Saturday, July 07, 2007

12 Politically Incorrect Things about Humans

Interesting stuff.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

How to Write Well

Scott Adams explain hy simple is better when you want to write good. He’s right. 

Monday, February 26, 2007

Secrets of Writing: Starting Out

When you plan to write a story, you first need to understand what A>B

Who is the story about?
What do they want?
Why can’t they get it?
Who stands in the way?

Now you have a starting point. Your next step is to figure how the best approach. What are the key things you want to have occur in the story? What kind of conflicts are involved and how do they effect the main characters?

A lot of the time, writers begin with a rough idea before they know who the characters are going to be. Like, a man is standing on the ledge of a building’s 20th floor, looking down at the street below, contemplating suicide. Where do you go from there?

It’s a good idea when you start with the germ of an idea, to flesh out the basic characters. Come up with personas and back stories and you just might gain insights as to where to take things. 

It’s always a good idea to work out the A>B

Then ask yourself, what does the audience need to know in this story? What kind of information is crucial to making the story work?

The writing process is personal to each writer. Everyone builds their stories in their own way. Some people start with an ending, some with a scene, some with a character, and work from there.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

SECRETS OF WRITING: Rules to Live By

1. A STORY IS ABOUT LIFE. LIFE MEANS CHANGE.

No story is interesting if nothing happens to the character. That goes without saying. But one way the audience knows things have occurred is when there is a net change between the beginning and end of the story. If the main character comes out ahead or behind of where he was when he started, then we know there was some kind of result to the story. A good story has some kind of result ending.
Because people expect a story to have some kind of resolution.

2. YOUR STORY PREMISE IS AN ARGUMENT. PROVE IT.

All good stories have some kind of point of view. They are actually making some kind of argument about why what the main character is right or wrong. Everything that happens in that story should reinforce the argument being made (drugs are bad, kindness is good, etc.). If your story has no point of view, then it will feel directionless and pointless.

3. ALL CLICHÉS MUST DIE!

Clich&eacutes are boring. We have seen them a zillion times and they make a story feel tired. Bad dialog is often bad because it is a cliché. Anything you have seen before somewhere other than real life should not make it into your work. If someone else has used it before, then you can be sure someone else has used it also, and so on. Don’t perpetuate the horror. No more Casablanca or Wizard of Oz lines. Please.

4. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS WRONG.

No one likes political correctness. It’s dishonest. It classifies people into artificial categories and sets them apart in some way. This is a patronizing and subtly discriminatory thing. It is not what it proposes to be. And on top of that, using PC terms dates the work, because anything so criticized and hated will become a joke in time. Already anti-PC comedies are all over the place. Using PC concepts and language will become as silly as “Jive Turkey” sooner or later. On top of that it’s lame. So why do it?

5. GOOD FICTION IS 40% WRITING, 60% REWRITING.

Your first impulses are not always the best ones. We tend to regurgitate ideas before realizing later they came from some movie we saw years ago. And first draft dialog is rarely great. Because dialog is about the interaction between different people. Different characters should sound like individuals. They should have unique ideas and voices. But in the course of writing a first draft characters often sound more like the writer. So you need to tweak things and fix plot holes or weak scenes. That’s why rewriting is essential to a good script.

6. STRONG STRUCTURES MAKE STRONG STORIES.

A “solid story” is a story that feels like it isn’t full of holes. That is resonates with thought and complexity. The only way you can get that feeling is if the story has a good structure. If your story is just slapped together with ideas that just popped into your head, it will have lots of weaknesses and the reader will feel it.

7. SHOW, DON’T TELL.

Too many writers have characters explain things, instead of showing it. When you show something it has more impact. How many bad lectures or boring conversations have you had to endure in life? Imagine how your reader will feel listening to one of your characters droning on about plot points that happened in a previous issue. Comics are a visual medium and it works best when you can see something rather than having to read about it. Wordy descriptions should be left to prose.

