Sunday, January 14, 2007

Religion of Peace Watch

Suspected Muslim militants beheaded a Buddhist man and shot dead two civilians in southern Thailand on Sunday as an uprising shows no signs of abating.

The head of the 40-year-old farmer was found next to his body and that of his 35-year-old wife at the entrance of their rubber plantation in Yala province, police said.

Both had been shot and a handwritten note next to the bodies said, “We shall kill all Thai Buddhists,” they said.

In the same province, a 74-year-old man was shot dead while riding his motorcycle, police said. Two teenagers, also on a motorcycle, had shot the man.

On Saturday, suspected militants shot dead police Sergeant-Major Pak Petmalai, 47, as he headed for work at a station near his home.

Reuters

Writing Question

Mr. Hudnall,

Please accept my thanks for the Secrets of Writing series.  I’ve noticed
that there are few if any comments for these pearls of wisdom and I wanted
to let you know personally that I greatly appreciate them.

Now for a writing question; I’m working on my first novel and of course became
stymied.  Your series has illuminated several problems with my ms and I’m
wondering what process you use to get the story done.

Do you develop ‘dossiers’ on every character, plot points etc. and then fill in
everything else? Or do you grab an idea and fill in the characters as you go?

I think I am struggling with the balance of telling vs. showing.

Thanks again for a great series,

Bill Bolton

It’s good to write down little dossiers on each major character. Because writing stuff down will help you put your impressions of the character in order and help you put them in perspective. You will need to give the reader a true account of who they are.

Your characters aren’t you, even when you are creating an avatar of yourself. And you need to understand what makes them tick and what makes them different than you. You also need to understand why react differently to each character they meet. We all treat people differently based on who they are and that also tells us soming about the character in question.

As far as plot the most important thing to understand first is what the characters want. The hero and villain. Every person alive is motivated by desire. We all want something. Why does what the hero want conflict with the villain and how can you make that stronger in your story?

To work on the plot you need to map out the key points and you need to know what the ending is and why that impacts the major characters. It should have some kind of impact that makes us care what happens. I will be getting into that shortly on the blog.

As far as showing and telling. You want to show things as much as possible. Figure out how you can do that. When characters explain everything, 99% of the time it slows things down an makes it boring. It’s always better to have the characters learn things and discover things on their own whenever possible. And that discovery should have some sort of impact on the story.

Good luck!

Bunny Suicides

Here’s a very strange, but morbidly funny comic strip series. Bunny Suicides.

Secrets of Writing: Act Structure

ACT STRUCTURE

We’ve been discussing various elements of story construction such as the world, the plot, the premise and the characters. Now we get down to the nitty gritty.

Act Structure is the most classic form of story construction. It’s a system that has worked incredibly well for thousands of years. I’m going to give you the basics so you can apply these principals you see fit.

Most of us are familiar with the structure known as the three act play. In a nutshell, the three act structure is: The Beginning, the Middle, and the End of the story.

In comic books, this structure has become rare as writers tend to leave their audiences hanging with unresolved climaxes at the end of every issue. Most comics are serialized fiction after all. But there is a right way and a wrong way to handle cliffhangers.

For now let’s deal with the acts.

What is an Act?

Acts are blocks of scenes in a story, separated by act climaxes (“Turning Points”). A comics story is built up from this form:  Panel>Scene>Sequence>Acts>Story. Every other medium employs the same form except for the panels. Panels are unique to comics.

The act serves to show a major change taking place in the story. It’s composed of sequences which build to that change, which is the turning point. The sequences are composed of scenes and the scenes are made up of the individual story panels.

The act serves to create a sense of closure for one part of the story. The audience can’t take everything at the same level of energy. We control the energy of the story through these compartmental devices. An act is the sum total of all its parts and it propels us into the next act until the climax and resolution.

Despite what many people think, the three act structure is not the most effective way to tell a story. Shakespeare preferred to do his plays in five acts. A story can be told in one act or seven depending on the objectives of the plot. Acts build the story’s emotional charge. If it takes more than three acts to build up the proper charge, then so be it.

