breakdowns to inspire you and break you through a block.

Good luck, everyone - and feel free to stop in and gripe!

- Alex

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Writing the Dark

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:57:00 +0000

I know, we're in the middle of the story elements for Nano, but it's HALLOWEEN, people!

I love - not just the day. October is my favorite month of the year. Always has been – the wind, the lengthening shadows, that subtle chill in the air. I guess that speaks to an early taste for the dark. Is that nature or nurture, I wonder?

I suspect that pretty much every single darker writer of us has at some point gotten the question: “What’s a nice girl/boy like you doing writing stuff like THAT?”

Well, first of all, “nice”? Um… responsible, sure. Compassionate, empathetic, thoughtful. Kind, even. But “nice” isn’t the first word that comes to my mind.
Still, much as I may disagree with the word choice, I know what these nice people are trying to ask.

As regular readers of this blog know, I'm big on identifying THEMES in your work. This is hard to escape when you write horror and crime fiction and are always being asked what life incidents led you to choose this dark genre of ours (some of us darker than others….).

For instance, I realized after seeing the movie ZODIAC that the Zodiac killer was a huge early – influence? Inspiration? Impression? What I mean is, I grew up in California and even years after this guy had dropped off the map, we kids were scaring ourselves senseless by telling ourselves Zodiac stories around the fire at Girl Scout camp. He was our Boogey Man.

A lot of the blame I can put squarely on my father. Dad loved horror and suspense -- books, movies, plays, anything – the house was full of mystery and horror and sci-fi classics, so early on I developed a taste for being scared senseless – possibly in self-defense. Also, Dad grew up in Mexico and that country lives with spirits in a much different way than we do (don’t you just love this month for all of the Dia de Los Muertos art?) Dad had a passel of terrifyingly realistic ghost stories that he’d pull out around the campfire to scare us with. Come to think of it, I had a lot of campfires in my childhood…

Also, since Dad was a scientist and Russian, and attended a lot of scientific conferences that got turned into family road trips, I have early memories of us in the family station wagon being followed by the CIA because, you know, Russians were out to destroy the world at the time. All that ever happened was that they followed us around but naturally I’d spice the whole thing up in my imagination – my first attempts at thrillers.

It’s also only recently occurred to me that perhaps I write ghosts because I went to a haunted high school – specifically, the grand and decrepit old auditorium where I spent most of my high school, rehearsing choir programs and plays, was supposedly haunted by a girl named Vicki who died the night of her prom back in the 20’s. Yes, yes, I know that’s a classic urban legend, but we all believed in Vicki, and there were parts of that auditorium where you just didn’t want to go, alone or with others. Cold spots. Strange noises. Disappearing props.

(But somehow it never once crossed my mind while I was writing THE HARROWING that I was writing about a haunted school because I went to a haunted school. And THE SPACE BETWEEN features a school haunted in an entirely different way.).

Also when I was a teenager I experimented with the paranormal, as teenagers do - ESP, dream interpretation, Tarot, spending the night in graveyards, all that fun stuff (that shows up in everything that I write: And you know, there's a lot more in heaven and earth, Horatio! It never ceases to fascinate me.

I have to admit, though - to me those otherworldly experiences are never as horrifying as the evil that people can do. From the time I was a very young child I was very sensitive to the fact that there's a lot of weirdness out there, and a lot of danger from unstable people. My family did quite a bit of traveling, so along with all the good stuff - great art, ancient cultures, different mores and political beliefs - I was exposed to disturbing images and situations: poverty, desperation, oppression, madness.

I had some pretty scary experiences early on in life that made me convinced that there is actual evil out there – in the form of people who have something terribly wrong with them, who actively want to hurt and destroy. A child molester who’d been trolling the streets around my elementary school tried to grab me one afternoon when I was walking home from school. He was a small and creepy man, and even though I didn’t have any concrete sense of what child molesting was at the time, I knew there was something wrong and dangerous about him and I ran. That was my first full-on experience of what evil looks and feels like, though certainly not my last - and it’s not something you forget or let go.

And I had friends, as we all do, who were not so lucky about escaping predators, and I’ve taught abused kids in the Los Angeles juvenile court system, and my anger about what I’ve seen has fueled a lot of my writing.

There’s more, of course, and once you start thinking of influences, it’s pretty fascinating how much you uncover about your motivations.

But the great, cathartic thing for me about good mysteries, thrillers, horror, suspense - is that you can work through those issues of good and evil. You can walk vicariously into those perilous situations and face your fears and - sometimes - triumph.

So, all, I wondered - what kinds of experiences from real life have made the dark writers of you the dark, twisted souls you are? And for the readers of you – why do you think you seek out this dark, twisted genre?

And it you AREN'T one of those darker souls, have you spent some time thinking about the themes of your work and why you write what you do?

As it's Halloween, there are treats. I just got my author copies of the UK version of my poltergeist thriller, THE UNSEEN, with this fabulous cover (It actually gave me a bad nightmare, and I almost never have nightmares.)

And in anticipation of the e book release, I'll also give away a signed copy of THE HARROWING to a random commenter. Yes, the comment can be a question about Nano!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

- Alex

Nanowrimo: Elements of Act Two, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 16:30:00 +0000

MIDPOINT

All of the first half of the second act – that’s p. 30-60 in a script, p. 100 to p. 200 in a 400-page book, is leading up to the MIDPOINT. So the Midpoint occurs at about one hour into a movie, and at about page 200 in a book.

The Midpoint is one of the most important scenes or sequences in any book or film: a major shift in the dynamics of the story. Something huge will be revealed; something goes disastrously wrong; someone close to the hero/ine dies, intensifying her or his commitment (What I call the “Now it’s personal” scene… imagine Clint Eastwood or Bruce Willis growling the line). Often the whole emotional dynamic between characters changes with what Hollywood calls, “Sex at Sixty” (that’s 60 minutes, not sixty years!).
The Midpoint is also often called the MOMENT OF COMMITMENT or the POINT OF NO RETURN or NO TURNING BACK: the hero/ine commits irrevocably to the action.

Often a TICKING CLOCK is introduced at the Midpoint, as we will discuss further in the chapter on Creating Suspense (Chapter 31). A clock is a great way to speed up the action and increase the urgency of your story.

The Midpoint can also be a huge defeat, which requires a recalculation and NEW PLAN of attack. It’s a game-changer, and it locks the hero/ine even more inevitably into the story.

In Sense and Sensibility, the Midpoint is the emotionally wrenching scene in which Lucy Steele reveals to Elinor that she has been secretly engaged to Edward Ferrars for five years. We are so committed to Edward and Elinor’s love that we are as devastated as Elinor is, and just as shocked that Edward would have lied to her. The Midpoint is even more wrenching because Elinor’s sister Marianne has also just been abandoned by her love interest. It’s a double-punch to the gut.

In Notting Hill, Julia Roberts has asked Hugh Grant up to her hotel suite for the first time, and Hugh walks in to find that Julia’s movie star boyfriend, Alec Baldwin, whom Hugh knew nothing about, is already there with her. We know that Hugh’s GHOST is that his ex-wife left him for a man who looked just like Harrison Ford (Alec is pretty close!), and to add to this blow, Alec mistakes Hugh for a room-service waiter and tips him, asking him to clean up while he takes Julia into the bedroom. Total emotional annihilation.

In a romance, the Midpoint is very often sexual or emotional. But the Midpoint can often be one of the most memorable visual SETPIECES of the story, just to further drive its importance home.

Note that the Midpoint is not necessarily just one scene; it can be a double punch as I just pointed out about Sense And Sensibility, and it can also be a progression of scenes and revelations that include a climactic scene, a complete change of location, a major revelation, a major reversal, a cliffhanger – all or any combination of the above.

One of the great Midpoints in theater and film is in My Fair Lady. Talk about a double punch! There is not one iconic song at the Midpoint curtain, but two: first “The Rain In Spain”, in which Eliza finally starts to speak with perfect diction, and Professor Higgins, the Colonel, and Eliza celebrate with wild and joyous dancing: a moment of triumph. Then when the housekeeper takes Eliza upstairs to bed, Higgins privately tells the Colonel that she’s ready: they can test her out in public. He intends to take her to an Embassy ball and pass her off as a lady to win his bet with the Colonel, which Eliza knows nothing about. Meanwhile upstairs, giddy with happiness, Eliza sings “I Could Have Danced All Night”, and we realize she has fallen in love with the Professor.
Not just two of the greatest songs of the musical theater in a row, but all of this SETUP, big HOPE, FEAR, and STAKES. Eliza is in love with Higgins and he’s just using her for a bet. There’s a huge TEST coming up at this ball, and we saw excitable Eliza fail miserably in her first public test at the Ascot races. There’s a penalty of prison for impersonating a lady, so there are not just the emotional stakes of a possible broken heart, but possible prison time.

Do you think anyone was not going to come back into the theater to see what happens at that ball?

Asking a big question like that is a great technique to use at the Midpoint.
A totally different, but equally famous example: in Jaws, the Midpoint climax is actually a whole sequence long: a highly suspenseful setpiece in which the city officials have refused to shut down the beaches, so Sheriff Brody is out there on the beach keeping watch (as if that’s going to prevent a shark attack!), the Coast Guard is patrolling the ocean – and, almost as if it’s aware of the whole plan, the shark swims into an unguarded harbor, where it attacks and swallows a man and for a horrifying moment we think that it has also killed Brody’s son (really it’s only frightened him into near-paralysis). It’s a huge climax and adrenaline rush, but it’s not over yet. Because now the Mayor writes the check to hire Quint to hunt down the shark, and since Brody’s family has been threatened (“Now it’s PERSONAL”), Brody decides to go out with Quint and Hooper on the boat – and there’s also a huge change in location as we see that little boat headed out to the open sea.

But a Midpoint doesn’t have to be a huge action scene. Another interesting and tonally very different Midpoint happens in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I’m sure some people would dispute me on this one (and people argue about the exact midpoint of movies all the time), but I would say the Midpoint is the scene that occurs exactly 60 minutes into the film, in which, having determined that the Nazis are digging in the wrong place in the archeological site, Indy goes down into that chamber with the pendant and a staff of the proper height, and uses the crystal in the pendant to pinpoint the exact location of the Ark.

This scene is quiet, and involves only one person, but it’s mystically powerful – note the use of light and the religious quality of the music… and Indy is decked out in robes almost like, well, Moses. Staff and all. Indy stands like God over the miniature of the temple city, and the beam of light comes through the crystal like light from heaven. It’s all a foreshadowing of the final climax, in which God intervenes in much the same way. Very effective, with lots of subliminal manipulation going on. And of course, at the end of the scene, Indy has the information he needs to retrieve the Ark. I would also point out that the Midpoint is often some kind of mirror image of the final climax; it’s an interesting device to use, and you may find yourself using it without even being aware of it.

(I will concede that in Raiders, you could call the Midpoint a two-parter: Indy’s discovery that Marion is still alive is a big twist. But personally I think that scene is part of the next sequence).

It really pays to start taking note of the Midpoints of films and books. If you find that your story is sagging in the middle, the first thing you should look at is your Midpoint scene.

I know this and I still sometimes forget it. When I turned in my poltergeist novel, The Unseen, I knew that I was missing something in the middle, even though there was a very clear change in location and focus at the Midpoint: it’s the point at which my characters actually move into the supposedly haunted house and begin their experiment.

But there was still something missing in the scene right before, the close of the first half, and my editor had the same feeling, without really knowing what was needed, although it had something to do with the motivation of the heroine – the reason she would put herself in that kind of danger. So I looked at the scene before the characters moved in to the house, and lo and behold: what I was missing was “Sex at Sixty”. It’s my heroine’s desire for one of the other characters that makes her commit to the investigation, and I wasn’t making that desire line clear enough.

The Midpoint often LOCKS THE HERO/INE INTO A COURSE OF ACTION, or sometimes, physically locks the hero/ine into a location.