8. NEVER TAKE THE CLIMAX AWAY FROM YOUR PROTAGONIST.

Also known as “Deus Ex Machina” which translates as “God from a Machine”. The Ancient Greeks learned the hard way that getting your heroes out of a jam by having a miracle, like the Gods showing up at the last minute to fix things, robs the hero of their purpose and makes the story silly. It’s not something you should ever do unless it serves the story, like in the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

9. EVERY SCENE MUST ADVANCE THE STORY.

Stories that have scenes that have no purpose in the story except to show something the writer thinks as cool or funny is a wasted scene. Because anything that doesn’t serve the story in someway is interrupting the flow of the story. A story should build and move in a forward direction, so every scene should serve that purpose.

10. RESEARCH IS THE CURE FOR CLICHÉS.

The reason some things seem fresher than other things is because the writer was injecting something new and original into the mix. The best place to find ideas you haven’t seen before is research. The world is a wacky, wonderful place and new things happen all the time. You should keep reading non fiction and news all the time and studying the subject matter you’re dealing with to find situations and ideas that will make your work seem real. Relying purely on your own brilliance is a sure way to run out of fresh ideas.

11. NEVER TRUST YOUR FIRST IDEA. MAKE IDEA LISTS.

This goes hand in hand with the previous point. If you are writing a scene, you want it to strike people as fresh and original. So you don’t want to have the first thing that comes into your head happening. That would be too easy. You should jot down everything you can think of that could happen in that scene, even thrown in ridiculous ideas. Then look them over and see which one works best. You’ll be surprised what cool stuff comes out of that process.

12. IF YOU DON’T MAKE THE AUDIENCE FEEL, YOU’VE FAILED.

A story needs to make the reader feel something. Anything. I’m sure you’ve read many a story that you forgot about the second you put it down. Do you want your story to have that kind of effect on someone? So how do you make people feel something? Well, to start, you need to find emotional hooks to sink into the reader. You need to touch on subject or situations that are sure to get to people in one way or another. Search your own feelings about things and then work it out in the story. But try to keep shock value to a minimum as that can get old fast and it tends to cheapen things.

13. DON’T PREACH, CONVINCE.

Nothing is more boring than being preached at. No one likes having ideas shoved down their throat unless they are some kind of zealot who wants to be stoked up on whatever dogma agrees with them. In real life there are two sides to every story, sometimes more. And a story that works is a story that gives a fair shake to the different sides. You need to convince your audience that you are telling them the truth. And you won’t do it by only presenting one side and making the other side look like cartoons. Most people have an innate sense of fairness, and they’ll be able to tell when you are not being fair. That can go against you.

14. NEVER WRITE “ON THE NOSE.” SUBTEXT ADDS DIMENSION.

Writing on the nose is an old Hollywood term. It means writing dialog that’s as unsubtle as a punch in the nose. In real life, people rarely say what they really think. Therefore, your characters shouldn’t either. When people talk to others, they are revealing how they feel about that person. If they suck up to someone they think they are more important. If they talk down to someone they don’t respect them. And so on. You inform the reader how one character relates to the other by the way they talk to them. And rarely, ever so rarely, do they say what they really think in those conversations. But you can always get a lot of information from the context and the style of the conversation. People can understand context it’s always much cooler to see than the obvious.

15. SAVE THE BEST FOR LAST.

You don’t want to do all your best ideas in the beginning of a story, because then it’s all downhill. Stories should be like roller coaster rides. They should have a long build to the top, then a steep scary drop, then some twists and turns and then go to another rise before hitting you with the best part. Don’t blow all your best stuff right away because you will raise people expectations and they will be let down when they get to the end.

16. TRUE CHARACTER IS REVEALED UNDER PRESSURE. ADD PRESSURE!

In real life, as it should in fiction, the true character of a person is revealed when they are put under pressure. That is when they let their guards down and show what they are made of. By applying pressure to a character we see what kind of person they are. Are they cowardly? Heroic? Mean? Altruistic? Talented? Inept? What are they? The best way to show that is showing what choices they would make in any given situation. Character is action. You define people by how they act and react to things.

