Secrets of Writing: Technique
“There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.”
H.L. Mencken
We’ve just learned all the basics of writing, from the definitions of story and plot to the basics of story structure. Now we’re going to delve into the more advanced area of technique. These are the tools you’ll use to make your story stronger. Knowing how to structure a story is only the beginning. Once you lay down the structure, you then have to fine tune it.
Technique should never be obvious. It should be invisible. The Audience should not be aware that it’s there. The mark of a good writer is their ability to make the technique in their story disappear. They make the story look “easy”. It seems compelling and real. Self aware writing that spends part of its time showing you how clever the writer is by beating you over the head with technique is bad writing. No matter how slick and intelligent such writing may seem, it’s not good if it’s beating you up with technique. Stories are meant to be enjoyed for what they are, not for how they are made.
There is an exception to this principle. Comedy or surrealistic structure allows you to break down the fourth wall and expose the writer’s hand. But in stories that are meant to be taken seriously, the writer’s hand should never be obvious. Distractions are a sin in fiction. You don’t want the Audience to stop reading all of a sudden to notice some trick you are pulling. You don’t want them to fall out of the trance a good story puts you in.
Your job is to seduce them, not to jump up and down and brag about yourself. You want them to get into the mood and into your bed. Self aware writing tends to spoil the mood. So it’s not a good idea.
I’ve tried to remember all the technique ideas I know and put them in here. I learn new ones all the time, so by the time you read this, I will probably know more. The following list of techniques is pretty useful however. More than enough to help you do your job.
They’re listed in an order I think is logical, based on their priorities and their place in the writing process. You will need to use the first ones before you use some of the later ones.
SET-UPS AND PAY OFFS
“If a shotgun hangs on the wall in the first act, it must be used by the climax.” Thus spake the great playwright Anton Chekov, who brought us “The Seagull”. Chekov was right, even though he often broke his own rule.
Any item or skill that is critical to the story in some manner, must be set up in the story before you use it. When you use the item that is known as the “pay off”. But it doesn’t stop with items and talents. Lots of things need setting up before being used.
First let’s understand the set up. It exists to tell the Audience that this item, talent, power, whatever, exists in the Milieu. This way, when it’s used later in the story it doesn’t seem random. We know that it can happen.
If a character ends up performing brain surgery later in the story and we were never told he was a doctor, the Audience loses their suspension of disbelief, and we know what that means. They’re gone.
People don’t like being lied to. They don’t like being made to look like fools. If you surprise them in a nice way, they like it. But if you expect them to swallow an absurdity that’s meant to be taken seriously, they’ll become disgusted with you.
So first you have to let them know that something is coming. But you have to do it in a way that isn’t spoiling the surprise your planning. A bad set up makes for a weak pay off.
Set ups are best done visually. When you set something up with dialog, it doesn’t stick in the mind as well as when people see it. Expositional dialog is also a pain to write naturally. So why make it difficult for yourself? If your character needs to perform a medical operation later in the story, all you need to do is show a Doctor’s Degree on their wall early in the story. Or show a business card that says he’s a doctor.
The same rule applies to super powers, martial arts skills, the ability to solve puzzles quickly, weapons that are used later, you name it. Anything that is crucial to the story must be set up before hand. And the sooner the better.
Since nothing in a story should go to waste, you shouldn’t set up anything you don’t plan to use. Unless you’re trying to trick the audience into thinking the story is going in a different direction than it actually is. You may want to set up some weapon, for example, but when the character goes to use it later, he find out it doesn’t work. This creates a powerful reversal which forces the hero to find another means to win the day.
When you don’t want the audience to see something coming, you should get your set up in early. That way, they may forget about it until later when you finally do the pay off. The object of a set up is to tell the audience that these things are in the world of the story, so they don’t just get pulled out of a hat later. People feel a story is bad when that happens. They may not understand why, but they instinctively feel the writer is bad. So make sure you set things up.
Pay offs are, in essence, the punch lines to the set up. A set up tells you a piece of information. But it’s an incomplete piece. It’s only the first half, like the first part of a joke. You don’t get it until the punchline is thrown at you.
A pay off can be a tremendous boost if it turns out to be extremely important to the story and you set it up cleverly. Alfred Hitchcock movies are worth studying for his use of set ups and pay offs. In VERTIGO, Jimmy Stewart’s character has a fear of heights. During the Turning Point, this fear pays off because it prevents him from seeing a murder. His need to overcome this fear is what allows him to solve the riddle of the crime at the end. So the set up doubles as a bit of characterization which leads to the character’s development. In SABOTEUR the Hero accidentally bumps into a man who later turns out to be a villain. The man drops some letters. When the Hero picks them up he sees an address on them and the name of the sender. This information becomes vital to him later because he gets accused of being a saboteur. The set up was his link to find the Villain. Unfortunately, the information was misleading. So the pay off is also a reversal.
It’s good to make each pay off count in more ways than one. If you can make them not only relevant to the story as information, but also a means of advancing the character or the conflict, you will get a much cooler scene for your effort. But more importantly, it helps create epiphanies for the audience.
Man you don’t even know how long I’ve waited for this since disabling my own Movable Type widget (that doesn’t work since Haloscan bypasses that code).
Posted by Rasel on 01/27 at 06:05 PM
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