The unfolding of your characters and their stories will of course be ongoing, continuing throughout the writing, but as stated earlier, repeated, and now restated once more:
Your outline is the part of the process at which the problems are easiest to see, easiest to fix without pulling threads, without that awful panic that strikes when, 250 pages into your novel or in the third act of your stage-or-screenplay, you realize that changes are necessary, but they may cause your entire contrivance to unravel.
And never delude yourself that your story — in order for it to hold an audience — is not very much a contrivance. In television I came to regard scripts as fragile constructs — houses of cards that, without careful shoring up, or with too much tinkering, can easily collapse.
Which, I believe, is part of the reason so many major movies are so deeply flawed; too many hands stirring the screenplays. The same can be true of novels. I know a number of writers who, while seeking representation, have been given conflicting editorial advice by agents who ask for this or that change in the manuscript before they will commit to handling the project. Sometimes their comments are constructive. Sometimes not.
It’s important to believe in what you write — to not be looking to others for approval. Admittedly, that can be a difficult place to reach — particularly when you’re new to writing. But it’s a worthy, necessary goal.
Plot Conveniences, Holes, and Other Audience Distractions
Going back to questioning your work while it’s still in outline form, and then throughout the writing process itself, one of the key hard questions to ask is: does this or that scene or incident move your story? Is it advancing the plot? Is it taking your characters and your audience to a different place? If it’s there solely because, for example, a character must receive a certain piece of information, or for you as the writer to plant some, as in making a certain event happen so that down the line something else can happen, if it’s sole purpose is to platform something — if any of these are the scene’s only reason for being, that’s a convenience.
Fix it, or get rid of it. Rethink it.
Because beyond being bad writing, over and above the fact that your audience will pick up on it, you should demand more of yourself.
Okay, what other dimensions can you add in order to justify such a scene, to make it integral to your story? The advancement of a sub-plot is one way to go. Or introducing a new one wherein, say, a character suddenly finds he’s got a fresh problem — with another player — or with something external.
Again, hard question: does the scene contain conflict? Are your character’s goals, needs, attitudes and points-of-view part of that scene? Or is it just talk — in broadcasting it’s called fill — speeches that do not need to be there, or could be spoken by anyone? Is it nothing more than a transaction in order to ease your continuity along to the next scene? Among the better TV series writing staffs such sloppiness is described contemptuously as “Television Writing.”
Another tired contrivance that should be rejected is the Withheld Information Gag, or, as we also refer to it in TV, The I Love Lucy Setup. This classic piece of illogic was the basis for virtually every episode of that landmark series, and one of the reasons for its success — and I suggest that you never use it. Briefly stated, the formula went like this: if Lucy had only admitted, at the top of the show, that she had A) dented the fender of Ricky’s car, or B) spent the rent money he’d entrusted to her, or C) forgotten to take care of some detail for which he was counting on her — or any of a hundred variations on the gag — there would be no story.
So, for the entire length of each episode, Lucy would do her damnedest to keep Ricky from learning the truth. Sometimes they flipped it, and Ricky would be the withholder, or it might be the Mertz’s. That’s all. It worked because we, the audience, bought the package, the fantasy: the ditzy, adorable redhead and her Cuban bandleader husband. We loved it — and them. We still do.
Obviously, nobody would try such a thing in a gritty, realistic novel.
And certainly never in the so-literal medium of big-budget, star-vehicle movies. Except that they did a few years back — and audiences, if they thought about it at all, are still scratching their heads, asking themselves the same nagging, dumb question that was on their minds through the entire film, while they should have been enjoying the show. The movie: the hugely successful My Best Friend’s Wedding (Scr. Ron Bass — Dir. P.J. Hogan). The question: If the star, Julia Roberts didn’t want Dermot Mulroney to marry Cameron Diaz, why in hell didn’t she just say so at the beginning of the picture, instead of unaccountably — and unbelievably — keeping it to herself?
This otherwise well-played, well-made movie, with its talented, attractive stars, fell apart for me — and for many others — from the opening scenes onward — because the question was in our minds — and it was never resolved. Further, to communicate her objections to the union, and to break it up, the super-appealing Ms. Roberts was forced by the script to play a series of unattractive, mean-spirited tricks on the couple. Even Julia’s legendary smile couldn’t overcome the sour taste in our mouths, the result of her character’s massively unfunny, psychotic, passive-aggressive behavior.
Sure the film made money. Sure, you probably enjoyed it on some qualified level. But we cannot know how much more successful the film might have been, how many more people might have put their friends onto it, if it had a storyline that made sense.
Again, I urge you not to construct a story on such a flimsy footing — unless you are fortunate enough to have Lucille Ball as your leading lady.
In a real way, the message for us as writers — both from the above, and from what follows — is to respect the audience.
Plugging Plot Holes
Often related to Plot Conveniences (or Contrivances) and every bit as damaging to a story, are Plot Holes. Illogic. Inconsistencies. Questions raised: Why didn’t the bad guy simply do X? Why didn’t the protagonist look in the closet in the first place?