17. THE END OF THE STORY SHOULD NEVER BE TELEGRAPHED.

If you were going to hit someone, would you do it in slow motion so they knew it was coming? If you were going to surprise someone, would you tell them what you were going to do ahead of time? Well then you should seriously consider how you lead up to the ending of your story, because the audience should not see it coming in advance. If they know what’s going to happen, why stick around to see the end of the story? The end of a story has major importance to the reader. This goes back to rule #2. When someone reads a story or sees a movie, they walk away with the ending as their last impression. And if that impression was dull, it colors their view of the work. So don’t disappoint them.

18. TAKE YOUR HERO THROUGH ALL STORY VALUES.

There’s a whole chapter dealing with story values. If you are unsure what they are skip to that chapter. But basically, in order to show things have happened for your character you need to show that they have been through the extremes of human experience. Happiness to sorrow. Riches to rags. Hate to love. And so on. If the character does not go through the appropriate extremes in your story, then the story does not have much emotional range and you will probably fail to move people.

19. RESPECT THE AUDIENCE.

You’re expecting people to spend money on your product. You expect them to come back for more. Do you really think they will want to if you don’t treat them right? Do you go back to restaurants with lousy food and bad service? Do you go back to stores where the clerks treat you like a moron and talk down to you? Well, it’s a really bad idea to talk down to your readers, or assume that they are too stupid to understand something simple. It’s also not a good plan to deliver the goods in a haphazard way, or be lay about how much effort you put into it. I don’t like getting hot food served half cold. I imagine you don’t either. Well, put yourself in the reader’s shoes. They are not spending money expecting to get some half baked sludge. Nor do they want to wait three years to read the next chapter. You have to make an effort to deliver the goods as you would expect from someone else.

20. KNOW YOUR WORLD INSIDE AND OUT.

Whether you are writing about “reality” or “fantasy” your story is set in a world of your devising. It is based on your personal interpretation of the world around you and how you see things. And since you’re are creating a world, it stands to figure that it should feel like a real one to the reader. They should believe in it as much as they do the one they live in. If they don’t believe in your world, then they will not find it very interesting. And if you should a lack of thought or depth in the world you created, they will not feel very inspired to pay much attention to it. It will become a dull background to a dull story. Because readers are more involved when they feel a part of the story. And that only happens when that world is real for them. Therefore, you need to understand the rules of your world and how it works well before you write about it. If someone asks you a question about how your character pays the rent, or what kind of parents they had, or why is the dragon green instead of red, you better know the answer.

21. NEVER SECOND GUESS THE AUDIENCE’S TASTES. ALWAYS WRITE FOR YOURSELF.

As some of the previous rules explained it, you need to respect the audience, you need to know the world inside and out, you need to know what the story is about, etc. The only way you can fully do that is if you love the story and the characters. You need to write something that you care about, that you believe in. If you don’t, the readers will feel it, and then they will respond accordingly. You might say that a lot of mindless crap sells well and the creators probably didn’t care about it. But how much of that crap is remembered years later in a positive way? The work that stands the test of time is work that is a labor of love. So don’t write what you think people want to read, whether you care or not. Write what has meaning for you. Because you are human and your humanity and feelings should be reflected in the work. It is bound to affect people if you do.

22. WORRY ABOUT YOUR OWN CAREER, NOT OTHERS.

If you become a professional comics creator, it’s very easy to fall into the jealousy trap that so many people are stuck in. That being the constant attention people pay to other people’s popularity or success and feeling upset about it. It’s easy to be annoyed when you work hard to do something you really care about while someone else makes tons of money doing their comic and they don’t show enough interest in it to turn it out on a regular schedule, or to see someone else who can’t even write or draw get all the attention from the fan press as a “hot talent”. But you really shouldn’t waste your time thinking about such things. Someone else’s success is not a reflection on your talent or abilities. It merely means at that point of time and place they are successful, for whatever reason. You may have you shot at the spotlight later. But if you spend too much time getting angry about other people’s success and bad mouthing them, people will only see you as jealous and spiteful, which will do you no good in the end. It’s better to stay positive and focused on your own work and career. You will be much better served if you do.