A great recent example is Inception: at the Midpoint, there’s a big action sequence, ending in a gun battle in which one of the allies, Saito (who hired the team to break into this dream) is badly wounded, and the team discovers that they can’t get out of the dream while Saito is unconscious. They’re stuck, perhaps forever, which forces them to devise a new PLAN.

There’s a not-so recent movie called Ghost Ship, about a salvage crew investigating a derelict ocean liner which has mysteriously appeared out in the middle of the Bering Straight, after being lost without a trace for forty years. At the Midpoint, the salvage crew’s own boat mysteriously catches on fire and sinks (taking one of the crew with it), forcing the entire crew to board the haunted ocean liner. They are physically locked into the situation, now, and their original PLAN – to tow the ocean liner back to shore – must change; they now have to repair the ocean liner and sail her out of the Strait. This development also solves the perennial problem of haunted house – or haunted ship – stories: “Why don’t the characters just leave?”

It’s a great Midpoint scene for all of the above reasons, plus it’s a great visual and action setpiece: the explosion of the salvage boat, the rescue (and loss) of crew members, and the suspense of who will get out of the water and on to the ocean liner alive.

RECALIBRATING THE PLAN

The game-changing action of the Midpoint will very often cause the hero/ine to have to recalibrate the PLAN.

In Sense And Sensibility, the PLAN was for Elinor and Marianne to marry well (hopefully for love), and secure their family’s future. At the Midpoint, their initial hopes for marriage are crushed, and immediately afterward the Mentor character, Mrs. Jennings, proposes a NEW PLAN: to take the sisters to London for “the Season”, where she is sure she can marry them off.

In While You Were Sleeping, Lucy’s PLAN is to continue pretending to be Peter’s fiancée to keep his family happy while he’s in the coma (partly to keep his grandmother from having a heart attack). At the Midpoint, Peter wakes from the coma, and now Lucy plans to confess the ruse to the family (but it’s complicated…)

As always, however the hero/ine decides to change the plan, it’s useful to state it aloud.

ESCALATING ACTIONS/ OBSESSIVE DRIVE

Now the actions your hero/ine takes toward his or her goal will become larger and increasingly obsessive. Small actions have not cut it, and there may also have been a big failure at the Midpoint, so it’s time for desperate measures.

In fact, I’ve noticed that in a lot of stories, the hero/ine tends to be winning throughout Act II, part 1, but after the Midpoint, in Act II, part 2, the hero/ine suddenly starts to lose, and lose big.

Losing leads to escalating actions by the hero/ine, and these escalating actions will often lead to HARD CHOICES and CROSSING THE LINE: The hero/ine actually starts doing things that are against character, self-destructive, or downright immoral. You see Bill Murray start to self-destruct and lash out at everyone around him in Act II:2 of Groundhog Day after Andie MacDowell rejects him (and rejects him again, and again, and again!) at the Midpoint.

And often the hero/ine will LOSE SUPPORT FROM KEY ALLIES when s/he begins to cross the line.

ESCALATING ACTIONS/ATTACKS BY ANTAGONIST

In Act II:2, the antagonist is escalating his or her actions as well – because of course, s/he hasn’t won yet, either, and is getting frustrated, and probably tired. The attacks are more brutal, and often more lethal. In suspense, very often the most intense action sequences happen during this third quarter, and this is another place that the hero/ine’s ally or allies may be killed. In a romantic comedy, this is where everything starts to spiral out of control (Tootsie is a great example, as we see Michael’s double life start to run him ragged).

THE LONG DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL (ALL IS LOST)

This third quarter of your story is almost certainly going to contain a scene or sequence which since the ancient Greeks has been called THE LONG DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL, also known as ALL IS LOST, or APPARENT DEFEAT, or THE BLACK MOMENT, or VISIT TO DEATH (which may also be a separate scene). The detective is thrown off the case, the crucial lawsuit is dismissed, a key witness is killed, an ally walks out. In The Wizard of Oz it’s when Dorothy is locked in the witch’s tower with that huge red hourglass. The hero/ine metaphorically dies in this scene, and often it’s because a loved one has actually died.

Yet like the phoenix, rising from the ashes, the hero/ine also formulates one last desperate plan, or figures out the missing piece of the puzzle, and comes out of the long dark night even more determined to win.

In lighter romance, the All Is Lost Scene is very, very often a scene I call THE LOVER MAKES A STAND. In this scene the Lover, the one who loves most deeply, basically says to the Loved One: “I’m not going to take your bullshit any more. Make up your mind. Either commit to me or don’t, but if you don’t, I’m out of here.”

In It’s Complicated: Steve Martin tells Meryl Streep that she’s not done with Alec yet, and Steve doesn’t want to see her while she’s still emotionally involved with him. In Notting Hill: Hugh Grant tells Julia Roberts in the bookstore that between her “foul temper” and his far less experienced heart, he doesn’t think he would recover from being discarded again, and turns down her offer to date. In When Harry Met Sally, Sally refuses Harry’s offer to go to the New Year’s party as a friendly date: “I’m not your consolation prize, Harry.”

In all of the above scenes, the Lover’s Stand forces the Loved One to step up and commit just as deeply as the Lover is committed. But it seems that very, very, very often, it’s one character, the Lover, who has to force the issue.

Also in romance, the All Is Lost moment is often the scene in which the WRONG PERSON PROPOSES (or the hero/ine proposes to the wrong person!) and All Is Lost because the hero/ine, for whatever reason, foolishly accepts.

This scene is usually very near the climax of the second act (either right before it or right after it) because it’s such a boost of energy to go from losing everything to gaining that key piece of knowledge that will power the hero/ine through the final confrontation to the end. In fact, the All Is Lost Moment is so big it often serves as the Act II Climax (page 90 of a script, page 300 or so of a novel).

But the Act Two Climax can also be a final revelation before the end game.

In suspense, it’s a very common storytelling device that the hero/ine’s main ally is revealed to be an enemy, or the main enemy, and it also often happens also that the hero/ine’s enemy is revealed to be more of a friend than we ever suspected (a classic example of this is Chief Renault in Casablanca, who not only covers for Rick’s murder of the Nazi Strasser, but junks his post to go fight the Nazis with Rick). This device can work just as well in romance, as we see in New In Town, when Lucy realizes her real antagonists are the executives of her own company, who are about to close the factory that Lucy has come to love. This is quickly followed by a great revelation that Lucy might be able to save the factory, and all the workers’ jobs, by using her ally Blanche’s secret tapioca recipe. And shortly after that, her biggest antagonist, the factory foreman, becomes her biggest ally in revamping the factory.

The second act climax is another place that you might start a TICKING CLOCK (although a clock can begin at virtually any time in a story).

Also usually at the climax of Act Two, the CENTRAL QUESTION of the story, that was asked in the first act, is answered. And here’s an interesting structural paradigm to consider. In a lot of stories, the answer is often: No.

In The Proposal, the Central Question is: “Will Margaret and Andrew be able to successfully fake a marriage and pass the INS test on Monday?” But at the Act II Climax, as Margaret prepares to walk down the aisle in front of Andrew’s family, she realizes she can’t go through with it. Andrew deserves more than a fake marriage. She confesses the ruse, apologizes to the family, and walks out on the wedding to surrender herself to the INS.

This is a good example of how the hero/ine is often pursuing the wrong goal, and has to give up on what s/he thought she wanted in order to get what she truly needs. If you put that moment at the Act Two Climax, it plays as a TWIST, which is always a great thing in storytelling.

There’s one more general point I’d like to make about Act II, Part 2. In shorter films and stories, this is the section that is most often shortened and compressed. There’s a big buildup in Act II, Part 1, and then after the Midpoint reversal, a quick slide into chaos and an All Is Lost moment in Act II, Part 2. And very often romances are shorter stories than other genres, and from what I’ve seen, it definitely holds true that Act II:2 is the section that is most often shortened.

Just something to keep in mind!

Next, Act Three – the FINAL BATTLE and RESOLUTION.

- Alex

And if you'd like to to see more of these story elements in action, I strongly recommend that you watch at least one and much better, three of the films I break down in the workbooks, following along with my notes.

I do full breakdowns of Chinatown, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Romancing the Stone, and The Mist, and act breakdowns of You've Got Mail, Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, Raiders of the Lost Ark in Screenwriting Tricks For Authors.

I do full breakdowns of The Proposal, Groundhog Day, Sense and Sensibility, Romancing the Stone, Leap Year, Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sea of Love, While You Were Sleeping and New in Town in Writing Love.

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Nanowrimo: Elements of Act Two, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:10:00 +0000

13. Act Two is summed up by the greats such as, like, you know, Aristotle — as “Rising Tension” or “Progressive Complications.” Or in the classic screenwriting formula: Act One is “Get the Hero Up a Tree,” and Act Two is “Throw Rocks at Him.” (And for the impatient out there, I’ll reveal that Act Three is “Get Him Down.”)

All true enough, but a tad vague for my taste.

Here’s the thing. The first half of Act Two, which we will call Act II, Part 1 (30-60 minutes in a film, pages 100-200 in a book), is the most variable of all the acts. I can give you very specific story elements, even give them to you in a relative order, for every other part of a story, but Act II:1 can be maddening. That is, I think, because what happens in Act II:1 is totally dependent on what KIND of story you’re telling. Is it a mystery, a fairy tale, a reluctant witness story, a mistaken identity story, a mythic journey, an epic, a forbidden love story, a Chosen One story, a magical day story, several of the above, or something else entirely?

Each one of those story types has its own particular structure and story elements besides the general key story structure elements we’ve been talking about, and Act II:1 is where you most often see those specific story elements come into play.

Here are the general story elements that you will usually find in Act II, Part 1, no matter what genre or story pattern you’re working with.

The beginning of the second act of a book or film (30 minutes or 30 script pages into a film, 100 or so pages into a book) — can often be summed up as INTO THE SPECIAL WORLD or CROSSING THE THRESHOLD.

We’ve met the hero/ine in their ORDINARY WORLD, and we know something’s missing for them, even if they’re not quite sure what, themselves. They’ve received a CALL TO ADVENTURE, and may have resisted it. But now it’s time for them to leave their comfort zone and go off into the SPECIAL WORLD to go after their heart’s desire.

This step might come in the first act, or once in a while somewhat later in the second act, but it’s generally the end or beginning of a sequence: landing in Alaska in The Proposal; flying down to Cartagena in Romancing the Stone; flying to Rio in Notorious; landing in wintry New Ulm in New in Town. As you can see from those examples, it’s often the beginning of an actual, physical journey, but the Special World can be much closer to home than that. In Meet the Parents it’s the in-laws’ house; in While You Were Sleeping it’s the warm, noisy, rambling Callaghan house; in Four Weddings and a Funeral it’s a wedding (really, a whole season of weddings!). Entering the Special World is a huge moment and deserves special weight.

Dorothy opening the door of her black and white house and stepping into Technicolor Oz is one of the most famous and graphic filmic examples … Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole is a famous literary example. The passageway to the special world might be particularly unique, like the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; that between-the-numbers subway platform in the Harry Potter series; Alice again, going Through the Looking Glass; the cyclone in The Wizard of Oz; the blue pill (or was it the red pill?) in The Matrix; the tesseract in A Wrinkle in Time; the umbrella Mary Poppins uses to travel with (and indeed, you can just study the Mary Poppins books for all kinds of great examples of passageways between worlds). You may not be writing a fantasy, but it’s still useful to look at more colorful examples of the INTO THE SPECIAL WORLD moment to inspire you to capture that feeling of an adventure beginning, even in a much more realistic story.

There is often a character who serves the archetypal function of a THRESHOLD GUARDIAN or GUARDIAN AT THE GATE, who gives the hero/ine trouble or a warning at this moment of entry; it’s a much-used but often powerfully effective suspense technique that always gets the pulse racing just a little faster, which is pretty much the point of suspense. At the very least a guardian at the gate will give the hero/ine conflict in a scene.