Let’s focus on one and two act stories for a second. These kinds of stories are by nature, brief. The longer the story, the more complexity and reversals are needed, and thus more acts.

One act stories are usually very short. They have the “twist” or “surprise” ending. These stories are created in service of the ending. Everything leads up to a big surprise. The old E.C. Comics stories were written using this principle. Bill Gaines would come up with some twist ending idea and bounce it off his collaborator Al Feldstien. They would often write the story backwards from the ending. This is not a bad idea, actually, and it worked well for them. The ending is one of the most important components of a story. But we’ll deal with that later. One act stories are pretty much reserved for short fiction because you don’t want to take too long getting to the punchline. The comic gag strip, such as “Garfield”, uses the one act story structure. The structure of a three panel strip is: Setup, Beat, Punchline. The beat being a pause of some kind before you hit them with the joke. 

Two Act stories are often used in half hour TV sitcoms. The first act takes place before the commercial break in the middle. Its purpose is to get the characters into trouble. The second act gets them out again. Hopefully, the climax of the second act will have a slam bang ending with a nice twist. This format isn’t bad for one issue comic book stories. Especially if they’re simple action plots. But the three act structure is probably best.

Three Act Structure

This is the most widely used structure, mainly because it’s the most simple. It’s also the minimum number of acts needed to take the hero through all four of the story values. One and two act stories are mainly gimmick stories aimed at reaching a simple conclusion rather than exploring the depths of a character or their experience. With the three act structure, we can really begin to get down and dirty. 

Act one serves to introduce the main characters, define their motivations, show us the Trigger Event, and get the story in motion for the second act. It’s basically an introduction to the story. But it needs to grab our attention and not let us go. It’s usually not that big a section of the over all story. And it ends with a plot twist that turns the story in the direction of the conflict.

Act two is the section where progressive complications threaten to defeat the hero. The villain gains his ascendancy in this act and is winning by the end of it. This is largest act in terms of size. It’s where most of the action takes place, where most of the character development occurs. You need to pace this section well and build it carefully for the big twist that throws us headlong into the climax.

Act three is the climax and resolution of the story. It is the smallest act in size and for good reason. Like its namesake, the climax doesn’t take long, but boy is it powerful! We couldn’t take too much of the climax at once. It would destroy it’s power. Energy in a story is a critical thing to control and the climax is an explosion of all the pent up energy we’ve been building. It’s where the forces of the conflict are at their peak. It’s here where the winner is determined and the outcome is revealed. The resolution is going to have to be short, because a long resolution makes for a dragged out ending. I’m sure you’ve seen them before and know what they feel like. So the third act is where we finish the story with our final body blow to the audience, and then we wrap it up nice and sweet so they don’t lose that warm, glowing feeling the climax gave them.

Constructing the Acts

Now that we have a rough idea what acts are and what purpose they serve, let’s talk about how we put them together.

Every act is composed of sequences. Sequences exist to create the Turning Point/Act Climax. They tell the story of how the Turning Point/Act Climax came about. Every sequence builds energy to create a lesser turning point which throws us into the following sequence. The last sequence in an act ends with a major turning point. 

Sequences are composed of scenes. Scenes are events that, when placed together, form the story of the sequence. Scenes end with mini-turning points that are smaller that the ones that end a sequence. Except for the last scene in the last sequence. These turning points can be as subtle as a change of expression on a person’s face, or as powerful as a planet exploding. It all depends on where they are in the sequence.

In comics, panels are used to create the scenes. It’s possible to do a scene in one panel, but generally, a scene is made up of two or more panels. Each panel is a static image showing a snapshot of action taking place. There will be dialog, narration, and possibly sound effects to make this static image come alive in some way. But these devices are not always needed. Panels are the only element of the act structure that does not end with a turning point. Not unless they are the last panel in a scene.

So...how do we construct an act? We start from the first image in panel one. Many people like to start with the “Splash Page”, a single panel page that has a dynamic image to rouse our interest. This first image sets the mood for the story right off the bat.

