Fiction Writing Demystified
By Thomas B. Sawyer
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Release Date: November, 26th, 2005
FICTION WRITING DEMYSTIFIED
Techniques That Will Make You a More Successful Writer
Copyright © 2003 by Thomas B. Sawyer. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Ashleywilde, Inc.
For information, address:
Ashleywilde, Inc.
23852 Pacific Coast Highway, #132
Malibu, California 90265
www.ashleywilde.com
ISBN 0-9627476-1-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2002110026
Printed in the United States of America
Design and production Leena Hannonen, Macnetic Design
For Holly, and my parents.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks to all those seasoned writers who held my hand in the months and years following my discovery of my calling. My gratitude also to Dr. Sidney Levy, and to Leonard Starr, mentor, friend, brother, without whose guidance none of this could have happened. And especially, I thank my parents for endowing me with so many assets, perhaps the most valuable being a lifetime supply of chutzpah and blanket invulnerability to rejection.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
An Approach to Storytelling
ONE-The Writer's Mindset
Face it - We're Entertainers
The TV Writer's Mandate
The TV Writer's Bogeyman
The Hitchcock Motto
The Computer in Your Head
Write to The Money
TWO - Beginnings - The Story Idea
Asking Yourself "Where's The Heat?"
A Word or Two About Originality
Stealing Stories From Oneself
Predictability
The Story Idea
Pitching
THREE - The Process
Building Your Story
What is a Story Outline and How does it Differ From a Synopsis or a Treatment?
What Does a Story Outline Look Like?
One More Plea (But Not the Last) On Behalf of Outlining - Or -How the "Drudgery" of Writing Your Outline Will Turn Into Pleasure
Conflict Defined
About Texture
Red Flags
Play the Moments - Don't Just Talk About Them
The Money Scene
The Plot Device
Clock
Maguffins
Hiding in Plain Sight
Meet-Cute
Platforming
The Deus Ex Machina
Parallel Action
The Penny-Drop
Coincidence
Sounds
The Moral Decision
Using Research - Without Letting it Use You
Closure
Let Your Characters Generate Their Own Stories
FOUR - Creating Vivid, Memorable, Engaging Characters
Start With the Edges
Avoid Flat-Out Opposites
Find the Facets
Thrust
Goals - Small and Large
Make it Worth Your Characters' Time - and it'll be Worth Your Audience's
Franchises
The Character Bio
Attitudes and Conditions
The TV Series Character-Mix
Naming Your Characters
Give 'em Secrets
Liars Play Better Than Saints
Habits, Hang-ups, Hobbies and Hatreds
Find the Permutations of Conflict
Character-types: More About Heroines and Heroes
Make Your Audience Cheer For Your Protagonist
The Fatally Flawed Protagonist
Attractive Protagonists
Intriguing Heavies
Outsiders
Con-Artists and Other Appealing Rascals
Character Arcs
Remember, They Had Lives Before Page One
Discovering, and Then Listening to Your Characters
Character Traps
Making All of Your Characters Count
Some Characterization House-Numbers
Anger
Passive-Aggressive
Control
Hunger for Approval
Caretaker
Low Self-Esteem
Psychopaths and Sociopaths
The Really Hard Part - Or - What Should Be The Hardest Part: Introducing Your Characters to Your Audience
Exposition
Don't tell it. Show it!
Amateur Exposition - The Dreaded "But, you are my sister..." Syndrome, and Other Sins
Front-loading - Some Advice - and Some Solutions
FIVE - Construction - Telling Your Story
Plotting - Laying Out Your Story
Plot Conveniences, Holes, and Other Audience Distractions
Plugging Plot Holes
How to Get Ahead of Your Audience - and Stay There
Knowing What to Include – and What to Leave Out
Backstory
Playing Fair
Point-of-View
Focus
Scene Structure
Choreography
THINK Picture/THINK Action/THINK Dialogue - A Screenwriter's Approach
Stoppers
More About Where to Start a Scene and Where to End it - Or - Why the Playwright's Curse is the Novelist's and Screenwriter's Blessing
Punchlines, Buttons and Act-Outs
The Non-Scene - Causes and Cures
Kicking It Off - That Super-Critical Opening Moment
Payoffs and Blowoffs - The Endgame - Or -More Fastballs and Curves
SIX - Writing Great, Unique Dialogue
"Unique Dialogue" Defined
Self-Explainers (and Other Works of Fiction)
Hearing Your Characters' Music
Subtext
Functional Dialogue - and How to Avoid It
Listen to the Silences
Helping Direct Your Actors' Dialogue
Memorable Dialogue
Dialect
Crosstalk
The Aria
Staying With It
Tombstoning
Don't Tell Your Audience What It Already Knows
NEVER Write Show-and-Tell Dialogue
Energy/Urgency
Dialogue Attribution in Prose - An Opinion or Two...