23. WHEN YOUR WORK SPEAKS FOR ITSELF, DON’T INTERRUPT.

Don’t explain the mystery. If you manage to thrill people and entertain them, be happy with that. I personally find it distasteful when all these behind the scenes documentaries on films are made. George Lucas being one of the worst offenders. By explaining everything away as gimmicks and tricks you do your story and your characters a disservice. I’m explaining how things are done in this book only for your edification as a fellow writer. But the magic that you put into your work should remain a mystery to all but yourself.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Secrets of Writing: Narration

When you have one central character telling a story, it’s common to write it from first person, with the central character playing the narrator. The central character is not always the hero in these stories. Sometimes they are only telling the story of the hero, as they see it.

The rules of exposition apply equally to narration, if not moreso. Narration tells the audience what’s happening in the story, but it needs to serve a dramatic function as well as an informational one. You don’t want the narrating character to be as boring as a math professor. Always remember you are trying to entertain the audience. That has to be foremost in your mind at all times.

But there’s a hitch to doing narration. You don’t want it to draw too much attention to itself. The narration serves to lead us into the key scenes of the story. That’s what its job is. It also opens up the story at the beginning and closes it at the end. But the true story is told through the scenes that are played out. All the narration does is give us context.

Many a writer has made the mistake of having the narration tell us something rather banal, as if it was important. Nothing should be said that isn’t illuminating or interesting. You also don’t want to tells us things point blank. “This is my brother, Joe. He’s the smart one in the family.”

Narration should be told with style. It needs to reflect the personality of the narrator. It needs to possess an interesting “voice”. Every character has their own voice. Their own way of talking. It reflects their background, ideology, world view and attitude. When you choose a character to narrate a story, they should be entertaining, without being distracting. The point of narration is to provide an over view of the story, information we need to understand the context of things. But since every story presents a point of view, when you use a narrator, keep in mind that the narrator is looking at it from a certain perspective. If you use an impersonal, god-like narrator, who isn’t in the story, then it can just be straight information. In which case it should be concise.

Friday, February 23, 2007

SECRETS OF WRITING: Dialog Part 4 - Stylized Dialog

One of the goals of writing dialog is to make each character sound like a unique individual. People don’t all sound alike. But we can’t deal with the actual pitch of a person’s voice in comics. We can’t do inflection and intonation without resorting to artificial tricks.

So that leaves stylized dialog.

This method helps create a unique voice for each character and provide yet another dimension to their persona. When stylized dialog is done well, people will think you write great dialog. Garth Ennis made a great name for himself on HELLBLAZER and PREACHER doing stylized dialog. On the other hand, you can make a bad name for yourself if you don’t handle stylized dialog well.

There are two forms to this technique. One is speech patterns, the other is lingo. People from certain sub-cultures or enthnicities have distinctive ways of talking that set them apart from others. The contrast in their speech patterns can make them stand out as characters, but you must be careful not to make their dialog sound clichéd.

“Wow, man. That cat’s really groovy. Dig that beat, daddyo!”

Dialog like that dates the work. We’re talking 1950s, early 60s beatnik culture. You have to be careful when using slang. When you choose the style of a character’s dialog, be aware of what period it dates them as being from. An old hippy in the 1990s might still retain certain speech patterns from his youth, like the use for the word “man” at the end of sentences. Someone who was young in the 1940s may still retain some 1940s style speech patterns.

People generally form their speech patterns in their youth so it helps enhance their characterization by defining these things.

Slanguage

Slang can make a book seem really hip if it’s up-to-date and contemporary. But the problem with slang is most of it becomes dated in two or three years.

In America slang comes mainly from our sub-cultures. Computer hackers have their own slang, surfers have theirs, etc. The black population arguably produces the most slang in the American vernacular. In the late 80s, early 90s, black slanguage became the parlance of the youth culture, which is similar to the beat generation’s adoption of jazzbo slang in the 1950s.

The problem with slang is it can seem really forced if not used properly. Having a character from a subculture talk in slang all the time sounds phony. Most people intersperse slang in their dialog. They don’t use it in every sentence. Don’t be fooled by pop songs and rap music. That isn’t the way people actually talk. Music is a distillation of feeling. Dialog is something else all together. It has to sound real.