You can set the mood of the story with the first scene and take it from there. Once you establish the mood, you have to work within its confines. Changing the mood of story once it’s been set can be a difficult and dangerous thing to do. I’m sure you’ve read books or seen films where it was unclear whether it was a comedy or a drama. This is because they set one mood, then changed it, then changed it again.

It’s important to either keep the mood consistent, or build toward a change in mood at the act climax. Don’t try to make a major mood change mid act or you will make it difficult for the audience to decide how to feel about the story.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

500 Useless Facts

The one about what will happen to you in a vacuum is wrong, but most of them are right.

What Happened After The Death Star Blew Up

Secrets of Writing: Stereotypes and Political Correctness

Stereotypes

Needless to say, you should avoid stereotypes when creating characters. But the truth is, there are people who look and act like living clichés. All stereotypes got started somewhere, and certainly there are people who fit the bill. But we need avoid clichéd characters for one simple reason.

It’s been done.

Forget right or wrong. That’s almost irrelevant. Your first goal as a writer is to be interesting. You can write objectionable fiction and still be entertaining as hell. Robert Crumb made a career out of it. You decide what is right when you set out to tell a story. Fiction is your statement. Your argument. Your goal is not to placate sectors of the public, because no matter what you do, someone will be offended anyway.

But you don’t want to write characters with contempt. Every person is an individual with unique thoughts and feelings. Your goal as a writer is to create characters that are distinct personalities. A stereotype is nothing more than a cartoon. It doesn’t do justice to its subject. It may be used for humorous effect, but it will never be taken seriously in drama. People are bored with clichés.

If you go to write a character from a different race or culture than your own, question the character choices you make. Try to create a real person before you settle on their ethnicity or culture. That way you can avoid creating a stereotype.

“Political Correctness”

In George Orwell’s 1984, the totalitarian government replaced old words with new ones in an attempt to brainwash the public. Political Correctness is an attempt to impose a way of thinking on people by changing terminology. Regardless of the moral intent, Political Correctness is wrong. People aren’t categories. They should not be cataloged into artificial classes of the mind. That’s just a new form of segregation and it doesn’t breed respect.

But more than that, it’s a form of censorship. And writers need to ignore censorship and tell the truth as they see it. Political correctness isn’t about the truth. It’s about avoiding it. It’s about not hurting anyone’s feelings, but also changing the subject. That is antithetical to what a writer needs to do in a story,

By and large, the public hates PC terms. The reason is simple. It’s absurd. When you classify people into some generic mold, you are dehumanizing them. You are robbing them of their individual dignity. Furthermore, the terms keep changing. Calling a black person a Negro is dated, just as the term “African-American” will be in several decades time. These artificial terms are merely buzzwords of the moment, nothing more. And they can date your work as surely as slanguage like “Groovy” and “Hepcat” will. 

Stick to terms that have stood the test of time. Better still, don’t even use terms unless it’s necessary for clarification. Your goal is to create people, not classifications.

REMEMBER: “Political Correctness” is wrong. Stereotypes are clichés. 

Friday, January 12, 2007

McPheever

Season 5 American Idol runner-up Katherine McPhee’s CD will be out at the end of the month. After a month delay. I am looking forward to hearing what she wants in an album. I actually really liked Kellie Pickler’s CD and also Chris Daughtry’s. And I’ve become a Kelly Clarkson fan. Even though I’m not into country that much, I also like Carrie Underwood’s latest effort. I have to say, the American Idol machine really puts out some talent. They have single handedly revived pop music at a time it was in peril.

Personally, my favorite new bands lean more in the direction of Evanescence and The Killers. But I enjoy good pop. Most people do, which is why it’s called pop music (short for popular).

I liked McPhee last year, even though she gave off major diva vibes at times. I was rooting for Taylor Hicks, and his first CD delivered. Now I am curious to hear what Kat has done. So far, all the Season 5 alum have done really solid work. I wish Elliot Yamin would get one out soon. All we have so far is a Christmas single available on iTunes. 

Trainwreck DuJour

Paula Abdul promoting American Idol

Super Sand Castles (and Sculptures)

Some of these are amazing