Holes often tend to appear because the writer wants such-andsuch to happen in the story, and logic is frequently the victim. Early in my writing career, I developed a kind of personal guideline that’s worked well for me in such situations:
Play the Reality
Which means that when you’re tempted to go into some sort of plot and/or character contortion in order for this or that complication to take place — the kind of contrivance that can come back and bite you on the ass — back off for a moment, and ask yourself what would normally happen in real life — what would the next step be, and maybe the one after?
It’s almost a certainty that the complication you’re trying to achieve can take place during that believable, non-audience-jarring course of events — that it can happen contortion-free. Consider the previous example, My Best Friend’s Wedding. There are several ways by which the I Love Lucy gag could have been avoided, and the movie would have been better for them. One would have been for the Julia Roberts character to plead her case to Dermot Mulroney, and have him reject it, and her, for some false reason — such as believing that marrying the Cameron Diaz character is the only way for him to solve a certain problem in his life. Or, he’s convinced — mistakenly or not — that the Julia Roberts character has in some way betrayed him. Or. Or. Or...
We’ve all experienced such distractions in novels, TV and movies. Sometimes, especially when the story is very compelling, we choose to overlook them. Sometimes not. And when it’s ‘not,” when the hole jumps out at us, or even naggingly diverts our attention, the writer is losing the audience.
That’s fatal.
Plugging plot holes is, like so much else in writing, about challenging yourself. Being on the lookout for such inconsistencies in your own material. The outline stage is where they’re easiest to recognize, and easiest to fix.
And they should be fixed.
Interestingly enough, on all but the tackiest TV series, such holes are routinely fixed before the script is okayed f
or production. I suspect that the reason is simple: in TV, writers are in charge. Often, we refer to the fixes as “bolstering” a particular event or story-move. As mentioned earlier, in theatrical motion pictures, the director runs the show, which may account for much of the “careless” writing that plagues so many big-budget American films. Most directors are not writers. Another contributing factor is Hollywood’s almost religious belief that the more writers they throw at a screenplay, the better it will become.
Wrong.
This was less of a problem during Hollywood’s “Golden Age” (roughly 1930-1948), when the major studios were really more like today’s TV networks. As suppliers of what was then the nation’s number-one form of entertainment, they owned their chains of theaters (think: the TV sets in our homes), for which they had to grind out a steady stream of product (as with weekly TV series, etc.). In that era, when the population of the U.S. was about 130 million, there were weeks that topped 100 million admissions. Unlike today’s movie production, there were heavy, autocratic (and usually, talented) hands on the controls — namely those of the moguls. Harry Cohn, Sam Goldwyn, Jack Warner, Darryl Zanuck, David O. Selznick, L.B. Mayer and a few others. As is the practice in today’s TV, most of them employed writers to oversee the scripts written by other writers. Moreover, directors, producers and actors rarely had anything approaching final say about the material.
While there are some very talented directors and producers making today’s theatrical films, there are many more whose legendary disdain for writers and writing (read, in some cases: outright contempt) — as well as for the audience — may account for the current paucity of memorable movies, and the high incidence of those with plot holes and other basic, solvable script problems.
Did the Golden Age chiefs and their studios make bad films? Of course. They made a lot more turkeys than they did classics. But the legacy of good ones that are still a joy to watch all these years later at least seem to outnumber the more recent movies that are worth revisiting. But then, the same appears to be true of novels, TV, and of art in general.
Actually, however, I suspect that “good old days” thinking can be a trap, something of an illusion — that the ratio in any medium of good-art-to-bad-art is more-or-less constant. It’s likely that at any given moment in history there are never a lot of great creative geniuses abroad in the land. Which is why we should be so thankful for the occasional Austen, Michelangelo, Dostoevsky, Fitzgerald, O’Hara, Puccini or Degas — the rare Chaplin, Sturges, Lelouch, Ingmar Bergman or Woody Allen...
How to Get Ahead of Your Audience — and Stay There
The plot hole is but one of the many ways a writer can lose the audience. Predictability is another. We’ve all experienced it — that feeling as you’re reading a story, or watching a movie or TV show, that you know what’s going to happen next. That the hero is about to be hit over the head, or the body is going to fall out of the closet, or isn’t it about time for something bad, funny, stupid (or otherwise predictable) to happen?
And then, surprise, surprise, you’re right.
As a reader or audience-member, when we’re right, when we see it coming, we feel somewhat smug.
And disappointed. Which, for us, and for the writer, is The Bad News.
We don’t want to be ahead of the story. And in our minds, it forever devalues the author’s work.
The trick, then, is to set ‘em up to expect a fastball, and then deliver your curve. What follows are several techniques I’ve absorbed from movies and TV that will help you stay ahead.
First, let’s talk about joke-structure. There is a huge lesson to be learned about staying ahead of your audience — and not incidentally about basic, solid storytelling technique — from the classic form for comedic sight-gags. And remember, this applies to writing anything, comedy or drama, slapstick or suspense, satire or soap opera. The structure goes like this:
Man walking down the street, reading his newspaper.
Cut to the banana-peel in his path, setting up the audience to expect that he’ll slip on it.
