Fiction Writing Demystified

by Thomas B. Sawyer

  Or — could it be — they simply don’t know any better...?

  Next time you encounter a piece that fails to engage you because it lacks edge, or story, or compelling characters, I suggest that you question it in at least the following terms: How could the author have made it better? How, if you were given the opportunity of rewriting or editing the material, could you have made it better?

  It seems a near-universal truth that it’s far easier to learn from bad stuff than from good. The good — novels, short stories, plays, movies — seem to transport us into their world, taking us along on their ride, anesthetizing most of our critical faculties. At least until we revisit them.

  And than there are those rare jewels — the really good ones — that get better as, with each encounter, we bring something new to the table. In my own experience, re-reading Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby at ten or fifteen-year intervals has been like reading a fresh, ever-better book each time.

  The good ones accomplish what we, as writers, hope to do.

  Kicking It Off — That Super-Critical Opening Moment

  Where and how to start one’s yarn — choosing the just right opening words for a novel, play or short story — selecting that optimum moment for the beginning of a screenplay or teleplay — the crucially important first meeting between your fictional creation and your audience is — once again — about hooking them.

  Right up there in importance with how you choose to introduce your characters, those initial words involve creative decisions not to be taken lightly. Nor usually are they easily arrived at. The estimable novelist/screenwriter Elmore Leonard, by the way, suggests that most of us should never start with weather.

  Look at some incredibly memorable opening lines, two of them dialogue, the others narrative:

  “Now is the winter of our discontent...”

  (William Shakespeare — Richard III)

  Let me tell you about the very rich — they are different from you and me...

  (F. Scott Fitzgerald — The Rich Boy)

  “Call me Ishmael...”

  (Herman Melville — Moby Dick)

  As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect...

  (Franz Kafka — The Metamorphosis)

  Or check out some great opening movie scenes, from Raiders of the Lost Ark (Scr. Lawrence Kasdan, Story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman — Dir. Steven Spielberg), to His Girl Friday and others. Or the awesome first few minutes of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Scr. William Goldman — Dir. George Roy Hill). Or The Godfather (Scr. Mario Puzo & Francis Ford Coppola, based on Puzo’s novel — Dir. Francis Ford Coppola), in which a dozen-or-so characters are introduced, all of them — and their complex relationships — vividly-and-economically defined, riveting our curiosity. Examine how these films hook us, how deftly they handle exposition, how quickly they are into the story. Writers of any type of fiction, as well as authors of nonfiction, can learn a lot from the choices made, from the way those movies begin.

  There is much about storytelling technique to be learned from the visual media, all the way from TV commercial spots to epic movies and miniseries. How it looks, and how it’s written. The effective juxtaposition of sounds and images.

  Has the influence of film and TV on narrative writing been consistently positive? Of course not. But cinema has definitely changed — and refreshed — the way novelists, historians and biographers practice their art.

  I don’t know that there is a for-certain technique for writing terrific opening scenes, nor any guarantee that yours will be as effective as those cited. But, like so much of the mindset I acquired while writing for TV, awareness of the problem — of the need for truly arresting hooks and grabbers — will ultimately improve your writing. And in any case, I deeply believe that whatever extra effort you put into such details will be rewarded — bigtime.

  Payoffs and Blowoffs — The Endgame

  or

  More Fastballs and Curves

  Endings.

  Guy gets the girl. The murder is solved. Girl gets other guy. The world is rescued from the bad guy. Girl loses guy. The farm is saved. Justice prevails. Earthlings survive attack from outer space. Problems are cleaned up — or not. Loose ends are knotted, snipped — or not.

  An ending is — an ending. But...

  But — like a lot of the stuff of good storytelling, it’s not that easy to do it well, to pull it off so that your audience says a collective “Wow!” The zinger, the twist, the topper they didn’t quite expect. You know the kind — those delicious finishes you’ve encountered in your favorite novels, stories, movies. As with memorable openings, satisfying, drop-dead endings can be elusive, difficult to create.

  But they’re worth the striving.

  In the action genre, whether TV, movies or novels, the end scene is often — and appropriately — described as the blowoff. A good way — for the writer’s head — to regard the finish of even the most benign type of story.

  How many times have we read novels where the last three or four pages were coda, where the whole thing just wound itself down, rather than presenting anything new — anything unanticipated? Satisfying, maybe. Blah, more likely. Like certain symphonic pieces that seem to end, but no, there’s more — and then more. And movies? A notable example was a rather pleasant Bette Midler vehicle, Beaches, (Scr. Mary Agnes Donoghue, from Iris Rainer Dart’s novel — Dir. Garry Marshall) which seemed to have three or four endings. They’d play a “final” scene, at the conclusion of which the audience expected to see the end-credits. Instead, another scene was played, and then another.

  Looked at another way, I suppose it can be argued that they were giving us their own brand of surprise, but I’m not sure that that was the filmmakers’ intent.