(While we’re on the subject, I highly recommend (again) Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey and John Truby’s Anatomy of Story for brilliant in-depth discussions on archetypal characters such as the Herald, Mentor, Shapeshifter, Threshold Guardian, and Trickster/Fool.)

If this has not already happened in Act One, the very early in the second act, the Hero/ine must formulate and state the PLAN. To review: we know the hero/ine’s GOAL or OUTER DESIRE by now (or if we don’t, we need to hear it, specifically). And now we need to know how the hero/ine intends to go about getting that goal. It needs to be spelled out in no uncertain terms. “Dorothy’s PLAN is to journey to the Emerald City to ask the mysterious Wizard of Oz to send her home to Kansas.” “Margaret and Andrew’s PLAN is to pretend they’re married and learn everything they can about each other during the weekend with Andrew’s family so they can pass the INS marriage test on Monday.” “Anna’s PLAN is to pay Declan to get her across Ireland to Dublin in time for her to propose to her boyfriend on Leap Day.”

Notice in the above examples that when I spell out the PLAN, I am also summing up the CENTRAL ACTION of each story: journey to Oz, pretend to be married, get across Ireland. This is so key to storytelling I wish I could somehow physically implant it in the brain of everyone who reads this book. Writers so often have no idea what the Central Action of their story is, or the Plan, and it’s the lack of these two things that is almost always where a story falls flat.

As we’ve already discussed, it’s human nature to expend the least amount of energy to get what we want. So the hero/ine’s Plan will change, constantly — as s/he first takes the absolute minimal steps to achieve her or his goal, and that minimal effort inevitably fails. So then, often reluctantly, the hero/ine has to ESCALATE (or CHANGE) THE PLAN.

Also throughout the second act, the antagonist has his or her own goal and plan, which is in direct conflict or competition with the hero/ine’s goal. We may actually see the forces of evil plotting their plots (John Grisham does this brilliantly in The Firm), or we may only see the effect of the antagonist’s plot in the continual thwarting of the hero/ine’s plans. Both techniques are effective.

This continual opposition of the protagonist’s and antagonist’s plans is the main underlying structure of the second act.

(I’m giving that its own, bold line to make sure it sinks in.)

The hero/ine’s plans should almost always be stated (although something might be held back even from the reader/audience, as in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca — that Bogey was a sly one). The antagonist’s plans might be clearly stated or kept hidden — but the effect of his/her/their plotting should be evident. It’s good storytelling if we, the reader or audience, are able to look back on the story at the end and understand how the hero/ine’s failures were a direct result of the antagonist’s scheming.

Another important storytelling and suspense technique (and I mean suspense as it plays out in any genre, not just thrillers) is KEEPING THE HERO/INE AND ANTAGONIST IN CLOSE PROXIMITY. Think of it as a chess game: the players are in a very small, confined space, and always passing within inches of each other, whether or not they’re aware of it. They should cross paths often, even if it’s not until the end until the hero/ine and the audience understand that the antagonist has been there in the shadows all along. In Romancing the Stone, a romantic comedy/adventure, you see protagonist Joan Wilder, and villain Zolo, and comic villains Ralph and Ira, all passing within spitting distance of each other, constantly. It’s a great suspense technique in itself. In While You Were Sleeping, Lucy is always running into her apparent antagonist, Peter’s brother Jack, at the hospital, as both of them are constantly visiting Peter.

Act II:1 is also where you really need to deliver on THE PROMISE OF THE PREMISE. That is, if you’re writing a fantasy, you need to give us scenes that give us the experience of wonder and magic. If you’re writing a comedy, you better be making us laugh. If you’re writing any kind of romance, here’s where we want to see and feel the hero and heroine falling in love, even if from the outside it looks more like the two of them are trying to kill each other. Think of the EXPERIENCE you want your reader or audience to have, and make sure you’re creating that experience; it’s one of your primary jobs as a writer.

The hero/ine’s ALLIES will be introduced in the second act, if they haven’t already been introduced in Act I. One of the great pleasures of Act II, Part 1 is experiencing the BONDING between the hero/ine and the allies, the team, the mentor or the love interest — or all of the above.

In fact, there is often an entire sequence you could call ASSEMBLING THE TEAM which comes early in the second act. The hero/ine has a task and needs a group of specialists to get it done. Action movies, spy movies and caper movies very often have this step and it often lasts a whole sequence. Think of Armageddon, The Sting, Mission Impossible (I mean the great TV series, of course), The Dirty Dozen, Star Wars. But you also see the team being assembled in fantasies like The Wizard of Oz and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Lord of the Rings. One of the delights of a sequence like this is that you see a bunch of highly skilled pros in top form — or alternately, a bunch of unlikely amateurs, losers that you root for because they’re so perfectly pathetic. I had fun with this in The Harrowing; even if you’re not writing an action or caper story, which I definitely wasn’t in that book, if you’ve got an ensemble cast of characters, the techniques of an Assembling the Team sequence can be hugely helpful. The inevitable clash of personalities, the constant divaness and one-upmanship, and the reluctant bonding, make for some great scenes; it’s a lively and compelling storytelling technique that you can see at its best in Four Weddings and a Funeral (in fact almost all of the films of Richard Curtis have stellar ensembles).

There is also often a TRAINING SEQUENCE in the first half of the second act. In a mentor movie, this is a pretty obligatory sequence. Think of Karate Kid, and that priceless Meeting the Mentor/Training sequence that introduces Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back.

There’s often a SERIES OF TESTS designed by the mentor (look at An Officer and a Gentleman and Silence of the Lambs). It could be the antagonist who is putting the heroine through tests (there’s a great sequence of this in While You Were Sleeping). And when there is no mentor, it may be life itself that seems to be designing the tests and challenges (well, and doesn’t life do exactly that?). Look at how Fate slyly intervenes in Groundhog Day, and in a more subtle way, in French Kiss.

Another inevitable element of the training sequence, and common to Act II:1 in general, is PLANTS AND PAYOFFS. For example, we learn that the hero/ine (and/or other members of the team) has a certain weakness in battle. That weakness will naturally have to be tested in the final battle. Yoda continually gets angry with Luke for not trusting the Force … so in his final battle with Vader, Luke’s only chance of survival is putting his entire fate in the hands of the Force he’s not sure he believes in. It’s a lovely moment of spiritual transcendence.

Very often in the second act we will see a battle before the final battle in which the hero/ine fails because of this weakness, so the suspense is even greater when s/he goes into the final battle in the third act. An absolutely beautiful example of this is in Dirty Dancing. In rehearsal after rehearsal, Baby can never, ever keep her balance in that flashy dance lift. She and Johnny attempt the lift in an early dance performance, Baby chickens out, and they cover the flub in an endearingly comic way. But in that final performance number she nails the lift, and it’s a great moment for her as a character and for the audience, quite literally uplifting.

Of course you’ll want to weave Plants and Payoffs all through the story. You can often develop these in rewrites, and it’s a good idea to do one read-through just looking for places to plant and payoff. One of the most classic examples of a plant is Indy freaking out about the snake on the plane in the first few minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The plant is cleverly hidden because we think it’s just a comic moment: this big, bad hero just survived a maze of lethal booby traps and an entire tribe of warriors trying to kill him, and then he wimps out about a little old snake. But the real payoff comes way later when Sallah slides the stone slab off the entrance to the tomb and Indy shines the light down into the pit — to reveal a live mass of thousands of coiling snakes. It’s so much later in the film that we’ve completely forgotten that Indy has a pathological fear of snakes — but that’s what makes it all so funny. (Of course, it’s also a suspense builder in this case: the descent into the tomb is that much more scary because we’re feeling Indy’s revulsion.)

I very strongly encourage novelists to start watching movies for Plants and Payoffs (and I’ve included a whole section on the technique, Chapter 32). Other names for this technique are Setup/Reveal or simply FORESHADOWING (which can be a bit different, more subtle). Woody Allen’s film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, does this beautifully with the long buildup to the entrance of Maria Elena, the Penelope Cruz character. Penelope completely delivers on her introduction and I knew she was a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination for that one. (In fact, she won.)

The Training Sequence can also involve a “Gathering the Tools” or “Gadget” Sequence. The wild gadgets and makeup were a huge part of the appeal of Mission Impossible (original TV series) and spoofed to hysterical success in Get Smart (original TV series), and these days, CSI uses the same technique to massive popular effect.

In a love story or romantic comedy, the Training Sequence or Tools Sequence is often a Shopping Sequence or a Workout Sequence or a Makeover Sequence, or a combination of all of the above. The heroine, with the help of a mentor or ally, undergoes a transformation through acquiring the most important of tools: the right clothes and shoes and hairstyle. It’s worked since Cinderella, whose personal shopper/fairy godmother considerately made house calls. See the original Arthur for the world’s loveliest example — can I have John Gielgud for my fairy godmother, please? But there are practically infinite examples: Miss Congeniality, Clueless, Maid to Order, My Fair Lady, New in Town, The Princess Diaries — we love this scene. Use it!

And the fairy tale version of Gathering the Tools is a really useful structure to look at. Remember all those tales in which the hero or heroine was innocently kind to horrible old hags or helpless animals (or even apple trees), and those creatures and old ladies gave them gifts that turned out to be magical at just the right moment? Plant/Payoff and moral lesson at the same time.

I’d also like to point out that if you happen to have both an Assembling the Team and a Training sequence in your second act, that can add up to a whole fourth of your story right there! Awesome! You’re halfway through already!

In a thriller or romantic suspense or urban fantasy or mystery — or in a fantasy like Harry Potter or The Wizard of Oz — there will be continual ATTACKS ON THE HERO/INE by the antagonist and/or forces of opposition. These will often start subtly and then increase in severity and danger. In a lighter romance these attacks can come from the antagonistic love interest, as in While You Were Sleeping, or the rival for the love interest’s hand (Made of Honor).

In a detective story, which is often also the structure of romantic suspense, paranormals, and urban fantasy, Act Two, Part One often consists very specifically of INTERVIEWING WITNESSES, FOLLOWING CLUES and LINING UP THE SUSPECTS, very often interspersed with ACTION SEQUENCES and ATTACKS ON THE HERO/INE. You will want to weave in RED HERRINGS and FALSE LEADS. And there’s another convention of the genre you’ll want to look at, which is THE DETECTIVE VOICING HIS/HER THEORY. Mysteries are by nature convoluted, because there are so many possible explanations for what’s going on, so don’t be afraid to have your detective or amateur sleuth just say what s/he’s thinking aloud. Your reader or audience will be grateful.

If you are using mystery elements, you will definitely want to break down several classics to see how these elements and sequences are handled. Murder on the Orient Express, Silence of the Lambs, Sea of Love, and Chinatown are great examples to analyze.

Also in the second act of many genres, you may be setting a TICKING CLOCK, which I’ll talk more about in an upcoming chapter on suspense techniques. Note that a clock can be set at any time in a story, not just in Act II.

And you’ll also want to be continually working the dynamic of HOPE and FEAR: you want to be clear about what your audience/reader hopes for your character and fears for your character, as I talked about in Elements of Act One.

A screenwriting trick that I strongly encourage novelists to look at is the filmmakers’ habit of STATING THE HOPE/FEAR AND STAKES, right out loud.

In The Proposal, the INS agent states the penalty for falsifying a marriage: Margaret will be deported, but Andrew faces a $250,000 fine and up to five years in prison. Yikes.

In Sense and Sensibility, numerous parallels are made between Marianne and Colonel Brandon’s tragic love, who ended up basically a prostitute who died in the poorhouse. Talk about fear and stakes! Very realistic for the period.

The writers often just have the characters say flat out what we’re supposed to be afraid of. Spell it out. It works.

All of the first half of the second act is leading up to the MIDPOINT. This is one of the most important scenes or sequences in any story — a huge shift in the dynamics of the story.

It’s so important that I will let you all take a breath now and deal with it in the next post.