Back to the man: at the last second, he notices the banana-peel, sidesteps it — and falls into an open manhole (which neither he nor the audience has seen).
That’s all there is to it.
But — consider all that it embodies.
It sets up the audiences’ expectations, seemingly yanks the rug, and then delivers satisfaction. It is, in those three simple moves, the essence — not only of good physical — and verbal comedy — but again, also of good storytelling.
Substitute whatever you want for the man, his distraction, the banana-peel and the manhole. A young woman fearing a rockslide, who instead gets hit (or almost hit) by a car. A kid sneaking a cigarette — his mother’s coming — it looks as if she’ll catch him, except that she leaves the house. He breathes a sigh, home free — and inadvertently knocks her special dessert onto the floor, ruining it. Or breaks one of her prized chotchkies.
Now — consider how unsatisfying it would have been if our anticipation was correct. If the man had slipped on the banana-peel. Sure, it’s sort of funny, as is any classically executed slapstick pratfall. The audience will probably laugh.
But simultaneously, there will be disappointment — because the viewers were ahead of the writer.
The films of Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, the Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, and more recently, Monty Python, Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy and Jim Carrey are for any writer well worth studying. For their timing, their great physical abilities, but most of all because their gags work, not only in terms of humor, but as well-told stories that — with their rarely predictable payoffs, keep them ahead of the audience.
But, in the vein of learning more from bad stuff than from good, I’ll cite another example. Some years ago, film director/writer Blake Edwards made The Pink Panther (Scr. Blake Edwards, Maurice Richlin — Dir. Edwards). Wildly successful, it was followed by several sequels. While most audiences loved them, I found the films excruciatingly unfunny. The reason: Edwards paid off virtually all of his gags by showing the banana-peel, and then having the man slip on it.
There were no surprises. Except, initially, that he went for the obvious.
As with the probability that I Love Lucy would not have worked without the gifted Lucille Ball, I suspect that if Edwards had-n’t cast the wonderful British comic actor, Peter Sellers, playing the bumbling hero, Inspector Clouseau, the series wouldn’t have fared nearly as well. Those movies managed to be more-or-less amusing, despite the man who made them. But his non-Clouseau movies suffered doubly, from the heavy-handed joke-delivery and from the absence of Mr. Sellers.
A brief additional lesson from joke-structure that’s worth noting, especially if you’re writing comedy, is that a sequence of three (of almost anything — from put-downs to pratfalls to problems) is funny. Two, however, is not funny. Nor are four in a row. But three is funny. I’m not sure why this is so, but it happens to be true.
And oddly — in terms of setup and payoff, the principle of three is every bit as valid for non-humor, for even the soberest, most dramatic stories. Two is usually not enough to make your point, and four will tend to be excessive.
Back to remaining ahead of your audience, in mysteries where, as mentioned earlier, you’re essentially playing a game with your readers or viewers, it’s an obvious, suicidal mistake to allow them to get ahead of you, to permit them to anticipate your moves and solve the puzzle before you and your detective character reveal its solution.
Every bit as bad, in mysteries or thrillers or procedurals, it’s a major boo-boo to let audiences feel smarter than the heavies.
But worse yet — in any kind of story — is allowing them to feel smarter than the author.
How does one insure against this? There are several ways. One is to withhold, disguise or otherwise obscure, certain information, so that ideally it only becomes clear to them when you want it to — as when your protagonist puts it all together, or when you construct you
r story so that a certain event triggers such a solution.
Earlier, I alluded to the most startling and successful example of this that I have ever seen in print, executed by Richard Condon in his marvelous suspense novel, The Manchurian Candidate. Midway through the story, Condon lays in a small detail in which the unnamed, mysterious, key heavy sustains a minor hand injury. Then, for many pages, the incident remains meaningless (but stays with the reader), until deep into the Third Act when, by having one character casually ask the least likely character how her hand was injured, the reader suddenly learns the heavy’s identity. It is a WOW! The revelation not only stunned me — it sent me riffling frantically backward through the book, searching out the account of the injury — I needed to make sure I hadn’t misread it. It remains, for me, the most dazzling literary trick I’ve ever encountered.
I borrowed the device from Condon in writing The Sixteenth Man. Mine is a pale imitation, but effective.
Given the sophistication of today’s audiences, the problem of staying ahead of them has become more of a challenge for writers of fiction than ever.
One way to view it is via the arithmetic: by the time the average American reaches the age of, say, 20, he or she has no doubt viewed thousands of hours of TV and movies. Stories. Many will have read dozens or even hundreds of novels.
They have been there — again and again.
All of the plots and devices and techniques.
Because of this saturated exposure — as with my own experience when I took up writing — they know a whole lot more about storytelling — both good and bad — than they may be able to articulate.
Which is one of the reasons that, 85 or 132 pages or so into the latest highly-touted bestseller, so many of us bail out. Or we punch eject minutes into the rented video or DVD, or walk out of movie theaters feeling dissatisfied (either vaguely or specifically), even after viewing an entire film we may have on several levels enjoyed.
Fiction Writing Demystified Page 16