Slang needs to be used to make points. It shouldn’t be over used. The rule for slanguage is the same for exposition. Convert your slang to ammunition. Make it have an impact. Use it sparingly. Don’t wear it out.

If you’re writing street characters, it may be wiser to use universal slang that has stood the test of time. That way, people who read your comic ten years in the future won’t laugh at it. You want your work to stay in print forever, if possible.

Profanity

The rules for profanity are the same for slang and exposition. You don’t want to over use it. Profanity can have a strong impact in a story is used sparingly. It can really highly a character’s emotional state.

When profanity is used all the time in a story, most people are turned off. The public is more forgiving of profanity today than ever before, but there are still a lot of people who don’t like it. Furthermore, many parents may prevent their kids from reading your comics if they find profanity in them. So you have to be aware of the limitations of the words.

Profanity comes in degrees of offensiveness. You can easily get away with “damn” and “hell”, because few people are offended by those words. But racial epithets and some of the extreme four letter words and their variations are dangerous territory. You have to think carefully when using them. It can seriously limit your audience, which is why major comics publishers generally don’t allow them.

When words offend the audience, it can make them stop liking your story. It can ruin the spell that your story was weaving around them. Think about who your target audience is. Decide if you want to risk alienating them.

REMEMBER: Profanity has power, but that same power can turn people away.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Secrets of Writing: Dialog Part 3: Exposition

This is the term used for dialog that reveals information to the audience. In bad fiction, this is usually the worst kind of dialog. That’s because it’s the hardest dialog to write convincingly. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to write a story without expositional dialog. So let’s try to understand how to make it work.

As we’ve discussed earlier, dialog is not real conversation, but it must seem real. The primary goal of dialog is to create drama, the secondary goal is to impart information. It’s important to keep these priorities straight. Too many writers try to cram tons on information into a word balloon without first considering whether it would be something a person would say. Or even more importantly, what this dialog does for the story dramatically.

You probably remember some teacher back in school who was a complete bore when he gave lectures. Information cannot be merely told to someone. It needs to be imparted in a dynamic, interesting manner. It’s extremely easy to bore someone if you’re not careful.

Public speaking classes teach you to make your points in short, sharp sentences with sufficient breaks between them so the audience can absorb what they heard. The same rule applies to writing. You have to convert your exposition into ammunition. The dialog has to sing with emotional meaning. It can’t just be raw data. It needs to have an impact on the character who’s receiving it.

If the dialog has no value in the scene, it will have no value to the reader. So it’s a bad idea to waste their time with meaning less chatter. Each line of dialog should further the story, define the characters, create emotion, add humor, or provide information. If it fails to do any of these things, consider dumping it.

So, when writing expositional scenes, you want to avoid table dusting. You want to make the passing of information to the audience seem as natural as a blue sky. To do this you have to carefully choose who says what to whom. The person receiving the information should not be aware of it, unless they are playing the fool for some reason. The person giving the information should only tell the other character the bare minimum of what they should know. As we discussed before, it’s boring to hear too much too soon. Tell us only what we need to know. Show us the rest whenever possible.

It’s much better for the story if the information passed on has some kind of emotional impact on the other character. Either it makes them laugh, cry, scared, or angry. If it’s boring to the receiver, don’t expect the audience to be too interested either.

When you create emotional meaning out of the dialog, you add to the energy of the scene and you advance the story.

Let’s explore some examples of expositional dialog to see how we can approach it differently.

Art Insert: A man and woman talking in what looks like a business meeting in an office.

MAN: I remember Kyle telling me about Lancaster. He said Lanc had some business dealings with Arabs.

WOMAN: I happen to know he has connections to several high ranking members of the Saudi Royal Family.

MAN: Then...you think this is about the sword?

WOMAN: Definitely.

In the above example, the two characters are talking about someone they both know. Notice the man has incomplete data and the woman seems to know more. She tells him what he needs to know in an indirect way. This is realistic behavior and it doesn’t seem forced. 

In the next example we look at a case where someone’s boss is providing info to an employee. This is basically a lecture, but watch how it’s done…

IMAGINE: A mob boss is talking to a soldier. They’re in a warehouse full of crates. Hiding behind one of the crates, listening in, is Kyle.

