Fiction Writing Demystified

by Thomas B. Sawyer

  The reasons for our disenchantment might be any (or several) of those mentioned above, or some you’ll find further along in this book. Again, it’s about entertaining. About grabbing — and then hanging onto your audience.

  That’s do-able, solvable, something that we can learn to handle. As writers, the important point is to be aware of our challenges. Passion alone is almost never enough.

  Knowing What to Include — and What to Leave Out

  As with reducing dialogue to its essentials, occasionally there are whole scenes we can leave out of our stories. What are some of the criteria? Is the scene essential — a step that the audience must witness? A description, say, of a character doing nothing more than exiting a room, moving down a corridor and into another room — which you may have written because it’s easier than figuring out an alternative transition? Another yardstick: is it a moment that, if omitted, will leave your readers confused? Which, by the way, is not always a bad thing. It’s the level and frequency that can cause problems. It is a long way from momentarily (for dramatic purposes) disorienting your audience — to baffling them about what you’re trying to say, and having them wonder why they’re bothering. Continuing with the criteria: is the scene or incident sufficiently interesting, entertaining enough to survive the cut? Does it add to or detract from the narrative pace, from the progress of your tale?

  Sometimes, the omission of a particular scene can cause a subsequent moment to become more effective. An example: While I was Story Editor on yet another (mercifully) short-lived action-adventure show, I had turned in a script in which the show’s teenage protagonist comes home with his pals, gives his mother a perfunctory hello as he and the others dash upstairs. The kids enter the young hero’s bedroom/lair/hangout — and are startled to find the bad guy waiting for them, a dangerous convict whose prison escape they’d earlier, unknowingly abetted by playing a video game with him on the web.

  I did not include the scene in which the convict entered the house and managed to enter the kid’s room because as a storyteller I knew the sudden reveal I had written would also be startling for the viewers — superior in this case to setting them up to anticipate the kids’ reactions. It was an easy choice for me — a no-brainer. And yet, when the show’s Executive Producer finished reading my script, he asked me how the convict had gotten into the house in the first place. I looked at him in disbelief: “Who cares?” He told me that he did, that he wanted me to write that scene, include it in the script.

  Now, this was not my first inkling — in the three-or-four weeks I’d been on the show — that as writers — or for that matter, as human beings — he and I were probably never going to find ourselves on the same page. But it was the one that tied it for me. With as much diplomacy as I could muster, I pointed out that the convict could have gotten there by several methods: He could have rung the doorbell and given the mother some kind of phony story — or he could have sneaked in without her knowledge — or broken into the house when nobody was home. I explained that after weighing those unentertaining, mundane, all-too-predictable options against the value of surprising both our hero and the audience (which, I figured, wouldn’t have given a damn how the convict got in — anyway), I had chosen to write it the way I did. The Executive Producer, however, was adamant — he wanted that scene. I refused. I would not write it, would not waste screen time on such a scene, adding that if he wanted it badly enough he would have to write it himself — and in the bargain remove my name from the script (lest anyone might think I would write that badly). Further (and obviously at that point superfluously), I offered that things were clearly not working out for us, and that I was quitting the show.

  When the episode finally aired, it was as I had written it.

  Backstory

  In simple, backstory is anything that your characters experienced, or that happened in your plot, before the first page of your tale. Mostly, it’s important that you, the writer, know the backstory. But sometimes for clarity, context, dramatic purposes, or other reasons, it’s necessary to include backstory in the piece you’re writing. The danger is in how you write it. Because done badly it can slow or stop the momentum of your story. Or, it can confuse your audience.

  In TV and film, backstory is something we try to minimize, or ideally, avoid — the use of flashbacks having fallen into largely-deserved disfavor — a stylistic gag that proved tedious and worse yet, sometimes made it difficult for audiences to follow. That’s a good guideline for narrative writing as well.

  All right. But the story you’re writing requires some history. Below are several approaches for handling backstory.

  A timeworn, somewhat dated, but nonetheless effective method is via a preferably brief prologue or foreword. Not necessarily the most artful tactic, it can do the job.

  Another way is to gradually lay it in as exposition after you’ve put your present-day story in motion — employing narrative voice or by sprinkling it into your characters’ dialogue. In the latter case, sprinkling is the important word. As with character-exposition, don’t worry about being elliptical, even cryptic, as you drop in hints of your backstory. It’s not necessary to put it all into a single speech. As long as it ultimately comes together for the reader.

  In my own scriptwriting experience, on those occasions when I was stuck with backstory, where it was necessary to show past events, I tried to limit them to the visual (a car crash, a fire, theft or violent act), rather than play them as dialogue scenes. And usually I tried to place them, prologue-style, at the top of the show, often with a caption indicating the date or time the event was taking place. Not, as mentioned, a bad way to deal with the problem when writing prose.

  Still another, rather extreme backstory device is the one described on page 108, used — but not invented by — Susan Isaacs in her novel, Lily White, which I emulated in The Sixteenth Man — wherein the entire narrative jumps back-and-forth in time through alternating chapters. But in both of those cases the backstory was every bit as important as the main story.

