New Novelists - Have You Tried Writing A Movie?

I have a pet peeve about first person point-of-view.

I find there are a fair number of books that rely heavily on telling, rather than showing:

I’m told a male lead is hot, sexy and caring, even though his actions are shown as manipulative, cruel and insincere.

I’m told a female lead is tough, even though she is shown as indecisive, passive and reactive.

This inability to look past actions makes me a terrible mind control candidate. I judge by what I see rather than what I'm told. I guess you could call me a "visual reader". You'll probably find "visual writers" penning movies, TV shows, comics or graphic novels.

I have enjoyed many books where the writer is being contrary on purpose. Sadly, there are just as many books where there is no supporting evidence to signpost this intention.

I can’t say this method is storytelling is wrong. There are dozens of books on bestseller lists (both-legacy and self-published) that do this. But, I've also read just as many first person books that are able to propel a story and characterisation forward visually, without having to tell me who the characters are.

So how can a teller become a seer?

There are many valuable tools for writers, but it wasn't until I wrote a screenplay that I really started to understand show-don't-tell in prose.

In screenplays, you only write what you see and hear. It's like plonking your novel in a sensory deprivation chamber. The kind Uncle Walter is so fond of. Your readers no longer have an ESP plug into the characters heads, which makes it vital that everything they say and do speaks for them. And you can't cheat by having everyone just say what they are thinking. You'd have to add "crazy" and "overly dramatic" to the character descriptions of every single one of your characters.

Writing a screenplay makes it easier to spot the problems.

If you rewrite your 300-page novel as a movie, and you can only manage 20 pages of story, then you'll know you are spending too much time in your character's heads.

A character-driven story can still have a satisfying beginning, middle and end, complete with stakes, obstacles, climaxes and resolutions. First person point-of-view doesn't replace this or make it any easier. If anything, I've always considered first person one of the hardest formats to write because it is rather tempting to just tell readers the plot, rather than let them see it for themselves.

Think of your favourite movies and TV shows.  Can you recall specific examples where action spoke louder than words ever could?

What/when was the last script you read? If it was Shakespeare in school, that's okay too.

Have you ever tried writing a screenplay? Would you be willing to give it a try, if you haven't?

I'll talk more about screenplays later, but in the meantime, there are plenty of scripts online that you can try out for yourselves. Remember to stick to movies/TV shows that you like or are in your preferred genre.

Some places to read more about screenplays:

Screenwriting Tricks For Authors - Alexandra Sokoloff

Script Gods Must Die

You have 10 minutes to make me care about your writing

I can usually decide if I'm going to buy or finish a book by page 10 (usually sooner).

I'm not Robert McKee, Larry Brody or any other awesome storyteller who can instantly recognise excellent characterisation, pacing, plotting and theme.

It just comes down to one simple question.

"What's in it for me?"

When I was a teen, I was supposed to have a date at the movies, watching Jurassic Park. I say supposed to because my date preferred walking around the shopping mall, discussing his gym regime and making me poke his biceps to prove that they were, I gather, bigger than the average Joe's.

This experience taught me two very valuable lessons. One, never date a guy who values the gym over Jurassic Park. And two, if you make me show up expecting dinosaurs, then you'd better make darn sure there is a noisy death by wobbly box or an impressively scary dinosaur claw within the first ten minutes, or you can go poke your own muscles all you want... by yourself.

Now, before you accuse me of being a bit unfair, I don't think this is an unreasonable expectation from your target audience. We live in the age of Google brain, competing tablets, thousands upon thousands of apps, YouTube, web series, online comics, podcasts and an explosion of self-published authors who are easily competing with the big boys (and gals). There are alternative entertainment options everywhere.

So you need to deliver on the promise you enticed me with. You may have captured my attention with a great logline, a fantastic book blurb, or even a gorgeous book cover. It's up to you to "clinch the deal".

"But so much cool stuff is gonna happen at the end!" you might enthuse.

Maybe.

But that's not why I stuck around. Neither is the "great romance" you have planned, the massive action sequences, or the stellar mindgames you've storyboarded for your characters. None of this matters at the beginning. In the beginning, you just need to give me a big enough taste of the promise so that I engage in the behaviour you want: buy your book, read it, love it, and stick around for the next one.

First impressions count

My brain lives in TV land, so I'm going to throw some choice examples from the TV show, Castle, to illustrate. And while I do that, just remember two simple rules:

• Arrive late, leave early
• Show, don't tell

These two fit together like rama lama lama ke ding a de dinga a dong, and you'll notice great examples of this rule in any good TV pilot.

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON IN

Castle 1x01 "Flowers for your grave"

The general gist of the premise (yeah, I’m making it up, I have no idea where official premises live)
Super-famous mystery writer, Richard Castle, is suffering from writer's block. When a life imitates art and a murderer starts mimicking the killings in his books, Castle realises with the help of tough, homicide detective Kate Beckett, that curing writer’s block might just be deadly.