  Again using action films as a model, think of it as the challenge of coming up with a blowoff that tops all of the movie’s earlier fireworks and razzle-dazzle sequences. A superb example of a film that accomplished this at the end of an already breathless, seamless, relentlessly paced story that was full of Big Moments (including the all-but-impossible-to-surpass railroad locomotive/prison bus collision), the finale of The Fugitive manages to leave the viewer exhausted and gratified.

  But helicopters, explosions and shootouts atop tall buildings aren’t a requirement. A much quieter though no less satisfying finish occurs in one of the best films ever made — the great, enduring Casablanca. Rick and Ilsa’s final goodbye was — and still is — flawless, almost unsurpassable, speaking to all but the most cynical among us, about sacrifice and lost love. But the film couldn’t end there. We had to see the plane taking off for Lisbon, as well as resolving Rick’s having shot the German Officer, Major Strasser. And ironically, the final, unforgettable line of dialogue — “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” — wasn’t even in the script. It was tacked on during the editing process.

  Now — going for this type of ending seems on the face of it to be an obvious goal. And of course, from page one, you’ve been trying to give them stuff they don’t expect.

  But the most important one you’re going to write is the one that resonates after the reader finishes your book, or your viewer turns off the TV or exits the theater. Sometimes it’s big without being slam-bang — a moral, a comment about life, or the world. Often it’s something small — smaller perhaps than the goal just achieved by your protagonist. A feelgood moment — or one that’s eerily ironic. Or humorous. Or full of portent. Again, the key is that it should seem unexpected — yet satisfyingly inevitable. It should feel right.

  Always, when you devise your endings, your story’s final moments, your curtain-line — try to surprise. I’m not talking off-thewall, come-from-nowhere, nonsense endings. I mean an end-frame that’s legitimate, organic to your story, that comes from deep within your construct, or your characters — one that seems right — and causes the audience to — if not gasp — perhaps think about.


  A Curtain that stays with us.

  One of my favorites is the final moment, the last line of dialogue in Three Days of the Condor. Aside from its superb execution, it struck a chilling note back in 1972. Seen today, in the context of what we now know, it’s spookily prophetic.

  A few other killer endings: Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and John O’Hara’s novella, Natica Jackson. Both will remain with you for a long time. As will the final, devastating shot in the wonderful, funny/painful film, The Heartbreak Kid (Scr. Neil Simon, based on a story by Bruce Jay Friedman — Dir. Elaine May). There are of course many others, and you probably have some favorites of your own.

  Study them. Figure out what makes them work.

  And then steal from them.

  Admittedly, by the time we’ve completed our outline we may not always have found that stick-to-the-ribs, unexpected ending — the superbly orchestrated blowoff. Oh, we should be more-or-less there, have an idea of how it’s going to end, but — things occur to us as we write — it’s part of the process — and when it’s working, when we let art happen, one of the fun parts.

  But certainly by the time you reach the end of your story there should be that turn, that switchback (or maybe several) that maybe even you — weren’t anticipating. I didn’t find the closing lines for The Sixteenth Man until after I had finished what I assumed was my final draft. As with so many of the discoveries we make while in process, that one hit at about 4:30 AM, when it surprised the hell out of me, jolting me out of heavy sleep.

  Which brings us to what is arguably the most important element in telling your story and in the portrayal of your characters, the one that goes beyond how they look, or move — the one that — if done well — will define them over and over for your audience: how they sound — how they speak. The words you put in their mouths.

  WRITING GREAT, UNIQUE DIALOGUE

  “Unique Dialogue” Defined

  In the area of dialogue writing, I have a few heroes. Novelists Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard and John O’Hara, playwrights Lillian Hellman, Harold Pinter and Clifford Odets, screenwriters Joe Mankiewicz, Bill Goldman (also a first-rate novelist), Callie Khouri, Anita Loos, Budd Schulberg, Dorothy Parker and Robert Towne. I do not include William Shakespeare because to me, having virtually invented the English Language as we know it, he occupies a realm of his own. I know that if I live four lifetimes I’ll never be in the same league with those people, much of whose dialogue I would kill to have written. But it’s a standard I try hard to achieve. To go for dialogue that — in every word or sentence uttered — delineates that character — could only be spoken by that character.

  And yet — is unexpected.

  Now, that’s a tough assignment — but you might be surprised by how do-able it is. Maybe not with the brilliance of the above-mentioned writers, but — respectably.

  Again, it’s partly mindset. Deciding that that is how you’re going to write.

  The next paragraph is, for me, among the top two or three things I’ve learned in writing scripts for film, TV and theater, all of which are of course mostly dialogue. It may be the single most important lesson you’ll find in this book:

  If you can assign a block of already-written dialogue to another character without rewriting the dialogue, you are doing it wrong.

  It almost deserves to be a chapter all by itself. Read it again.

  If you can assign a block of already-written dialogue to another character without rewriting the dialogue, you are doing it wrong.