- Alex

And if you'd like to to see more of these story elements in action, I strongly recommend that you watch at least one and much better, three of the films I break down in the workbooks, following along with my notes.

I do full breakdowns of Chinatown, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Romancing the Stone, and The Mist, and act breakdowns of You've Got Mail, Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, Raiders of the Lost Ark in Screenwriting Tricks For Authors.

I do full breakdowns of The Proposal, Groundhog Day, Sense and Sensibility, Romancing the Stone, Leap Year, Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sea of Love, While You Were Sleeping and New in Town in Writing Love.

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Nanowrimo: Elements of Act One

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:32:00 +0000

So, now that we’ve talked about the index card method, and basic filmic structure and how it might be applied to novels, the natural question is: What actually goes into a first act?

The first act of a movie (first 30 script pages/30 minutes) or book (first 100 pages, approximately) is the SET UP. By the end of the first act you’re going to be introduced to all the major players of the story, the themes, the location, the visual image system, the conflicts, and especially the main conflict.

If you're making up index cards, you can immediately make up several cards that will go in your first act column. You may or may not know what some of those scenes look like already, but either way, you know they’re all going to be there.

• Opening Image
• Meet the Hero or Heroine 
• The Ordinary World
• Hero/ine’s Inner and Outer Desire 
• Hero/ine’s Problem
• Hero/ine’s Ghost or Wound
• Hero/ine’s Arc
(And yes, in a love story with an equal hero and heroine, each character must have all of the previous five elements!)
• Inciting Incident/ Call to Adventure
• Meet the Antagonist (and/or introduce a Mystery, which is what you do when you’re going to keep your antagonist hidden to reveal at the end)
•  State the Theme/ What’s the story about? 
• Sequence One Climax 
• Introduce Allies 
* Introduce Mentor  (possibly)
• Introduce Love Interest  
• Plants/Reveals (or: Set ups and Payoffs) 
• Hope/Fear (and Stakes) 
• Time Clock (possibly. May not have one and may be revealed later in the story)
• Central Question/Central Story Action 
• Hero/ine’s Plan
• Antagonist's Plan (which we might not know until later in the story, but YOU need to know!)
• Act One Climax

Yeah, it’s a lot! And these are elements that are present in all genres; we haven’t even gotten to story elements specific to specific genres.

That’s why first acts are often the most revised and rewritten sections of the story. It’s also why it’s often the section most in need of cutting and condensing. The answer is usually combining scenes. Every element on that list (except optional elements like the mentor and the ticking clock) has to be present, but they all have to be introduced within such a limited time frame (and page frame) that you simply have to make each scene work on multiple levels.

Let’s break these things down. I’ll do a quick overview here, but we’re going to go in-depth into some of these elements later on.

OPENING IMAGE

In a film you have an opening image by default, whether you plan to or not. It’s the first thing you see in the film. But good filmmakers will use that opening image to establish all kinds of things about the film – mood, tone, location, and especially theme. Think of the opening image of Witness: the serene and isolated calm of wind over a wheat field. It’s the world of the Amish, the non-violent, unhurried world into which city violence will soon be introduced. It’s a great contrast with the next images to come: the chaos and noise of the city. This is a great opening image because it also suggests the climax, which takes place in the grain silo; one of the villains is killed by the spill of grain.

The opening image of Notting Hill is actually a montage of movie star Anna Scott’s career: newspaper headlines, magazine spreads, photo shoots, paparazzi tailing her at premieres and the Oscars. This montage sets up this story’s unusual antagonist; it’s Anna’s fame that is the constant opposition to Will and Anna’s love in this Cinderella story.

The opening image of New in Town is the frozen tundra of New Ulm, Minnesota (in December!), an arctic wasteland compared to the heroine’s Miami home. Of course this sets up the Special World into which fish-out-of water Lucy will be thrust. But the film also uses the images of snow and ice to represent Lucy’s frozen emotions, which will thaw and then melt during the course of this romantic comedy.
Well, what I’m suggesting is that we novelists can steal this idea of opening image to write much more powerful opening pages. We’ll be talking more about that soon.

MEETING THE HERO/INE

Of course you’re going to devise an interesting, clever and evocative introduction to your main character. (And there’s a whole chapter on Character Introductions coming up.) But there are a whole lot of structural details that you need to get across about your hero/ine from the very beginning. You have to know your character’s INNER AND OUTER DESIRES and how they conflict.

I go into the idea of inner and outer desires in depth in both workbooks. For now I’ll just say that it’s usually true that the external desire will be a selfish want – something the protagonist wants for him or herself; and the inner need will be unselfish - something the protagonist comes to want for other people. This is a useful guideline to follow because it clearly shows character growth. But in love stories, there’s usually a more general sense that a hero/ine’s outer desire is for a person (and usually the wrong person!) but their inner desire is to be a better and more complete person, something that s/he is usually best able to accomplish through making a true partnership with the love interest.

Closely entwined with the inner/outer desire lines is the ARC of the character (since you are devising the end of your story at the same time as you’re planning the beginning, right?). The arc of the character is what the character learns during the course of the story, and how s/he changes because of it. It could be said that the arc of a character is almost always about the character realizing that s/he’s been obsessed with an outer goal or desire, when what she really needs to be whole, fulfilled, and lovable is _________ (fill in the blank). On top of that a character will progress, for example: from shy and repressed to a capable and respected leader, from selfish to altruistic, from pathological liar to a seeker of truth. And the bigger the change, the more impact the story will have, as long as you keep it believable.

So it’s essential to know where you want your character to end up, and then work backward to create a number of personal obstacles and external problems that are keeping that character from being everything s/he can be.

THE HERO/INE’S IMMEDIATE PROBLEM

This can mean the Hero/ine’s inner need, but there is often, but not always, one immediately apparent problem that the hero/ine needs to solve, and quickly (such as the threat of deportation in The Proposal.) This can be the INCITING INCIDENT, but is not always. Some stories don’t have this kind of external problem; the problems come later, when, for example, the hero tries to pursue the love interest and is in some way blocked from doing so.

THE ANTAGONIST

The antagonist, opponent, villain deserves his/her own chapter. For now I’ll just say, either you’ll be introducing the antagonist in the first act, or you’ll be introducing a mystery or problem or crisis that has actually been set in motion by the antagonist.
But - it must be said immediately that in many love stories the main antagonist is actually the lover. This is not necessarily so; sometimes there is an obvious outside opponent, or several. When the lover is the main opponent, what you generally see is a DOUBLE REVERSAL: both the protagonist and antagonist change, with significant character arcs, so that they can ultimately be together happily.

ALLIES

Also in the first act, you’ll probably set up most of the hero/ine’s allies: the sidekick, the co-worker, the roommate, the best friend, the love interest, the brother or sister. Allies can also be introduced in other acts of the story.

MENTOR

Not all stories have mentors, and the mentor might not be introduced until some time in the second act.

LOVE INTEREST

This character generally plays a dual role: the love interest can also be the antagonist (as you find in most love stories), an ally, or a mentor.

INCITING INCIDENT/CALL TO ADVENTURE (also called INCITING EVENT)

This is the event that starts the story and forces the hero/ine to react.
In The Proposal, the Canadian heroine Margaret is threatened with deportation because her visa has expired – a pressing EXTERNAL PROBLEM that forces the heroine to react, and quickly (so she pressures her assistant to marry her to keep her legally in the country).

In Sense and Sensibility, the Dashwood women, including sisters Elinor and Marianne, lose their home and all they have when their father dies and the house and estate go to their half-brother according to the law of primogeniture.

In Leap Year, Anna’s very long-term boyfriend gives her earrings instead of the engagement ring she was expecting, and Anna decides to fly to Ireland to propose to him on Leap Day, when any man proposed to by a woman is traditionally required to accept.

In It’s Complicated, Meryl Streep has ex-sex with her ex-husband Alec Baldwin at their son’s graduation, and the two are back into an affair, even though he has remarried.
In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, an owl delivers Harry’s invitation to Hogwart’s School. (The Call to Adventure is very often a literal phone call, summons, knock on the door, or mailed invitation.)

Each of these incidents propels the hero/ine into action. S/he must make a decision – to take the job, accept the task, answer the call. This is not an optional step for you, the writer – it is a crucial part of every story.

Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler detail another step here: THE REFUSAL OF THE CALL. The hero/ine is often (not always!) reluctant to take that step into adventure and at first says no to the job. When you think about it, it’s human nature to resist change, so a little reluctance on the part of the hero/ine can bring some psychological truth to your story, as well as dramatic tension.

Also note that the INCITING INCIDENT and CALL TO ADVENTURE may be the same scene, or they can be two separate scenes. But we’ll talk more about that later.

HOPE/FEAR (and STAKES)

Just as good storytellers will be sure to make it perfectly clear what the main character’s inner and outer desires are, these storytellers will also be very clear about what we HOPE and FEAR for the main character. Generally what we hope for the character is the same as her or his INNER NEED. In It’s A Wonderful Life, we HOPE George Bailey will keep defying villainous Mr. Potter and continue building houses and doing good for people in the town. We FEAT Potter will drive George and his family into ruin (and George possibly to suicide). Our FEAR for the character should be the absolute worst-case scenario: in a drama, mystery or thriller we’re talking madness, suicide, death, ruin. In a comedy or romance the stakes are more likely the loss of love – but that means you have to make that love and the potential loss of it meaningful.

Our awareness of the stakes may grow along with the main character’s growing awareness, but in most stories there are clues to the bigger picture right from the beginning. And I need to point out that what we HOPE and FEAR for the main character is often quite different from what the character hopes and fears for herself: because we are able to see what or who they really need.

STATEMENT OF THEME

A reader or audience will get restless if they don’t have a good idea of what the story is within the first five (I’d even say three) minutes of a movie, or the first twenty pages of a book. Sometimes it’s enough to have just a sense of the central conflict. But often good storytellers will make it perfectly clear what the theme of the story is, and very early on in the story. In the first act of It’s a Wonderful Life, George is impatient to leave pokey little Bedford Falls and go out in the world to “do big things”. George’s father tells him that in their own small way, he feels they are doing big things at the Building and Loan; they’re satisfying one of the most basic needs of human beings by helping them own their own homes. This is a lovely statement of the theme of the movie: that it’s the ordinary, seemingly mundane acts that we do every day that add up to a heroic life.

In Sea Of Love, the filmmakers set up protagonist Frank’s obsession with his ex-wife right from the start – which mirrors the killer’s obsessive love for his ex-wife that is driving him to murder. It’s a major theme of the story and we get it right up front.

SEQUENCE ONE CLIMAX

An act or sequence climax will have a reversal, revelation, and often a setpiece and/or change of location that spins the story into the next act.

CENTRAL QUESTION/CENTRAL STORY ACTION

I will be didactic here and say that by the end of the first act you must have given your reader or audience everything they need to know about what the story is going to be about: what kind of story it is, who the hero/ine and antagonist (or mystery) are, and what the main conflict is going to be. It’s useful to think of the story a posing a Central Question:

In New In Town: Will corporate executive Lucy be able to streamline the struggling factory and get that promotion?

In Leap Year: Will Anna get across Ireland to Dublin in time to propose to her boyfriend on Leap Day?

In The Proposal: Will Margaret and Andrew be able to fake a marriage convincingly enough to prevent Margaret from being deported?

It’s the question on which the entire action of the story hinges, and it’s usually answered definitively at the climax of the second act (and usually with a twist).

PLAN

The Central Story Action is directly related to the protagonist’s PLAN to get what s/he wants, or thinks she wants. (Although sometimes the Central Story Action and Plan are more the protagonist’s reaction to the antagonist’s Plan).

Plan, Central Question and Central Story action are usually set up in the first act, but they are the crux of the second act, and maybe the most important key elements to understand about your story. More about those HERE.