  Usually, however — as with so much of good writing — backstory should be limited by the old less-is-more doctrine.

  Playing Fair

  When I started writing TV murder mysteries, one of the lessons I had to learn quickly was the carefully observed rule that we must give the viewers an honest chance to solve the crime. It meant that we had to include what was referred to as The Play-Fair Clue. An explanation follows, but again — the principle applies to all sorts of writing.

  As in other mysteries, toward the end of a typical Murder, She Wrote episode, when Jessica Fletcher revealed the killer, she usually described how she had arrived at the solution. Such moments are generally known among writers as Morris-the-Explainer Scenes. They often included flashbacks (though we tried to keep those to a minimum) that would illustrate something that Jessica and the audience had seen or heard which, when put together with other clues, led her to the truth.

  Customarily, one of these was The Play-Fair Clue. That decisive bit of evidence which we hoped, when we did it right, would cause the viewers to hit themselves upside their heads for not having spotted it. A glance or gesture, a word, an anomaly. The telltale smudge of lipstick on a lapel — a distinctive shade worn only by the victim, or a grease-spot where none should have been. When we displayed the flashback, sure enough, there it was.

  But, truth-be-told, we were rather devious about it: when we showed it the first time, it was visible or audible for only the briefest instant. Just long enough to later prove we’d played fair with the audience — just enough that if the viewers had been looking or listening really, really, really carefully, they would (should) have noticed, and figured out the solution. It was, as noted earlier, a game we played twenty-two times a year for twelve years. Our viewers were long-since hip to the fact that this-or-that was probably a clue — they were trying to get ahead of us, ahead of Jessica — so we’d try to throw in red-herrings — clue look-alikes that weren’t really clues at al
l. Our challenge, beyond staying ahead of them, was to keep on fooling them.

  What all this means to the non-mystery writer is mislead ’em, but don’t cheat ’em. Don’t suddenly spring stuff on your audience that you haven’t platformed earlier — though it’s okay if you’ve laid it in the sneakiest way.

  Point-of-View

  The outline stage is also where — if you haven’t done so already — you begin choosing your point(s)-of-view. And deciding where to shift to another.

  In series television, it’s pretty simple. As stated, write to the money — the star. Don’t turn away from him or her for very many scenes in a row. That can apply to novels as well. But if your novel is an ensemble piece with multiple stories and protagonists, point-ofview is, as in that type of TV series, mini-series, or full-length theatrical movie, a bit more complicated.

  Again, the TV model: we refer to it as “servicing” your principal characters — or sometimes, your actors — giving them appropriate, adequate, meaty-enough screen-time. In multiple-thread shows wherein several stories are being told in (mostly) parallel action, the technique is one of jumping back-and-forth, getting out of one story (cutting away) at a dramatically arresting moment — and picking up another ongoing set of conflicts. From which, of course, you’ve omitted the dull parts.

  All of which translates very directly to narrative fiction and, of course, to playwriting.

  However, in straight narrative prose, point-of-view is even more complex, requires more attention. And while my take on the subject was not something I learned in TV, but rather when I turned to novel-writing, I’m including it here because of its relevance.

  The subject of point-of-view in the novel has been covered very nicely by — among others — literary super-agent Albert Zuckerman, who posits in his informative book, Writing the Blockbuster Novel, that for a novel to succeed, it should be told from the points-of-view of no more than four characters — total. Fewer if possible. And, he suggests, the point-of-view should never shift within the same chapter. There are other caveats in his book, and while all may be valid, as with so many guidelines about art, there are numerous highly successful writers whose points-of-view tend to jump frequently, and it seems to work not only for them, but also for their readers. The prolific and popular Donald Westlake is an excellent example.

  In writing The Sixteenth Man, I found much of Mr. Zuckerman’s book extremely useful, much of his advice a worthwhile discipline. But not all of it.

  The way I handle point-of-view in my own writing of third-person narrative fiction is that, in basic terms, over the course of a single chapter, I only allow myself into the head of one character at a time, only describe the inner feelings, or write the inner-monologue, of that character.

  Conversely, if another character in the same scene is expressing anything non-verbally, I, the invisible narrator, prefer to describe it only in objective, external physical terms (She placed her hands on her hips), without commenting on the meaning of the gesture (as in She impatiently placed her hands on her hips). I try to allow my pointof-view character to make the comment on it, either internally, as in: He wondered why she was becoming impatient — or — her impatience reminded him of... Or, he remarks on it via internal monologue, or verbally. So that we’re seeing as much as possible through his eyes.

  Often, such things are judgment calls, but as a first-time novelist trying to maintain a consistent narrative voice, I found such criteria extremely helpful.

  Again, as with so many aspects of the craft, the techniques and much of the mindset work across almost any form of fiction writing, from TV to novels to movies and short fiction: select the character(s) from whose point-of-view you’re telling your story, and then stick to them. Don’t jump around unless there’s a purpose.