In the first act, is there a:

Mystery writer? Check.

Detective? Check.

Murder? Check.

Is he famous? Oh yeah. He's the rock star of mystery writers. He's signing girl boobies! But he's supported by his dramatic mother and a well-adjusted "uber-responsible" daughter who illustrate that - while he looks like he could be the stereotypical cad - he's actually more grounded than he appears.

Is she tough? Hell yeah. She has male underlings and they didn't sass her once! You know what that tells me? She's good at her job, like dah-yem good. Oh come on. I don’t suffer from insane troll logic. How many procedurals or movies have you seen that display a woman's "toughness" by having some dude insult her sexuality, just so she can beat him up/down/at his own game? By making it a non-issue, the writers of Castle have immediately elevated her to the "best person for the job".

Holy crap. Look at that! They fulfilled the promise of the premise within the first act.

Whatcha talkin' 'bout Willis? The mystery hasn't been solved and they haven't even teamed up yet. How on earth did they fulfil a promise?

Simple.

There’s not much that today’s audiences haven’t seen. They’ve seen every trick in the book, so you get to use that to your advantage. Show us who your characters are. Trust your audience to fill in the blanks.

We don't need to see them acting as a team in the first act to know that they will become one. Even if we'd never paid any attention to the premise before flicking on the TV, we can see what this show is promising.

Both characters already have distinctive personalities and approaches. Within the space of ten minutes, this has shaped the tone of the series. He's a bit cooky; she's no nonsense. This sets the tone as lighter and less self-serious than a gloomy CSI or Law & Order-type procedural, but her brusque efficiency leaves the option open for darker approach than, say, Murder She Wrote or Diagnosis Murder.

Focusing on Castle and Beckett individually from the get go, visually illustrates that these two characters are going to be partners in screen-time, even if, in the beginning of the episode, they haven't even met. Splitting their narrative has made it easier to pair them up as equals. The caveat is that they needed to have teamed up by the end of the episode. There would have been no payoff for following two separate stories (she's looking for a murderer; he's trying to get over writer's block) if they hadn't.

Thankfully, she knows his books, so there's no long convoluted plot to team them up, so we can just get on with it. And by it, I mean telling a good story that doesn't leave the audience frustrated or negatively surprised.

What if

Imagine if your first meeting of Richard (within the first act) was in the morgue, as he slipped an underpaid attendant a hundred dollar note so he could see a dead body as "inspiration". What's your impression of him now? Would you believe he's well-connected, funny or grounded enough to team up with Beckett? How do you think that would change the Beckett-Castle dynamic? How does it change the tone?

So what is the first 10% of your story promising? And have you delivered it by the time your audience reaches the end?

What Would JC Do? (Nice Guys In Storytelling)

I like nice guys. There. I admit it. Out loud. And, I’ve decided not to duck my head in shame over it, either.
While the rest of the world embraces the Spikes and Damon Salvatores of the fictional world, I prefer the Angels and Stefans. You know, the “nice(r)” option. A lot of people immediately respond to that with “oh, you mean the boring option, right?”.
“Nooooo,” she wails to the universe and pats her nice, misunderstood favourites on their (oddly often) perfectly-styled heads.
While it is true that a lot of characters that start off as “nice guys” become insufferable, boring black holes whose only purpose is to suck the rest of the characters down with them, the nice guys I’m referring to are, at their heart, redeemable. Yes, bad boys aren’t the only characters that need redemption… or can get away with moments of wickedness. I always feel the characters that are introduced as bad boys have it easy. They can get away with murder because they’ll flash a sexy smile or make a darkly delicious statement that promises to reveal their soft underbelly or a twisted past that “made them who they are”.


Nice guys seem to get immediately dismissed as boring because they aren’t trying to make someone else miserable.
That’s why whenever I write a “nice guy” character, I’ll inevitably ask myself the question “What would John Crichton do?” or more accurately "What would I do to John Crichton?"
John Crichton was the ultimate nice guy when his character first appeared on the little-known oft-missed, science-fiction epic, Farscape. He was an all-American hero: astronaut, scientist, former football star and a great believer that “talking” and “reasoning” could solve any problem.
Sounds boring, right?
But what if I told you that by the end of season 4, John Crichton was making choices that, from an outsider’s point of view, only the worst of humanity would ever make?
And that he was still a nice guy?
A great number of his plans would end in tears… or screaming. Entire races would accuse him of being a monster. But, heck, you still hoped his crazy plans would succeed. You still wanted him to get the girl; you revelled in his bromance with a giant, angry alien; and you winced each time he monumentally frelled up.
Despite everything he did, he never gave up that part of himself that made him someone we could relate to. Even when he was full of bluster and bravado (and a stark raving looney), he could be proven wrong, fail and fall. At his worst, the fierce loyalty his friends and lover had for him reminded us that he was someone worth saving. A good man in impossible situations. He still believed in friendship, love, heroes and saving the world. He just had a more “flexible” idea of how to go about it.
A “nice guy” character takes does not have to be boring. His sole purpose is not to get the girl or prevent the bad boy from getting the girl. A nice guy has an arc and journey all of his own. He strives to be a better man, and occasionally he can stumble. He’ll tick you off and make you roll your eyes, but if you let him, he can also make you smile, enjoy the quiet and remind you that if there weren’t any nice guys, the bad boys probably wouldn’t want to become better men… and what would be the point of that?