ACT ONE CLIMAX

The climax of an act is very, very often a SETPIECE SCENE: there’s a dazzling, thematic location, an action or suspense sequence, an intricate set, a crowd scene, even a musical number (as in The Wizard of Oz and, more surprisingly, Jaws.).

But let’s cover the basics right now. There are multiple definitions of a setpiece. It can be a huge action scene like, well, anything in The Dark Knight, that takes weeks to shoot and costs millions, requiring multiple sets, special effects and car crashes… or a meticulously planned suspense scene with multiple cuts that takes place all in - a shower, for instance, in Psycho.

If you start watching movies specifically to pick out the setpiece scenes, you’ll notice an interesting thing. They’re almost always used as act or sequence climaxes. They are tent poles holding the structure of the movie up… or jewels in the necklace of the plotline. The scenes featured in the trailers to entice people to see the movie. The scenes everyone talks about after the credits roll.

That elaborate, booby-trapped cave in the first scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The helicopter chasing Cary Grant through the cornfield in North By Northwest. Folding up Paris and the zero gravity fight in the hotel corridor in Inception. The goofy intergalactic bar in Star Wars. Munchkinland, the Scarecrow’s cornfield, the dark forest, the poppy field, the Emerald City, the witch’s castle in The Wizard of Oz. The dungeon – I mean prison – in Silence of the Lambs. In fact you can look at Raiders and Silence and see that every single sequence contains a wonderful setpiece (The Nepalese bar, the suspension bridge, the temple in Raiders…).

Actually, this might just be a good time to stop, take a breath, and watch some movies, to see all of these techniques we’re talking about in action (and pay particular attention to setpieces!). Again, only use any of these techniques that appeal to you or that you think will help.

ASSIGNMENT:

You can work off a movie from your own master list, or if you've never done this before, I include full breakdowns of movies in both my STFA workbooks (see below(.

If you really want to see how the Elements of Act One function, get hold of three of movies, and watch the first act of one of the films, looking for the elements I’ve discussed here. Then read my Act One breakdown for that film, and watch the first act again. Do that with three movies in a row, and you will be super-prepared to start analyzing the films on your own list.

And I’m sure you realize this, but I’m going to say it anyway. The reason that I suggest you break down several movies of your choice for the story elements is to make it easier for you to identify these same story elements in your own story.

- Alex

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If you'd like to to see more of these story elements in action, I strongly recommend that you watch at least one, and much better, three of the films I break down in the workbooks, following along with my notes. Whether from my list or your own, try to choose movies that you think are structurally similar to the story you're working on.

I do full breakdowns of Chinatown, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Romancing the Stone, and The Mist, and act breakdowns of You've Got Mail, Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, Raiders of the Lost Ark in Screenwriting Tricks For Authors.

I do full breakdowns of The Proposal, Groundhog Day, Sense and Sensibility, Romancing the Stone, Leap Year, Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sea of Love, While You Were Sleeping and New in Town in Writing Love.

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

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Nanowrimo: Narrative Structure Cheat Sheet

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:12:00 +0000

There really is something about fall for me, this huge jolt of energy. Thank God, because I have a lot to do. Last week I did my taxes and a book proposal at the same time, two activities that should never be performed simultaneously, and I went to Houston to teach a workshop.

This week I have to write another book proposal while doing edits for another book. In the middle of all of this there is another book that I am dying, just dying to get done. (At some point the brain does explode, doesn’t it?)

But again, this is why I’m a big fan of Nanowrimo. Even though, truthfully, like every full-time writer I have a Nano-like writing schedule most of the time, there’s something about having a designated month where all kinds of people are putting in this kind of insane writing time with the insane goal of having some rough approximation of a book at the end of it that makes it all feel okay, somehow, even doable.

So back to Nanowrimo Prep. We've already covered Story Structure 101.

And I was going to continue today to go over the story elements of each act, starting with Act One, but this year I'm going to try something a little different, first.

The more I analyze structure, the more it seems to me that every story has the same underlying structure. In previous years I’ve come up with a checklist of story elements, and last year I really expanded on that one. But in the last month of some short workshops and my Nano Prep, I’ve actually tried to put the most important of those story elements into an almost narrative, a cheat sheet for story development.

So I’m running it by you all today, to see if it makes sense to anyone but me.

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NARRATIVE STRUCTURE CHEAT SHEET, from Screenwriting Tricks for Authors

Act I:

We meet the Hero/ine in the Ordinary World.

S/he has:

-- a Ghost or Wound

-- a strong Desire

-- Special Skills

And an Opponent, or several, which is standing in the way of her getting what s/he wants, and possibly wants exactly the same thing that s/he wants

She gets a Call to Adventure: a phone call, an invitation, a look from a stranger, that invites her to change her life.

That impulse may be blocked by a

-- Threshold Guardian

-- And/or the Opponent

-- And/or she is herself reluctant to take the journey.

But she overcomes whatever opposition,

-- Gathers Allies and the advice of a Mentor

-- Formulates a specific PLAN to get what s/he wants

And Crosses the Threshold Into the Special World.

Act II:1

The hero/ine goes after what s/he wants, following the PLAN

The opponent blocks and attacks, following his or her own PLAN to get what s/he wants

The hero/ine may now:

-- Gather a Team

-- Train for battle (in a love story this can be shopping or dating)

-- Investigate the situation.

-- Pass numerous Tests

All following the Plan, to achieve the Desire.

No matter what genre, we experience scenes that deliver on the Promise of the Premise – magic, flying, sex, mystery, horror, thrills, action.

We also enjoy the hero/ine’s Bonding with Allies or Falling in Love

And usually in this Act the hero/ine is Winning.

Then at the Midpoint, there is a big Reversal, Revelation, Loss or Win that is a Game-Changer.

Act II:2

The hero/ine must Recover and Recalibrate from the game-changer of the Midpoint.

And formulate a New Plan

Neither the Hero/ine nor the Antagonist has gotten what they want, and everyone is tired and pissed.

Therefore they Make Mistakes

And often Cross a Moral Line

And Lose Allies

And the hero/ine, or if not the hero/ine, at least we, are getting the idea (if we didn’t have it before) that the hero/ine might be WRONG about what s/he wants.

Things begin to Spiral Out of Control

And get Darker and Darker (even if it’s funny)

Until everything crashes in a Black Moment, or All is Lost Moment, or Visit to Death.

And then, out of that compete despair comes a New Revelation for the hero/ine

That leads to a New Plan for the Final Battle.

Act III

The Heroine Makes that last New Plan

Possibly Gathers the Team (Allies) again

Possibly briefly Trains again

Then Storms the Opponent’s Castle (or basement)

The Team (if there is one) Attacks the Opponent on his or her own turf, and all their

--- Skills are tested.

--- Subplots are resolved,

--- and secondary Opponents are defeated in a satisfying way.

Then the Hero/ine goes in alone for the final battle with the Antagonist. Her Character Arc, everything s/he’s learned in the story, helps her win it.

The Hero/ine has come Full Circle

And we see the New Way of Life that s/he will live.

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If this works to make the process a little easier for you, great! It may be more useful to look at it later, during your rewrites.

And if not, no problem - forget it! I'm just always looking to try to explain things in different ways, because I know for myself, sometimes it just doesn't sink in until I hear it for the tenth or ten thousandth time.

- Alex

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plan, Central Question, Central Story Action

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 18:09:00 +0000

These interrelated key story elements are so important I’m going to start with them even before I get into all the elements of Act One. Partly because I think understanding these elements will help a lot of people with their premises, but also - if there is just ONE thing to take out of all of these hundreds of posts, I think this is the one I would choose. Seriously.

Plan, Central Question, Central Story Action

You always hear that “Drama is conflict”, but when you think about it – what the hell does that mean, practically?

It’s actually much more true, and specific, to say that drama is the constant clashing of a hero/ine’s PLAN and an antagonist’s, or several antagonists’, PLANS.

In the first act of a story, the hero/ine is introduced, and that hero/ine either has or quickly develops a DESIRE. She might have a PROBLEM that needs to be solved, or someone or something she WANTS, or a bad situation that she needs to get out of, pronto. There is also someone, something, or a set of someones and somethings that is BLOCKING the desire (the Antagonist or Forces of Antagonism.) That's the SET UP of Act I in a nutshell.

The hero/ine's reaction to that problem or situation is to formulate a PLAN, even if that plan is vague or even completely subconscious. But somewhere in there, there is a plan, and storytelling is usually easier if you have the hero/ine or someone else (maybe you, the author) state that plan clearly, so the audience or reader knows exactly what the expectation is.

And the protagonist’s plan (and the corresponding plan of the antagonist’s) actually drives the entire action of the second act. Stating the plan tells the audience or reader what the CENTRAL ACTION of the story will be. Until we know that as a reader, we are floundering around trying to figure out what the story is actually going to be about. So it’s critical for you, the author (or screenwriter) to set up the plan by the end of Act One, or at the very beginning of Act Two, at the latest.

Let’s look at some examples of how plans work.

I’m going to start, improbably, with the actioner 2012, even though I thought it was a pretty terrible movie overall.

Now, I’m sure in a theater this movie delivered on its primary objective, which was a rollercoaster ride as only Hollywood special effects can provide. Whether we like it or not, there is obviously a massive worldwide audience for movies that are primarily about delivering pure sensation. Story isn’t important, nor, apparently, is basic logic. As long as people keep buying enough tickets to these movies to make them profitable, it’s the business of Hollywood to keep churning them out.

But even in this rollercoaster ride of special effects and sensations, there was a clear central PLAN for an audience to hook into, a plan that drove the story. Without that plan, 2012 really would have been nothing but a chaos of special effects.

If you’ve seen this movie (and I know some of you have…), there is a point in the first act where a truly over-the-top Woody Harrelson as an Art Bell-like conspiracy pirate radio commentator rants to protagonist John Cusack about having a map that shows the location of “spaceships” that the government is stocking to abandon planet when the prophesied end of the world commences.

Although Cusack doesn’t believe it at the time, this is the PLANT (sort of camouflaged by the fact that Woody is a nutjob), that gives the audience the idea of what the PLAN OF ACTION will be: Cusack will have to go back for the map in the midst of all the cataclysm, then somehow get his family to these “spaceships” in order for all of them to survive the end of the world.

The PLAN is reiterated, in dialogue, when Cusack gets back to his family and tells his ex-wife basically exactly what I just said above: “We’re going to go back to the nutjob with the map so that we can get to those spaceships and get off the planet before it collapses.”

And lo and behold, that’s exactly what happens; it’s not only Cusack’s PLAN, but the central action of the story, that can be summed up as a CENTRAL QUESTION: Will Cusack be able to get his family to the spaceships before the world ends?

Or put another way, the CENTRAL STORY ACTION: John Cusack must get his family to the spaceships before the world ends.

(Note the ticking clock, there, as well. And as if the end of the world weren’t enough, the movie also starts a literal “Twenty-nine minutes to the end of the world!” ticking computer clock at, yes, 29 minutes before the end of the movie. I must point out here that ticking clocks are dangerous because of the huge cliché factor. We all need to study structure to know what NOT to do, as well.)

And all this happens about the end of Act I. Remember that I said that it’s essential to have laid out the CENTRAL QUESTION and CENTRAL STORY ACTION by the end of Act I? But also at this point – or possibly just after the climax of Act I, in the very beginning of Act II, we need to know what the PLAN is. PLAN and CENTRAL QUESTION are integrally related, and I keep looking for ways to talk about it because this is such an important concept to get.

A reader/audience really needs to know what the overall PLAN is, even if they only get in a subconscious way. Otherwise they are left floundering, wondering where the hell all of this is going.

In 2012, even in the midst of all the buildings crumbling and crevasses opening and fires booming and planes crashing, we understand on some level what is going on:

- What does the protagonist want? (OUTER DESIRE) To save his family.

- How is he going to do it? (PLAN) By getting the map from the nutjob and getting his family to the secret spaceships (that aren’t really spaceships).