SEVEN - Coda
The Rorschach View
PREFACE
During 20 years as a writer/producer or story editor on 16 different network TV series, my experience has been dramatically different from that of most working fiction writers. In addition to writing my own scripts, I listened to hundreds of story-pitches from both staffers and freelancers, generated and commissioned hundreds of scripts which I then oversaw and edited. Of necessity, a large part of my job has been that of teacher.
But not a teacher of theory.
Rather, of nuggets about writing—of explaining to other writers—and to myself in the bargain— in clear, concise language, very specific, problem-solving ways to improve the end product.
Where it misses. How to fix it. To make it work better.
It is not entirely surprising that many of the rather specialized, highly pragmatic techniques one learns in the pressure-driven world of writing for series TV translate readily to fiction writing of any kind, from short stories to novels to stageplays to movie scripts. Even, for that matter, to poetry, non-fiction—such as biography—and textbooks.
What is surprising is that this practical, result-oriented approach is seldom featured in books on writing or in creative writing courses. Touched on, perhaps, but not in the kind of depth that makes it all of a piece. One possible reason is that many of the books are written, and courses taught, by writers who, if they've had professional writing careers, have, like the majority of their fellows understandably spent much of their creative lives sitting in rooms by themselves, living mostly inside their heads. Thinking about what they're writing rather than talking about it—rather than needing to analyze it in order to explain to others what they do—and why they're doing it a particular way.
Rather than—as in my own case—being paid to show other working writers how to solve their manuscript problems.
That's why I wrote this book, to help spell out, make accessible, to demystify those aspects and methods of storytelling that may seem daunting—or even unknowable—to so many would-be writers. For them, and for those who may already have many of the bits and pieces of storytelling knowledge rattling about willy-nilly in their brains, I hope that reading these pages will help organize—and again, de-intimidate them.
That is what this book is about.
I haven't invented anything new about storytelling or characterization or construction. I certainly don't claim to know everything there is to know about fiction writing—as if that were possible. I continue to learn, and to be amazed by the process of writing. You won't necessarily find anything here that isn't covered in other books or courses in creative writing—or that you're not familiar with on some level. But because of those peculiar demands of my career, of having had to find fresh ways of looking at stories (my own as well as others'), to quickly nail the stuff that doesn't work, and improve the stuff that does, much about the craft has become clearer to me.
Including the fact that good, effective, workmanlike fiction writing does not demand genius.
But—it's not something everyone can do.
It requires talent. Which you probably possess to some degree or you wouldn't be reading this; the desire to create usually—not always, but usually—presupposes that you have some gift for the art.
And, writing fiction takes knowledge about basic storytelling. Again, some of us have an instinct for it. A feeling for it. But if you sense that you do not, don't give up. Much of that part is craft, and it is learnable. In my own case, as I'm sure it was (is) for many of you, when I began writing in earnest I discovered to my surprise that I knew more than I thought I did. And the knowledge seemed to amount to more than just an awareness of the differences between good writing and bad writing. I have the impression, from my travels as a guest-speaker on the Writer's Conference Circuit, and my experience as a teacher of screenwriting, that this is a common phenomenon. The result, I suspect, of our almost universal, close-to-saturation exposure—by the time we reach adulthood—to stories, of our having read or viewed or otherwise absorbed hundreds or even thousands of them—from the classic children's tales to countless episodes of I Love Lucy and other shows, to movies, novels and so on.
But what I knew—perhaps "perceived" better describes it—was vague. All-over-the-place. Disparate, unorganized bits-and-pieces that gradually started coming together for me as I began my television-writing career. Because, to my great good fortune, I was the freelancer being helped along, coached, by the seasoned writer/producers and story editors for whom I was writing scripts.
In truth, I was being paid to learn from these practical-minded, experienced professional storytellers—writers who, selfishly, wanted me to succeed in order to make their lives easier. To hold my hand so that, when I turned in my final draft, they wouldn't have to rewrite me from page one.
Not everyone is so lucky.
In this book you will be struck—often, I hope—by flashes of "whoa, of course" recognition. Stuff about writing which till now you've "sort of" understood, that will suddenly become distinct for you, viewable from a fresh perspective. ...
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