GUEST POST: How to Help Your Favorite Authors - by Lindsay Buroker

Originally by Lindsay Buroker, author of Flash Gold, The Emperor's Edge, and Encrypted. Finally giving me an answer to one of the questions I've been dying to ask an Indie author.

As authors, we spend a lot of time trying to promote our books. Our biggest obstacle is obscurity because there are a lot of books out there. No, really. A lot.

We like to think that good stories are all it takes to make it (in author terms “make it” usually means “become well known enough and sell enough books that I can quit my day job and write for a living”), but you can doubtlessly think of mediocre books that are selling bazillions of copies and authors you love who never make it out of the “mid-list” category.

Sometimes it’s just the author (or publishing house) with the biggest marketing budget who wins, but you, as a reader, have amazing power. Don’t believe for a second that you don’t have anything to do with whether an author makes it, because you do. A lot. No, really. A lot.

Why does this matter to you? Well, authors who get to quit their day jobs can write faster and put more books out for you!

The following are some little things you can do that can make a big difference. Some of them only take a few seconds. Your favorite authors will appreciate the effort. Trust me. 

Helping out on Amazon

Amazon is the big kahuna of book sellers, especially when it comes to ebooks, so helping an author “get found” on there can give them a big boost. You can certainly do these things on other bookstore sites as well (nothing against copying and pasting a review, for example), but Amazon tends to have more cool features to help an author get found.

Here’s the list (any one of these things can help):

• If you do nothing else, consider writing a review on Amazon, even if the book already has quite a few and/or you’ve reviewed it elsewhere. There’s evidence that ratings and reviews factor into the Amazon algorithms that decide which books are promoted on the site (i.e. certain books are recommended to customers who bought books in similar genres). If reviewing isn’t your bag, don’t worry about writing paragraphs-long in-depth studies of the book; maybe you could just pen a few sentences with a couple of specifics about why you liked the book.
• “Tag” the book with genre-appropriate labels (i.e. thriller, steampunk, paranormal romance). You don’t have to leave a review to do this; you just need an account at Amazon. A combination of the right tags and a good sales ranking can make a book come up when customers search for that type of story on Amazon.
• Give the book a thumb’s up. This takes less than a second and probably doesn’t do much, but it may play into Amazon’s algorithms to a lesser extent than reviews/ratings.
• Make a “Listmania” List and add your favorite authors’ books to it. This creates another avenue for new readers to find books. It’s better to create lists around similar types of books (i.e. genres or sub-genres) than to do a smorgasbord, and consider titling it something description so folks will be more inclined to check it out, ie. “Fun heroic fantasy ebooks for $5 or less”
• If you have a Kindle, highlight some wise or fun quotations from the book and share them publicly (if enough people share their highlights, they’ll show up at the bottom of a book’s page):

Helping out with Social Media

If you’re involved with Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc., you can give your favorite authors a shout-out when they release new books. If they blog, you can follow their site (through Google Reader or other RSS readers) and share the link when they post something that may be interesting to your friends. If they’re on Twitter, you can follow them and retweet their links now and then.

Authors don’t expect you to follow them 24/7 and repeat everything they say (that might actually alarm some folks…), but a little promotional help now and then is greatly appreciated.

If you like to be social about books, you can join sites such as Goodreads, Shelfari, or LibraryThing. You can help your favorite authors by posting reviews and talking about their books on those sites, or you can just use those places to find online reading buddies with common interests.

Helping out with Your Blog

Do you ever talk about books or what you’re reading on your blog? You might consider reviewing your favorite authors on your site (you could even make a few dollars if you signed up as an Amazon affiliate).

Also, if most of your favorites maintain websites, you could add an “author blogroll” list in your menu with links to those sites.

And Lastly…

These days, most authors have websites and contact forms so you can get in touch. If you enjoyed their work, consider sending them a short note to let them know. While it won’t help them sell more books, it’ll make their day.

Thanks for reading (this post and books in general!).

Lindsay Buroker