- What’s standing in his way? (FORCES OF OPPOSITION) About a billion natural disasters as the planet caves in, an evil politician who has put a billion dollar price tag on tickets for the spaceship, a Russian Mafioso who keeps being in the same place at the same time as Cusack, and sometimes ends up helping, and sometimes ends up hurting. (Was I the only one queased out by the way all the Russian characters were killed off, leaving only the most obnoxious kids on the planet?)

--

Here’s another example, from a much better movie:

At the end of the first sequence of Raiders Of The Lost Ark (which is arguably two sequences in itself, first the action sequence in the cave in South America, then the university sequence back in the US), Indy has just taught his archeology class when his mentor, Marcus, comes to meet him with a couple of government agents who have a job for him (CALL TO ADVENTURE). The agents explain that Hitler has become obsessed with collecting occult artifacts from all over the world, and is currently trying to find the legendary Lost Ark of the Covenant, which is rumored to make any army in possession of it invincible in battle.

So there’s the MACGUFFIN, the object that everyone wants, and the STAKES: if Hitler’s minions (THE ANTAGONISTS) get this Ark before Indy does, the Nazi army will be invincible.

And then Indy explains his PLAN to find the Ark: his old mentor, Abner Ravenwood, was an expert on the Ark and had an ancient Egyptian medallion on which was inscribed the instructions for using the medallion to find the hidden location of the Ark.

So after hearing the plan, we understand the entire OVERALL ACTION of the story: Indy is going to find Abner (his mentor) to get the medallion, then use the medallion to find the Ark before Hitler’s minions can get it.

And even though there are lots of twists along the way, that’s really it: the basic action of the story.

--

In the first act of Silence of the Lambs, Clarice gets an assignment, an “interesting errand” from her teacher at the FBI academy: she is to interview Hannibal Lecter, an imprisoned psychopath, for a new database of serial killers. But when she walks into the basement dungeon where Lecter is kept, he assumes that she is here to ask him about a new serial killer, Buffalo Bill. Lecter tosses her a clue to follow and Clarice follows up, and when she finds the severed, preserved head of an old patient of Lecter’s hidden in a storage unit, she realizes that Lecter knows Buffalo Bill. Lecter is pleased with her investigative skills and promises, “I’ll help you catch him, Clarice.”

At the same time, Bill kidnaps another victim, Catherine Martin. And from there, Clarice has a PLAN of her own: she is going to somehow get Lecter to divulge the identity of Buffalo Bill and save Catherine’s life. Her PLAN (and the CENTRAL ACTION of the story) is to persuade Lecter to give up Bill’s identity and location, even if it means doing what her FBI mentor has warned her not to do at any cost: divulge deeply personal information to this psychopathic genius. (Note how genre-specific that central action is: it’s going to require psychological manipulation and gamesmanship, and this is a keenly, excruciatingly psychological thriller.)

--

Another favorite PLAN and CENTRAL STORY ACTION of mine is in Brian DePalma’s The Untouchables.

Young FBI agent Eliot Ness is assigned to bring down mobster Al Capone. So far no one in law enforcement or government has been able to pin Capone to any of his heinous crimes; he keeps too much distance between himself and the actual killings, hijackings, extortions, etc. One of Ness’ Untouchable team, a FBI accountant, proposes that the team gather evidence and nail Capone on federal tax evasion. It’s not sexy, but the penalty is up to 25 years in prison. (As you might know, this PLAN is historically accurate: Al Capone was actually finally charged and imprisoned on the charge of tax evasion.)

So the PLAN and CENTRAL ACTION of the story becomes to locate one of Capone’s bookkeepers, take him into custody and force him to testify against Capone.

But of course, in a crime thriller, this has to be done with plenty of action sequences and shootouts, so Capone gets wind of the plan and moves the accountant to a secret location high in the mountains, so Ness and his team have to storm the hideout – much gunfire and chases on horseback ensue (and some clever persuasion by Sean Connery to get the bookkeeper to testify).

So as we approach the MIDPOINT, Ness’s team has the bookkeeper in custody, the trial is set, and Ness’s men are escorting the bookkeeper to court.

But the movie is only half over. So of course, as very often happens at the midpoint, the plan fails. In a suspenseful and emotional wrenching MIDPOINT CLIMAX, Ness’s accountant teammate, whom we have come to love, escorts the bookkeeper into the courthouse elevator to take him up to the courtroom. As the doors close, we see the police guard is actually one of Capone’s men.

Ness and his other teammate (a criminally hot Andy Garcia), realize that something’s wrong and race up (down?) the stairs to catch the elevator, but arrive to find a bloodbath – both accountants brutally murdered, and the word TOUCHABLE painted on the elevator in blood.

So the plan is totally foiled – they have no witness and no more case. It’s a great midpoint reversal, because we – and Ness himself – have no idea what the team is going to be able to do next (and also Ness is so emotionally devastated by the loss of his teammate that he begins to do reckless things.).

(In case you’re wondering, the new plan becomes for the Sean Connery character to find another Capone accountant, and it’s when Capone’s men are trying to hustle that second accountant out of town that the big chase/baby carriage scene in the train station goes down.)

--

Generally, PLAN and CENTRAL STORY ACTION are really the same thing – the Central Action of the story is carrying out the specific Plan. And the CENTRAL QUESTION of the story is – “Will the Plan succeed?”

Again, the PLAN, CENTRAL QUESTION and CENTRAL STORY ACTION are almost always set up – and spelled out - by the end of the first act, although the specifics of the Plan may be spelled out right after the Act I Climax at the very beginning of Act II.

Can it be later? Well, anything’s possible, but the sooner a reader or audience understands the overall thrust of the story action, the sooner they can relax and let the story take them where it’s going to go. So much of storytelling is about you, the author, reassuring your reader or audience that you know what you’re doing, so they can relax and let you drive.

If you haven’t done this yet, take a favorite movie or book (or two or three) and identify the PLAN, CENTRAL STORY ACTION and CENTRAL QUESTION and them in a few sentences. Like this:

- In Philadelphia Story, Cary Grant’s PLAN is to break up Katharine Hepburn’s wedding by sending in a photographer and journalist from a tabloid, which he knows will agitate her and her whole family to the point of explosion. (So the CENTRAL ACTION of the story is using the journalists to break up the wedding, and the CENTRAL QUESTION is – Will he be able to break up the wedding?)

- In Inception the PLAN is for the team of dream burglars to go into a corporate heir’s dreams to plant the idea of breaking up his father’s corporation. (So the CENTRAL ACTION is going into the corporate heir’s dream and planting the idea, and the CENTRAL QUESTION is – Will they succeed?).

- In Sense And Sensibility the PLAN is for Marianne and Elinor to secure the family’s fortune and their own happiness by marrying well. (How are they going to do that? By the period’s equivalent of dating – which is the CENTRAL ACTION. Yes, dating is a PLAN! The CENTRAL QUESTION is, Will the sisters succeed in marrying well?)

- In The Proposal, Margaret’s PLAN is to learn enough about Andrew over the four-day weekend with his family to pass the INS marriage test so she won’t be deported. (The CENTRAL ACTION is going to Alaska to meet Andrew’s family and pretending to be married while they learn enough about each other to pass the test. The CENTRAL QUESTION is: Will they be able to successfully fake the marriage?

Now, try it with your own story!

- What does the protagonist WANT?

- How does s/he PLAN to do it?

- What and who is standing in his or her way?

For example, in my thriller, Book of Shadows, here's the Act One set up: the protagonist, homicide detective Adam Garrett, is called on to investigate the murder of a college girl - which looks like a Satanic killing. Garrett and his partner make a quick arrest of a classmate of the girl's, a troubled Goth musician. But Garrett is not convinced of the boy's guilt, and when a practicing witch from nearby Salem insists the boy is innocent and there have been other murders, he is compelled to investigate further.

So Garrett’s PLAN and the CENTRAL ACTION of the story is to use the witch and her specialized knowledge of magical practices to investigate the murder on his own, all the while knowing that she is using him for her own purposes and may well be involved in the killing. The CENTRAL QUESTION is: will they catch the killer before s/he kills again - and/or kills Garrett (if the witch turns out to be the killer)?

- What does the protagonist WANT? To catch the killer before s/he kills again.

- How does he PLAN to do it? By using the witch and her specialized knowledge of magical practices to investigate further.

- What’s standing in his way? His own department, the killer, and possibly the witch herself. And if the witch is right… possibly even a demon.

It’s important to note that the Plan and Central Action of the story are not always driven by the protagonist. Usually, yes. But in The Matrix, it’s Neo’s mentor Morpheus who has the overall PLAN, which drives the central action right up until the end of the second act. The Plan is to recruit and train Neo, whom Morpheus believes is “The One” prophesied to destroy the Matrix. So that’s the action we see unfolding: Morpheus recruiting, deprogramming and training Neo, who is admittedly very cute, but essentially just following Morpheus’s orders for two thirds of the movie.

Does this weaken the structure of that film? Not at all. Morpheus drives the action until that crucial point, the Act Two Climax, when he is abducted by the agents of the Matrix, at which point Neo steps into his greatness and becomes “The One” by taking over the action and making a new plan, to rescue Morpheus by sacrificing himself.

It is a terrific way to show a huge character arc: Neo stepping into his destiny. And I would add that this is a common structural pattern for mythic journey stories - in Lord of the Rings, it's Gandalf who has the PLAN and drives the reluctant Frodo in the central story action.

Here’s another example. In the very funny romantic comedy It’s Complicated, Meryl Streep’s character Jane is the protagonist, but she doesn’t drive the action or have any particular plan of her own. It’s her ex-husband Jake (Alec Baldwin), who seduces her and at the end of the first act, proposes (in a very persuasive speech) that they continue this affair as a perfect solution to both their love troubles – it will fulfill their sexual and intimacy needs without disrupting the rest of their lives.

Jane decides at that point to go along with Jake’s plan (saying, “I forgot what a good lawyer you are.”). In terms of action, she is essentially passive, letting the two men in her life court her (which results in bigger and bigger comic entanglements), but that makes for a more pronounced and satisfying character arc when she finally takes a stand and breaks off the affair with Jake for good, so she can finally move on with her life.

I would venture to guess that most of us know what it’s like to be swept up in a ripping good love entanglement, and can sympathize with Jane’s desire just to go with the passion of it without having to make any pesky practical decisions. It’s a perfectly fine – and natural – structure for a romantic comedy, as long as at that key juncture, the protagonist has the realization and balls – or ovaries – to take control of their own life again and make a stand for what they truly want.

I give you these last two examples – hopefully - to show how helpful it can be to study the specific structure of stories that are similar to your own. As you can see from the above, the general writing rule that the protagonist drives the action may not apply to what you’re writing – and you might want to make a different choice that will better serve your own story. And that goes for any general writing rule.

ASSIGNMENT QUESTIONS: Have you identified the CENTRAL ACTION of your story? At what point in your book does the reader have a clear idea of the protagonist’s PLAN? Is it stated aloud? Can you make it more clear than it is?

And you guys, you really need to understand this. This idea of a CENTRAL STORY ACTION goes back THOUSANDS of years, to the Golden Age of Greek drama. Aristotle laid it out in the POETICS (here's a reminder...)

If you think you can fight thousands of years of dramatic structure (which is by now, I would venture to say, part of our DNA strand...) well, good for you, you rebel, you! But why make things so hard on yourself? Think about it. Thousands of years, this stuff has worked. Fight it at your peril, is all I'm saying.

- Alex

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

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Nanowrimo Prep: Story Structure 101

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 14:12:00 +0000

Today: everything you need to know about story structure.

Well, not really. But we need to get down to this, so I'm giving you Nanos four posts in a row that review general story structure so you can really dive into outlining and/or carding. This should keep you busy for a couple of days, anyway!

What is the Three Act Structure and Why Should You Care?