BOSS: Okay, Vance...the shipment comes in at three A.M. sharp. I don’t expect any trouble. We greased the right wheels. But just to make sure, I want you and Carlos to keep and eye out, capiche?

VANCE: What about Kyle? 

BOSS: Don’t worry about that milk sucking freak. I’ve taken care of him.

From this discussion, information is passed, but we only get the information absolutely necessary. And there are implied elements in the dialog that suggests Kyle is a threat, that this shipment is illegal or something others will want in on. All of this is done with subtext. You only say what you need to say, and try to be indirect about it so the reader has something to imagine. When you spark the audience’s imagination, you give them something to anticipate. You provide an element of mystery.

In the following example, we find out about a third character through dialog between two people.

IMAGINE: Two soldiers are sitting in a trench during some war. They’re passing the time, talking.

BOB: So, what’s the scoop, Cort? Do you know what happened to Pete? I’ve been looking for him.

CORT: Didn’t you hear? He stepped on a land mine. Blew his friggin’ legs off.

BOB: Jesus! When did that happen?

CORT:  Last week. They sent him home already.

BOB: Home!? The bastard owes me two hundred bucks! How am I ever going to get it back?

In the above example we find out that Bob is owed money by Pete. And the subtext is, Bob cares more about the money than about Pete’s misfortune. This defines Bob’s character and suggests he may have a pressing reason for wanting that money back.

Exposition should tell us things the way a fly on the wall would hear it. When people who know each other are talking, they use a shorthand because they both have common knowledge and they’re not going to repeat information to each other they already know. So you need to set up the conversation so the audience can understand what they’re saying by what’s not said. This adds more realism to the dialog.

As an exercise, go to a bar or a restaurant at a busy time and eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. Study how they pass information back and forth. There are specific ways people talk to each other based on the nature of the conversation. Mating rituals are different than business transactions (most of the time, anyway). Study the differences and try to discern the relationships of the people based on the way they communicate with each other.

REMEMBER: Convert your exposition to ammunition. 

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

SECRETS OF WRITING: Dialog Part 2 - Text and Subtext

We’ve already covered the difference between text and subtext. Now let’s try to understand how it works for dialog.

In bad fiction, people say exactly what they mean to each other. This is also done in children’s fiction, because children don’t have the facility to understand subtext as well as adults.  But when I say children, I mean young children. The average comic reader is usually over the age of 12, so subtext is not out of the question.

In fact, a lack of subtext marks any story as shallow. Subtext adds dimension to the work and adds meaning to the dialog.

The most effective way to engage an Audience is to give their minds something to work with. It isn’t enough to show them things. You also want to hint at things. When the mind receives incomplete information, it tries to fill in the blanks. Subtext creates more depth for the Audience and it causes them to feel the hidden meaning behind the words.

EXAMPLE: A man and a woman facing each other across the dinner table. The man says: “Did you do anything interesting today?” His expression somewhat challenging and suspicious. The woman won’t meet his eyes, but she has a slight smirk: “Oh, nothing. I just saw an old friend.”

The emotions revealed on a character’s face colors the meaning of the words. We don’t have the benefit of sound in comics, so we can’t deal with inflection and word stress without using artificial semiotics. But with emotional expressions, the subtext of the conversation is revealed. The man doesn’t trust the woman. He feels she’s cheating on him. The woman is feeding his jealousy, taunting him with vague answers. She may very well be cheating on him.

(Art insert: Same dialog, same couple, same setting, but their expressions are friendly and smiling.)

Notice how the subtext changes in this new example. Suddenly, they seem interested in each other and now it looks like this is all part of some kind of courting ritual.

Subtext changes the meaning of a scene, so the actions of the characters when they talk must be carefully selected. The choice of words is also critical. Some words can be used to suggest the subtext more strongly, creating a level of irony.

REMEMBER: Never forget to use subtext in a conversation.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Secrets of Writing: Dialog Part 1

If there’s anything as important as the structure and the characterization, it’s the dialog.
That’s why it gets its own section. There’s a lot to cover here.