  Now, obviously, if you’re telling an epic tale, covering many years, you’ll have no choice but to shift. And yet, even in such a case, it’s usually best to limit your points-of-view to a select few.

  Focus

  All-over-the-place is a phrase used to describe a script or story outline that is not focused — one that jumps around to the point of becoming unclear as to what it is about. Not a great way to go.

  Crime and Punishment and Gone With the Wind come to mind as definitive examples highly focused stories. Both Raskolnikov and Scarlett O’Hara are focal figures. They were whom the novels were about. Yes, there were many other characters, each with their problems and stories and subplots, but neither Dostoevsky nor Margaret Mitchell ever forgot where “the money” was.

  Even if you’re writing a “sprawling” epic, it’s important to maintain focus on what you want the story to say.

  Scene Structure

  Scenes, like entire stories, should have a dynamic — a shape. Beginnings, middles, ends. They should build to something — to whatever it is you want the scene to accomplish.

  And having accomplished it — you should get the hell out.

  Obviously, it is sometimes necessary to write scenes that are very, very brief and don’t have room for much construction. Frequent examples of this appear theatrical feature films — particularly in the more self-consciously stylish ones — where they do a lot of fast cutting.

  Even if you’re writing a novel or short story, it’s often effective to manipulate your audience in that same cinematic way. Quick cuts. Building suspense, as in the movie version of Jaws, where Spielberg used all kinds of cinematic devices to nail us to the edge of our seats — from the ominous music to the shark’s point-of-view, to not letting us see the shark until deep into the movie.

  But as in much of television, in novel writing, in storytelling generally, it’s a good idea to construct your longer scenes by having them begin on one emotional level and end on another. It’s something you can almost diagram, like one of those above-the-line-below-theline waveform graphs.

  Say for instance that your scene starts off with your characters at the tops of their emotions, in mid-fight or mid-argument. Unless the moment is extremely brief — intended for instance as parallel action — to simply let the audience know the fight is in progress — you don’t want it to play at that same level of heat all the way through the scene. Why? Because it’s monotonous. Because it goes nowhere. The emotions should taper off, maybe heating up again before you’re out of the scene. Bumps, enroute to a relatively placid ending. Or perhaps it starts out quietly, and escalates. That’s shape, that’s a dynamic.

  In television drama, we try to limit a scene’s length to three pages, maximum. Among the reasons for this are, again, pace, energy, keeping the audience’s attention. But it’s also a valuable limitation in that it forces the writer to get to the point of the scene.

  Which is not to suggest that the scene needs to progress in a straight line, bang-on, to whatever it’s about, without going anywhere else. Without a detour or two. Quite the opposite. One of the most valuable gags I’ve learned in screenwriting is:

  Have more than one thing happen in a scene.

  Interrupt the action or the dialogue, for instance, by bringing another character into the scene to deliver a new piece of information that will carry the story to its next place, perhaps introducing a clock, a new or stakes-raising conflict, a crisis of some sort. Or, it can be done with a phone call. Or just a diversion that upsets the rhythm of the moment, an annoying or distracting incident, for example. In a way this can be regarded as yet another device, one that has value for advancing your story, or heightening drama. And/or it can give your characters something else to which they can react. Yes, we’re talking another thumb-rule that one should not be locked into, but try it. Ever notice, in a restaurant, how often a waiter or waitress happens to interrupt the diners’ conversation — particularly one in which a punchline is about to be delivered? Use that. More than anything, it can liven-up one of those necessary-but-less-than-riveting scenes, lending it energy — perhaps triggering an emotional spike when the interrupted person reacts angrily.

  And, as wi
th your story as a whole, your individual scenes should, as often as possible have surprise endings. Unexpected bounces and/or moments that reverberate. Something, no matter how small, that the audience isn’t quite prepared for.

  Choreography

  Choreographing your scenes is one more technique that ports very nicely and meaningfully from TV and screenwriting to any kind of storytelling. What it amounts to, as stated earlier, is “directing” your players, giving them business, picturing them — and describing them — in motion, delivering their dialogue with something more going on than their hands merely dangling at their sides. Doing something besides — or perhaps instead of — just talking. Animating what might otherwise be a somewhat uninteresting talk-scene. This last is addressed at greater length in the chapter on dialogue writing.

  In writing film and TV one quickly learns that while it’s easy — and often very desirable to continually move the action from setting to setting, when it comes to shooting the script, those frequent moves can cause serious problems. Changing locations — even from one room to another — takes time, which translates to money. New camera setups, relighting and remiking. And major moves, from interior to exterior, or to different, physically distant outdoor locations, can be even more time-consuming and labor-intensive, usually requiring trucks and busses. These last are known as Company Moves. They’re very costly, and understandably viewed by the bean-counters with extreme unenthusiasm.

  Hence, in writing our scripts we try to avoid frivolous moves, location changes that aren’t essential to telling the story and — always the decisive factor — keeping the audience entertained. Writers of narrative can afford to be a bit more casual about changes of locale, but I feel that generally — even in prose, the old caveat about less being more still holds true. Don’t write “Company Moves” unless you’re making a point.