  Even if the content of the speech is nothing more than “Hello, how are you?” Or even just “Hello.”

  No two characters that you create — if you are doing your job, which means if you are listening to them — should express the same thought the same way.

  Ideally, every line that a character speaks should be a Character Line — that is, it should help define that character, be unique to that character. Ideally. Each word we put in the mouth of a character — the way that character speaks — should be — distinctly, the singular way the character filters the world he or she occupies — the world we’ve created — as well as where the individual is coming from at that moment in our story. As only that character would say it.

  I hasten to re-emphasize that I do not mean dialogue should be self-explaining, self-expository. As stated earlier, that is a major no-no.

  Self-Explainers (and Other Works of Fiction)

  Characters who can clearly, lucidly explain themselves — explain why they’re doing this or that — should be at most a rare exception. As when your bad guy is doing his aria, telling us — as in the earlier-referenced James Bond movies, how and why he is going to rule the world.

  Is it ever appropriate for them to explain themselves — say — obliquely? Sometimes. One of the very best — one that I wish I had written — is the monologue — almost a soliloquy — delivered toward the end of Three Days of the Condor by Joubert, the enigmatic assassin (marvelously played by Max von Sydow), in which he quietly, guiltlessly expounds on the pleasures of his chosen profession. He might have been describing a career as a floral designer, or an academic. I’ve used that speech as a model in several of my scripts.

  But self-deluding, or unable to see themselves as others view them — that’s even better than articulated self-knowledge.

  Outright lying to themselves — that’s often as good as it gets. Why? Once again, because your audience will connect. Because of the character’s universality. Because it’s what most of us do.

  Moreover, fictional characters who can tell us all about themselves are not well written. How many people do you know who’re really able to explain who they are? Elderly people, sometimes (though in real life I suspect the age/wisdom equation is overrated). Younger ones, almost never.

  As emphasized in the section titled Liars Play Better Than Saints (page 89), and re-emphasized here, most of us are doing this-or-that number on ourselves most of the time. We’re withholding things, or telling partial or outright lies to ourselves and to others. It’s how we get through life.

  And — unless you’re writing about monsters, “we,” albeit arguably in heightened form, are whom your characters should reflect.

  Again, this is an important point because we can all identify with such traits. It is those quirks, those human frailties that make your characters believable.

  But there’s an even more compelling reason for not having your characters really understand themselves: accurate self-knowledge is generally not entertaining.

  Rephrased, I don’t know about you, but when I’m presented with a character who can — and does — explain him-or-herself, or who seems to truly understand what motivates him, I tend to not believe that character. Ergo, I zone out.

  Okay — but suppose your story requires that some of that character-appraisal stuff be said, not by your novel’s narrator, but rather, in dialogue. As stated before, one way to achieve this is by giving those personal insights, those pithy observations, to another character.

  Why is that more believable? Think about people you know. Think about yourself. Most of us seem to have the answers to our friends’ problems and/or shortcomings, yet very few of us can solve our own. Nor, I suspect, are most of us consciously aware of them, though they may be obvious to others.

  Before moving on to other techniques of dialogue-writing, I want to impart another of my personal no-no’s.

  Never, never have one of your characters say, “What th’...?” Not ever.

  Unless you’re writing satire.

  In any other context, it makes a statement about you — as a writer — as an ostensibly creative person — that you really will not want said. If I encounter “What th’...?” in a manuscript submitted by a writer looking to me for work — I read no further. Why? Because nobody outside of comic books ever says it. Because, worse than a cliché, it is the almost quintessential example of mindless writing — a nearly sure-fire indicator that there will be more of the sa
me elsewhere in the material. That too much of it will be beyond fixing.

  Once you’ve gotten past that first, get-it-all-down-draft (if that’s your M.O.), mindless writing has no place in your work.

  There is no mindlessness in good writing.

  Hearing Your Characters’ Music

  In the early days of TV there was a hit sitcom called My Favorite Martian (Cr. Jack Chertok). Ray Walston, a veteran character actor with a wonderful, Broadway-trained sense of comic timing, played the Martian. Scanning the script for an upcoming episode, Ray was stopped by a particular line of dialogue written for him, and announced — perfectly seriously — “A Martian wouldn’t say that.”

  When you’re really cooking, your own characters will say things like that to you. Listen to how they sound. The tempo. Their individual rhythms. You’ll know when you get to that place. And it can take awhile. You may not hit it the first time out — but don’t give up on it.

  And while you’re listening, hear the silences. Non-verbal responses to the last line spoken. Think about how much can be said with a look, a gesture, a shift in body position. Whether you’re writing dialogue for film, stage, or narrative, say as much as you can with silences. See Listen to the Silences, on the following page, and Dialogue Attribution in Prose (page 189) for some further thoughts on the uses of silence.

  Subtext

  Simply put, when employed in dialogue, subtext is people talking about things that have meaning on more than one level. Like most of us do in real life. A lot.