People will judge you heavily by your dialog. Even if the plot is bad, the dialog can make you look good. There are a lot of half-baked stories out there people like because of the dialog. But dialog is no substitute for a great story. They should go hand in hand.

The technique of writing good dialog is fairly simple. But it can still be very tough to get right. It boils down to a few simple rules:

1. Dialog is not real conversation. It’s only supposed to sound real. 
2. It must sound realistic. Say it out loud to be sure.
3. Keep it short and sweet.
4. If you’ve heard it before, think of another way of saying it.
5. All clichés must die!
6. Research! Cultures and sub-cultures have their own slanguage.
7. Dialog should not be expected unless you want it to be

The Nature of Dialog

Dialog is not real conversation. Real conversation is a boring and oppressive when translated to print. People use too many “Ums” and “Ahs” and “You knows” and “I means” and lots of other redundant words and sounds.

Dialog needs to be memorable. It can’t be even remotely dull. Because any forgettable dialog sucks energy from your story. Good dialog adds to the pleasure of reading and thus adds energy to the story.

The “show, don’t tell” rule applies as much to dialog as anything else we’ve talked about. If you can show us something visually, instead of telling us, it will work better for you. If not, then make that dialog zing.

Dialog should first be dramatic, then informational. That is your priority. Every line should advance the story and help make the responding dialog more exciting.

Have you ever seen a conversation between two people where you were just dying to hear everything they say because each line made you want to hear the other character’s response? You need to be able to do that in your story. You need to make those lines of dialog count.

This is helped by following the above rules. Now let’s get into specifics.

Prolixity

This is a form of writing that must be avoided at all cost. Unless you are doing it on purpose. Prolixity is the term for sentences that use too many words. Too many words makes a sentence boring. It makes it passive.

“We talked for what seemed like days as the cold September morning turned to afternoon, then night, then morning again as we talked and talked some more about all the things that were on our minds and all the things we should have done to stop the terror that was ravaging the city while we impotently looked on. Finally, we had a plan after discussing all the possible outcomes of every action we could take to end the problems that faced us.”

Aside from taking too long to say what it has to say, the above paragraph is full of redundancy. When you take too long to say something, your writing becomes vague. It causes the audience’s mind to wander. Think back on those days in high school when some boring teacher droned on about history or math. Remember how you would rather be doing something else? We’ll you don’t want the reader to feel that way. You want them to be excited and involved. Anything but bored.

The above paragraph would read better this way:

“We talked from dawn till dusk till dawn again, covering every possible contingency. The fear that was ravaging the city had to be stopped. Now we had a plan.”

Less is More

Short sentences have more punch. Long sentences take longer to read, so the energy it takes to read them is dragged out and diminished. People respond to sound bites more than to speeches. This is why people with emotionally charged causes sound more correct on television, even though they’re usually presenting disinformation and/or out and out propaganda.

The human mind accepts information more easily when the information comes in simple bursts. You’re driving down a highway and see a sign that says:

FOOD

This has more resonance for most people than: JOHN’S COUNTRY KITCHEN SERVING HOT MEALS AT A GOOD PRICE.

Both work, but the first one is primal. It allows you to fill in the blanks and create a immediate image in your mind. The second tells you more information and thus you have more to process in your mind. It complicates things.
If there was a sign that said: JOHN’S COUNTRY KITCHEN SPECIALIZING IN HAMBURGERS, STEAKS, BREAKFAST FOODS. WE ALSO HAVE SHAKES, MUFFINS, PIES AND OTHER CULINARY TREATS TO WHET YOUR APPETITE.

This is even more information. It’s also more specific. It robs us of our imagination. A vegetarian might be put off by all the mention of meat products. A dieter might think...too fattening, move on. But a sign that says FOOD allows us to become curious and want to find out more. It only tells us what we need to know. Nothing more.

The object of prose is to keep the reader interested. To keep their eyes glued to the page.  You want them to read the next sentence and the next and the next. You want to stimulate them.