The Three-Act, Eight Sequence Structure

The Index Card Method and Structure Grid

Story Elements Checklist for Brainstorming Index Cards

- Alex

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

Nanowrimo Prep: The Index Card Method

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 14:07:00 +0000

I want to skip ahead of myself here for a minute and say that if you do not have a premise for your story yet, or if the thought of having to write a premise is making you hyperventilate, THAT'S OKAY. Put down the knife and breathe.

Because maybe what you really need to do is do some free-form brainstorming on your story. Get to know it, as it were.

And the best way I know to do that is to use index cards (or Post Its). Here's the whole post on the index card method.

but unless you're familiar with the structure grid already, don't even worry about that, yet. The idea is just to use a pack of index cards and write out all the scenes you know about your story already. Just a simple one-line description, one scene per card. It can be as vague as: "First kiss with love interest." Or - "Watch sunset together." Or - "Hero kills babysitter" or "House eats mailman" or "Heroine slips into alternate dimension". (Hey, Halloween is coming. You all know what I write.).

I guarantee that writing out those scenes will lead to more scenes, and if you want to take a stab at putting them in a relative order, that will lead to even more scenes.

What I am trying to get across here is that you don't have to follow these steps in any particular order. If you can't get to a premise yet, that's really just fine. Do some brainstorming for a while to coax your story out. You can do this on paper or on the computer, but if you haven't used index cards before, just try it. There's something magical about the cards, I swear.

And it's so fast - I have to write two book proposals in the next week and there is no way I would even attempt to do that without index cards. They work.

It's a great day for brainstorming, all this rain in So Cal. Use those negative ions!

- Alex

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Previous Nanowrimo Prep posts:

- Do You Know What Your Next Book Is?

- First, You Need an Idea

- Your Best Idea

- What's Your Premise?

Nanowrimo Prep: What's Your Premise?

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 22:16:00 +0000

I am always finding myself in this same conversation with aspiring authors.

Me: “So what’s your book about?”

Aspiring Author: “Oh, I can’t really describe it in a few sentences– there’s just so much going on in it.”

WRONG ANSWER.

The time to know what your book is about is before you start it, and you damn well better know what it’s about by the time it’s finished and people, like, oh, you know - agents and editors, are asking you what it’s about.

And here’s another tip – when people ask you what your book is about, the answer is not “War” or “Love” or “Betrayal”, even though your book might be about one or all of those things. Those words don’t distinguish YOUR book from any of the millions of books about those things.

When people ask you what your book is about, what they are really asking is – “What’s the premise?” In other words, “What’s the story line in one easily understandable sentence?”

That one sentence is also referred to as a “logline” (in Hollywood) or “the elevator pitch” (in publishing) or “the TV Guide pitch” – it all means the same thing.

That sentence really should give you a sense of the entire story: the character of the protagonist, the character of the antagonist, the conflict, the setting, the tone, the genre. And – it should make whoever hears it want to read the book. Preferably immediately. It should make the person you tell it to light up and say – “Ooh, that sounds great!” And “Where do I buy it?”

Writing a premise sentence is a bit of an art, but it’s a critical art for authors, and screenwriters, and playwrights. You need to do this well to sell a book, to pitch a movie, to apply for a grant. You will need to do it well when your agent, and your publicist, and the sales department of your publishing house, and the reference librarian, and the Sisters in Crime books in print catalogue editor ask you for a one-sentence book description, or jacket copy, or ad copy. You will use that sentence over and over and over again in radio and TV interviews, on panels, and in bookstores (over and over and OVER again) when potential readers ask you, “So what’s your book about?” and you have about one minute to get them hooked enough to buy the book.

And even before all that, the premise is the map of your book when you’re writing it.

So what are some examples of premise lines?

Name these books:

- When a great white shark starts attacking beachgoers in a coastal town during high tourist season, a water-phobic Sheriff must assemble a team to hunt it down before it kills again.

- A young female FBI trainee must barter personal information with an imprisoned psychopathic genius in order to catch a serial killer who is capturing and killing young women for their skins.

- A treasure-hunting archeologist races over the globe to find the legendary Lost Ark of the Covenant before Hitler’s minions can acquire and use it to supernaturally power the Nazi army.

Notice how all of these premises contain a defined protagonist, a powerful antagonist, a sense of the setting, conflict and stakes, and a sense of how the action will play out. Another interesting thing about these premises is that in all three, the protagonists are up against forces that seem much bigger than the protagonist.

And okay, they're some pretty bloody examples, as usual for me. So let’s try some love premises:

• A commitment-phobic Englishman falls in love with a beautiful, elusive American during a year in which all the people around him seem to be marrying and finding their mates at a round-robin of four weddings – and a funeral.

• A lonely widower and a lonely journalist who live on opposite sides of the country fall in love with each other without ever having met.

• A man and a woman debate the theory that a man and a woman can never really be friends, over a period of years in which they become best friends, then fall in love.

Note that I have not described any of those stories as “THIS BLOCKBUSTER MOVIE meets THAT BLOCKBUSTER MOVIE.”

This is a very common mistake that authors make. There is no faster way to make an agent’s or editor’s or producer’s or director’s eyes glaze over than to pitch your book as “It’s When Harry Met Sally meets Jaws!!!!”

Remember that this “method” of pitching was immortalized in The Player, a movie that is a satire of Hollywood. The famous pitch: “It’s Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman!!!” was a joke.

That is not to say it is not done. In fact, the Kirkus review of The Harrowing included the line: “Poltergeist meets The Breakfast Club”, and you better believe my publisher jumped on that and put it on the cover of the paperback. This is a literal description of my book, and I bless Kirkus every day for saying it.

But I, the author, am not allowed to say that. It’s cheating. It’s a joke. You can say it as shorthand to your agent, or to your friends, and your agent can say it that way to your editor.

But I would never pitch it that way myself. It’s just too risky. It’s not the way to sell your book to someone you don’t know. The risk, bluntly, is coming off as an amateur. With your own pitch, you need to be detailed and you need to be specific.

Here’s my premise for THE HARROWING:

Five troubled college students left alone on their isolated campus over the long Thanksgiving break confront their own demons and a mysterious presence – that may or may not be real.

I wrote that sentence to quickly convey all the elements I want to get across about this book.

Who’s the story about? Five college kids, and “alone” and “troubled” characterize them in a couple of words. Not only are they alone and troubled, they have personal demons. What’s the setting? An isolated college campus, and it’s Thanksgiving - fall, going on winter. Bleak, spooky. Plus – if it’s Thanksgiving, why are they on campus instead of home with their families?

Who’s the antagonist? A mysterious presence. What’s the conflict? It’s inner and outer – it will be the kids against themselves, and also against this mysterious presence. What are the stakes? Well, not so clear, but there’s a sense of danger involved with any mysterious presence.

And there are a lot of clues to the genre – sounds like something supernatural’s going on, but there’s also a sense that it’s psychological – because the kids are troubled and this presence may or may not be real. There's a sense of danger, possibly on several levels.

Here’s my premise line for my thriller, BOOK OF SHADOWS.

A very rational, very male Boston homicide detective and a very intuitive, very female practicing witch from Salem reluctantly team in a race to catch a Satanic killer that she believes is trying to summon a real demon.

Who’s the story about? A homicide detective and a modern witch, and their professions and the descriptives “rational” and “intuitive” characterize them in a couple of words – and set up an obvious contrast and potential for an “opposites attract” story.

What’s the setting? Boston and Salem – again, opposites.

Who’s the antagonist? A Satanic killer – any way you look at it, that’s not good. What’s the conflict? It’s both interpersonal and external: it will be the cop and the witch against each other, and the two of them against the killer. What are the stakes? Life and death, and something possibly supernatural as well, if there really is a demon involved.

And there are clues to the genre: there may be something supernatural going on, but that’s only what she believes, so there’s a mystery there: not just who the killer is, but what the killer is. There's a sense of danger, too, possibly on several levels.

The best way to learn how to write a good premise line is to practice. I encourage you to take the master list of films and books you’ve made and for each story, write a one-sentence premise that contains all these story elements: protagonist, antagonist, conflict, stakes, setting, atmosphere and genre.

If you need a lot of examples all at once, pick up a copy of the TV Guide, or click through the descriptions of movies on your TiVo or DVR. Those aren’t usually the best written premises, but they do get the point across, and it will get you thinking about stories in brief.

But the very best thing you can do is to spend some time writing out the premises for your master list. Not only is it great practice for crafting premise lines, but it will give you a terrific sense of the elements that you want to see in a story, and quite possibly a good sense of the story patterns that you most enjoy.

ASSIGNMENT: Write out premise lines for each story on your master list, and for your own Work In Progress (WIP).

No putting this off - you're going to need this premise to move forward. You might have to write a whole paragraph first and then start distilling it down, that's fine. But do it.

- Alex

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Previous Nanowrimo Prep posts:

- Do You Know What Your Next Book Is?

- First, You Need an Idea

Nanowrimo Prep:: Your Best Idea

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:57:00 +0000

Okay! How did everyone do on their idea lists?

So now that you have this – hopefully – vast list of ideas, how do you choose THE idea for your next (or first) book?

Obviously, if this is a contracted book, you talk it over with your editor. If it’s a spec book, you talk it over with your agent. Absolutely mandatory.

But that’s a whole other post. Today I’m dealing with choosing an idea for a spec book, not necessarily contracted. And how to fine-tune ideas before you talk to your agent, and/or how to decide if you DON’T have an agent.

There are lots of methods. It happens differently for me every time. But here’s the bottom line:

You already know which is your best idea.

Oh, come on, of course you do. You KNOW. Either you already know and you know you know, or you already know and you are pretending you don’t know.

If you already know, and you know you know, great! We’ll get to you in the next post. But let me deal with the others today.

For those of you who say you really, really DON’T know, many shrinks would put it to you this way: What story idea would you be working on if you DID know which was the right one?

Answer that question without talking yourself out of it, and that’s the one.

I am a big believer in this. But if your connection with your intuition or your Higher Power or however you want to put it has been a little off lately, or maybe for all of your life, try one or all of these exercises to coax it out.

- Meditate.

- Just before you fall asleep at night, ask yourself what story to write, and see what you dream, and/or what you wake up thinking in the morning. Keep a pad or tape recorder beside the bed so you can write or talk as soon as you wake up.

- Ask yourself the question in the shower or while swimming or running or working out.

- Spend a whole day free-form writing and see what comes out.

- Write a logline for each of your promising ideas and run them all by at least three people you trust and see what lights them up. If you don’t know how to write a logline, we’ll get to it in the next two posts.

- Set aside a day (you know, one of those 24 hour things I’ve heard so much about), and brainstorm index cards and see if your story takes off. And if you don’t know how to work with index cards, that also will be one of the next two posts.

- Pay attention to signs. Even if you don’t believe it, spend a day or two acting as if you believe the Universe is talking to you all the time, and it will tell you your best story idea if you listen – to songs, to random bits of conversation, to newspaper articles on precisely the topic you’re thinking about writing about, to the movies that come up on TV that night, to e mails or Facebook postings that come out of nowhere. If you’re going to be a writer you’d better get comfortable with synchronicity because you’re crazy if you think you can write a book without it.

The way I really know what to write is when the entire world around me is giving me clues. Like when I keep getting into random conversations with strangers that turn out to be exactly what my book is about. Like when I am on a plane writing a scene about rum, and I walk off the plane and the first thing I see on the causeway is a rum bar (I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a rum bar). Like when I am having no luck Googling the specific information I need on rumrunning during Prohibition and that night the History Channel has an hour special on rumrunning during Prohibition. Like when I meet a person on the street or see someone on television and realize THAT’S one of my main characters that I had been struggling to define. Like I decide to set a story in the Bahamas and suddenly get two offers of pretty much free trips to the Bahamas. And no, I'm not kidding, It works.

So if you need a little time to get that divine nod, go ahead and take it. Listen to what your subconscious, or the universe, or the elves, or WHATEVER is telling you, and report back if you feel like it. And then we'll really get down to work.