Keeping the text short and sweet does this very well. It retains more mystery, which due to human nature, makes the reader curious to know more. We want to know what’s in the box, what’s behind that door. As a writer, you’re leading them through a great castle, through secret passages, up stairs, through cavernous halls. You should keep their excitement high as they explore the mysteries you’re about to unfold.

Short sentences are snappy. They are easy to read, easy to understand. When you write a line of dialog or a line of prose in a caption, take a hard look at it. See if you can’t cut words, shorten it. See if it can’t be said more strongly, more effectively.

REMEMBER: Less is more when it comes to prose.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Secrets of Writing: Symbolism and Icons

Another method that adds resonance to a story and helps to amplify the themes and the premise is symbolism. It creates a resonance in the mind of the Audience that helps establish mood, feeling, and emotion. It plays with our subconscious in ways that can achieve

Symbolism can be used in a variety of ways, both visually and subtextually.

All human beings respond to symbolism. It seems to be a universal language that all people understand. Psychologists like Carl Jung have theorized that we have a collective unconscious and certain things are known to us all. Symbolism is our collective way of interpreting things. A heart is often represented as a shape that looks nothing like a real heart. The sun is usually drawn as a circle with lines coming out of it. But symbolism isn’t limited to icons.  We understand some things as symbolism because they evoke a feeling in us. They represent something to us. The Jack O’Lantern means Halloween to us. The Turkey means Thanksgiving. The Christmas Tree, Christmas. A rattle or pacifier translates to “baby”. A man in a suit, carrying a briefcase, can mean “father” or “executive”. A woman in an apron can mean “mother”.

The use of symbolism can be used to foreshadow events, as we saw in the last chapter. They can also be used as a form of commentary on the story. It can be used as a counterpoint to events in the scene. Or it can be used to amplify the message or tone of the scene.

Symbolic Charge

When symbolism is used to evoke an archetypal feeling in the work, this is known as symbolic charge. Just as symbolic characterization makes a character look like what they’re supposed to be, symbolic charge uses symbolism to enhance the feel of the story so it matches an archetypal model you’ve chosen.

In the movie BRAZIL, papers were always in evidence, floating on a breeze or stacked to the ceiling, suggesting a bureaucracy. The use of air tubes all over the place added with sounds resembling a growling stomach gave the symbolic charge that the people lived in the bowels of some enormous creature. So the symbolic charge of this film gave you the feeling that everyone had been swallowed by a totalitarian beast.

The symbolic choices were logical to the milieu and didn’t seem out of place, yet they also served to make the story resonate with a feeling which enhanced the work. It really made you feel the nightmarish quality of the world, even though you could laugh at its excesses.

Symbolism works best when it’s integrated into the story in a non-obtrusive way. It should work on the subconscious of the audience, not hit them over the head.

Icons

When symbolism is boiled down to its purest, most representational form, you are left with the icon. Icons are something we’re all familiar with. From the stop sign to the smiley face button, icons are a common form of communication in our post-industrial society.

They have a strong power on a psychological level because they have immediate recognition value. People know what an icon stands for when they see it. And depending on the emotional charge that icon has for them, it can be used in powerful ways.

The American Flag is often used to promote patriotism. The cross to promote Christianity. Santa Claus to promote Christmas. If you choose a icon with the right symbolic power for what you want to say, you can pass a message onto the audience without any elaboration. If they see a preacher standing before a cross, they feel the religious resonance. And if you invert that cross and put the guy a hooded robe, they know what that means, too.

Icons are a great form of communication. But you should be careful about sending mixed messages with them. If you want to use an icon to say something different for ironic effect, you need to make it clear.

The smiley face icon with a bullet hole between the eyes is a good example of mixed message icons. It tells you, basically, that the person displaying this icon hates cheerful people.

One of the reasons icons have such a powerful charge is that simplicity is easy to understand. It allows the mind to complete the picture. Just as prose allows the mind to evoke an image of its own. When you give someone the minimum amount of information to understand a concept, their mind has the freedom to extrapolate and build on the idea. The more information you provide, the less room for thought, because you start fencing in the realm of probabilities. The receiver also has to absorb more data.

Icons provide clear cut messages. just don’t use them to muddy the waters and you’ll do fine.