- Alex

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Halloween is coming and that means I’m doing all kinds of events, as usual. This weekend:

-- Saturday, October 1, 2011 at 10:30 am (PST): Suspense Radio interview

I’m talking to John Raab of Suspense Magazine on Suspense Radio; John’s also interviewing the marvelously funny and talented Paul Levine at 10 am.

http://www.suspensemagazine.com/suspenseradio.html

------------------

Sunday, October 2, I’m signing at the West Hollywood Book Fair, and teaching a FREE Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshop from 12:30-2:00 pm.

-- West Hollywood Library & West Hollywood Park
647 N. San Vicente Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA

FREE Admission & FREE Parking

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Previous Nanowrimo Prep posts:

- Do You Know What Your Next Book Is?

- First, You Need an Idea

Nanowrimo Prep: First, You Need an Idea

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:17:00 +0000

I know, I know, it's not even October yet, but I've started my Nanowrimo prep series early this year because a month just never seems to be enough time. And who knows where I'll be by the end of October, so I don't want to leave anyone hanging.

Now that I've explained Nano here, we'll start at the very beginning, with generating that perfect idea - because this is a part of the writing process that people rarely spend enough time on, and is CRUCIAL if you want to develop a riveting book, even more crucial if you have any hope of being paid to write. You are going to spend TWO YEARS of your life, minimum, on this book (and that's truly a minimum). Don't you think you better be sure this is the right book to write before you start?

And, oh yeah - the same process is going to apply to scripts, too, and I'll make sure to differentiate when it's important.

------------------------------------------------------------------

First, you need an idea.

When people ask authors, “Where do you get your ideas?”, authors tend to clam up or worse, get sarcastic - because the only real answer to that is, “Where DON’T I get ideas?” or even more to the point, “How do I turn these ideas OFF?”

The thing is, “Where do you get your ideas?” is not the real question these people are asking. The real question is “How do you go from an idea to a coherent story line that holds up – and holds a reader’s interest - for 400 pages of a book?”

Or more concisely: “How do you come up with your PREMISES?”

Look, we all have story ideas all the time. Even non-writers, and non-aspiring writers – I truly mean, EVERYONE, has story ideas all the time. Those story ideas are called daydreams, or fantasies, or often “Porn starring me and Edward Cullen, or me and Stringer Bell,” (or maybe both. Wrap your mind around that one for a second…)

But you see what I mean.

We all create stories in our own heads all the time, minimal as some of our plot lines may be.

So I bet you have dozens of ideas, hundreds. A better question is “What’s a good story idea?”

I see two essential ingredients:

B) What idea gets you excited enough to spend a year (or most likely more) of your life completely immersed in it –

and

B) Gets other people excited enough about it to buy it and read it and even maybe possibly make it into a movie or TV series with an amusement park ride spinoff and a Guess clothing line based on the story?

A) is good if you just want to write for yourself.

But B) is essential if you want to be a professional writer.

As many of you know, I’m all about learning by making lists. Because let’s face it – we have to trick ourselves into writing, every single day, and what could be simpler and more non-threatening than making a list? Anything to avoid the actual rest of it!

So here are two lists to do to get those ideas flowing, and then we can start to narrow it all down to the best one.

List # 1: Make a list of all your story ideas.

Yes, you read that right. ALL of them.

This is a great exercise because it gets your subconscious churning and invites it to choose what it truly wants to be working on. Your subconscious knows WAY more than you do about writing. None of us can do the kind of deep work that writing is all on our own. And with a little help from the Universe you could find yourself writing the next Harry Potter or Twilight.

Also this exercise gives you an overall idea of what your THEMES are as a writer (and very likely the themes you have as a person). I absolutely believe that writers only have about six or seven themes that they’re dealing with over and over and over again. It’s my experience that your writing improves exponentially when you become more aware of the themes that you’re working with.

You may be amazed, looking over this list that you’ve generated, how much overlap there is in theme (and in central characters, hero/ines and villains, and dynamics between characters, and tone of endings).

You may even find that two of your story ideas, or a premise line plus a character from a totally different premise line, might combine to form a bigger, more exciting idea.

But in any case, you should have a much better idea at the end of the exercise of what turns you on as a writer, and what would sustain you emotionally over the long process of writing a novel.

Then just let that percolate for a while. Give yourself a little time for the right idea to take hold of you. You’ll know what that feels like – it’s a little like falling in love. (We’ll go more into this in the next few days.)

List # 2: The Master List

The other list I always encourage my students to do is a list of your ten favorite movies and books in the genre that you’re writing, or if you don’t have a premise yet, ten movies and books that you WISH you had written.

It’s good to compare and contrast your idea list with this IDEAL list.

This list of ten (or more, if you want – ten is just a minimum!) – is going to be enormously helpful to you in structuring and outlining your own novel.

Now, the novelists who have just found this blog recently may be wondering why I’m asking you to list movies as well as books. Good question.

The thing is, for the purposes of structural analysis, film is such a compressed and concise medium that it’s like seeing an X-ray of a story. In film you have two hours, really a little less, to tell the story. It’s a very stripped-down form that even so, often has enormous emotional power. Plus we’ve usually seen more of these movies than we’ve read specific books, so they’re a more universal form of reference for discussion.

It’s often easier to see the mechanics of structure in a film than in a novel, which makes looking at films that are similar to your own novel story a great way to jump start your novel outline.

And just practically, film has had an enormous influence on contemporary novels, and on publishing. Editors love books with the high concept premises, pacing, and visual and emotional impact of movies, so being aware of classic and blockbuster films and the film techniques that got them that status can help you write novels that will actually sell in today’s market.

And even beyond that – studying movies is fun, and fun is something writers just don’t let themselves have enough of. If you train yourself to view movies looking for for some of these structural elements I’m going to be talking about, then every time you go to the movies or watch something on television, you’re actually honing your craft (even on a date or while spending quality time with your loved ones!), and after a while you won’t even notice you’re doing it.

When the work is play, you’ve got the best of all possible worlds.

So go make your lists, and I will, too, and let’s talk about some of your results this week.

- Alex

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

Nanowrimo: Do You Know What Your Next Book Is?

noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:04:00 +0000

Fall is my favorite season. Maybe it’s that Halloween thing, maybe it’s the “back to school” energy, maybe it’s the Santa Ana winds that were so much a part of my life growing up in Southern California that I made them a character in The Space Between, maybe it’s just that you get a jolt of ambition because it gets cooler and your brain returns to some functional temperature.

Because it’s sort of ingrained in us (whether we like it or not), that fall is the beginning of a new school year, I think fall is a good time for making resolutions. Like, about that new book you’re going to be writing for the next year or so.

Myself, I have so many books to finish right now that I can’t let myself think about any new ones until I get at least ONE more done. I’ve taken the idea of multitasking to a near-suicidal extreme. But I’m not complaining – not only do I have a job, I have my dream job.

However, given what I blog and teach about, I am aware that this is a perfect time for OTHER people to be thinking about THEIR new books. Because, you know, it’s September, but November will be here before you know it.

I’m sure many if not most here are aware that November is Nanowrimo – National Novel Writing Month. As explained at the official site here, and here and here, the goal of Nanowrimo is to bash through 50,000 words of a novel in a single month.

I could not be more supportive of this idea – it gives focus and a nice juicy competitive edge to an endeavor that can seem completely overwhelming when you’re facing it all on your own. Through peer pressure and the truly national focus on the event, Nanowrimo forces people to commit. It’s easy to get caught up in and carried along by the writing frenzy of tens of thousands – or maybe by now hundreds of thousands - of “Wrimos”. And I’ve met and heard of lots of novelists, like Carrie Ryan (The Forest of Hands and Teeth) Sara Gruen (Water For Elephants), and Lisa Daily (The Dreamgirl Academy) who started novels during Nanowrimo that went on to sell, sometimes sell big.

Nanowrimo works.

But as everyone who reads this blog knows, I’m not a big fan of sitting down and typing Chapter One at the top of a blank screen and seeing what comes out from there. It may be fine – but it may be a disaster, or something even worse than a disaster – an unfinished book. And it doesn’t have to be.

I’m always asked to do Nanowrimo “pep talks”. These are always in the month of November.

That makes no sense to me.

I mean, I’m happy to do it, but mid-November is way too late for that kind of thing. What people should be asking me, and other authors that they ask to do Nano support, is Nano PREP talks.

If you’re going to put a month aside to write 50,000 words, doesn’t it make a little more sense to have worked out the outline, or at least an overall roadmap, before November 1? I am pretty positive that in most cases far more writing, and far more professional writing, would get done in November if Wrimos took the month of October – at LEAST - to really think out some things about their story and characters, and where the whole book is going. It wouldn’t have to be the full-tilt-every-day frenzy that November will be, but even a half hour per day in October, even fifteen minutes a day, thinking about what you really want to be writing would do your potential novel worlds of good.

But you know what? Even if you never look at that prep work again, your brilliant subconscious mind will have been working on it for you for a whole month. (Cause let’s face it – we don’t do this mystical thing called writing all by ourselves, now, do we?).

So once again, I'm going to do a Nano prep series, but this year as you can see I'm starting even earlier. But I'll be gentle, just to get you all thinking at first, and hopefully get some people not just to consider Nano this year, but to give them a chance to really make something of the month.

Here's the first thing to consider:

How do you choose the next book you write? (Or the first, if it's your first?)

I know, I know, it chooses you. That’s a good answer, and sometimes it IS the answer, but it’s not the only answer. And let’s face it – just like with, well, men, sometimes the one who chooses you is NOT the one YOU should be choosing. What makes anyone think it’s any different with books?

It’s a huge commitment, to decide on a book to write. That’s a minimum of six months of your life just getting it written, not even factoring in revisions and promotion. You live in that world for a long, long time. Not only that, but if you're a professional writer, you're pretty much always going to be having to work on more than one book at a time. You're writing a minimum of one book while you're editing another and always doing promotion for a third.

So the book you choose to write is not just going to have to hold your attention for six to twelve months with its world and characters, but it's going to have to hold your attention while you're working just as hard on another or two or three other completely different projects at the same time. You're going to have to want to come back to that book after being on the road touring a completely different book and doing something that is both exhausting and almost antithetical to writing (promotion).

That's a lot to ask of a story.

So how does that decision process happen?

When on panels or at events, I have been asked, “How do you decide what book you should write?” I have not so facetiously answered: “I write the book that someone writes me a check for.”

That’s maybe a screenwriter thing to say, and I don’t mean that in a good way, but it’s true, isn’t it?

Anything that you aren’t getting a check for you’re going to have to scramble to write, steal time for – it’s just harder. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, or that it doesn’t produce great work, but it’s harder.

As a professional writer, you’re also constricted to a certain degree by your genre, and even more so by your brand. I’m not allowed to turn in a chick lit story, or a flat-out gruesome horrorfest, or probably a spy story, either. Once you’ve published you are a certain commodity.

If you are writing a series, you're even more restricted. You have a certain amount of freedom about your situation and plot but – you’re going to have to write the same characters, and if your characters live in a certain place, you’re also constricted by place. Now that I’m doing a couple of paranormal series, I am learning that every decision is easier in a way, because so many elements are already defined, but it’s also way more limiting than my standalones and I could see how it would get frustrating.

Input from your agent is key, of course - you are a team and you are shaping your career together. Your agent will steer you away from projects that are in a genre that is glutted, saving you years of work over the years, and s/he will help you make all kinds of big-pitcure decisions.

But what I’m really interested in right now is not the restrictions but the limitless possibilities. I'll get more specific next post.

How DO you decide what to write?

And even more importantly – How do you decide what to READ?

Because I have a theory that it’s actually the same answer, but we’ll see.

I'm off to Bouchercon,, the World Mystery Convention - paneling on Thursday, partying the rest of the time. I mean, you know, networking.

Happy Fall, everyone...

- Alex

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Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

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- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

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- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

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