Category Archives: The Fictorians

Ideas are Cheap”¦ and Everywhere

Clancy Metzger The Writing Life 3 Comments

“Ideas are cheap.” I heard this once from a panel of successful authors at a seminar, and I thought to myself  –  ‘No, that can’t be right. If I have a genius idea, it’s priceless.’ Right? Wrong.

     Then said panel proved it. Take any idea and give it to someone and their spin on it will be completely different than the next person’s and the next’s. So, any idea has an unlimited number of incarnations. Cheap. All our experiences create our perspective and that all plays a role in how we would tackle a topic. Cool. Cheap.

Whenever me and my CP are talking about something that happened to me, or I did, or I lived in the past, she says, ‘that’d make a great story.’ And, I think, DUH, why didn’t I think of that. Everywhere.

Really absorb these concepts, fellow Fictorians – anything, everything is an idea for a story and no two people will tell that story the same. Cheap and Everywhere.

How many of us have watched the TV show, Angel? Me? I own it, love it, discuss it… you get the idea. Yet I never had this moment of brilliance. What if you took the characters of Angel and Wesley and made them gay lovers with a BDSM slant to their relationship? No one have that idea? Wrong. At least one person did. When I found out the book I was reading was inspired by that very idea – I thought that’s freakin’ genius. The names are different and there’s a lot changed… because it’s through this author’s filter. But, knowing the characters that were the source inspiration, there were moments reading the book where I could picture them. I recognized some character traits. The author had an idea and explored it.

The point is that ideas are everywhere if you ‘get it.’  Tap into your inspiration and run with it. Ideas are cheap… and everywhere.

I challenge you – use the following idea, process it through the filter of your experiences, and where do you take that story? Share if you want.

IDEA: You just had several huge flower boxes built in your yard, and they’re big enough to hold a body or two…

Major Character Fail: Alexander the Jittery Mess

Craft & Skills Moses Siregar III 4 Comments

I waited until 2011 to watch Oliver Stone’s 2004 movie Alexander, even though I’m a fan of Stone and a sucker for ancient Greece. Critics and moviegoers alike trashed the film, so I put off seeing it until I was sick last week and needed to kill three hours from the couch. I’m glad I waited, though, because now I can draw a critical storytelling lesson from this failed epic.

Critics slammed Alexander on many levels, but I saw one central problem with the movie: a tragic failure to give us a central character that we’ll want to watch for any length of time-not to mention for nearly three hours.

Stphen Hunter writes:

If you played a word-association game with “Alexander the Great,” you’d probably come up with “conqueror,” “king,” “warrior,” “legend,” “despot,” “wastrel” or “killer.” Unfortunately, Oliver Stone has chosen to build his epic of the Macedonian military genius around a word highly unlikely to make the list: “crybaby.”

 

It’s almost as if Stone set out to make one of the world’s most storied conquerers as weak and unlikable as possible. With a strong, charismatic Alexander, this film might have turned out fairly well. Without such an Alexander, it’s a disaster.

The first problem I found was that few characters in the movie actually liked Alexander. David Farland once pointed out in one of his free Daily Kicks that in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, one of the reasons we like Ferris is because everyone else does; he’s incredibly cool. Stone’s Alexander isn’t. His soldiers argue with him. His mom thinks he’s a “boy” even when he’s a grown man. His dad nearly kills him and frequently threatens to do it. His wife doesn’t respect him. Many of the finest men in his army think he’s a royal putz.

And you expect me to care about the guy? Maybe if Alexander seemed like a real victim–just a poor misunderstood guy. But that’s not what we get here.

Compounding this problem is Colin Farrell’s portrayal of Alexander (I liked Farrell in In Bruges, btw). His errors remind us that a protagonist shouldn’t make us want to slap the snot out of him in every scene. Desson Thomson writes:

Farrell puts a lot of energy into his role, but his character’s pulled and tugged in so many directions, we’re not sure what to make of him. He’s tough in the battlefield, anguished over mutiny from his soldiers, torn between lovers, impulsive and fearful, heedlessly brave and fitfully sensitive.

Hunter again:

His Alexander, as expressed through the weepy histrionics of Colin Farrell, is more like a desperate housewife than a soldier. He’s always crying, his voice trembles, his eyes fill with tears.

So, few characters in the movie really like Alexander and Alexander himself is a jittery mess. Can we at least feel sorry for him? I didn’t. Sure, he had a complicated childhood. But Stone and Farrell never gave me much to actually like about Alexander.

Alexander says he wants to do good things for the people he conquers, but this feels hollow when he seems to be driven by an ambition that comes out of his Oedipal psychology. Then he actually does some nice things for the conquered, but his men sneer at him for favoring foreigners. Even when he marries a sexy Persian dancer, Alexander gets no dap from his boys.

Our protagonist just wants to be loved, but even after he sexually conquers his tigress of a wife, he whispers something in her sleeping ear (or at least he thought she was sleeping) about her heart being a pale reflection of his mother’s. Meanwhile, Alexander doesn’t have the conviction to give himself to his true love (his boyhood friend and lover Hephaistion) in a passionate way; or, if he does, it happens off stage.

And then he wants his men to cross snowy mountains to die in India, while none of them seem to want to go along with him.

What am I supposed to feel now?

Pity? Meh. How many people has he gotten killed?

Admiration? What’s there to like?

On top of all of this, Alexander just seems bland. Roger Ebert writes:

Farrell is a fine actor, but on a human scale; he’s not cut out for philosopher-king. One needs to sense a certain madness in a colossus; … Farrell seems too reasonable, too much of ordinary scale, to drive men to the ends of the world with his unbending will.

Stone and Farrell gave us plenty of reasons to dislike Alexander and few (either unconvincing or undermined) reasons to like him.

As a writer, telling a good story with an unlikable protagonist takes great skill and creativity. When a story like Alexander’s depends wholly on that central figure then it’s even more important that the character works. When writing about a relatively unlikable figure, at least give us something to like or respect about the character, and at least define him well. Alexander wasn’t likable to begin with, we never quite figure out who he is, and he ultimately meets a tragic end without redemption. So I just watched a movie about someone I want to choke, someone I don’t understand, whom no one else seems to like.

And then he dies.

Note to self and kids: Don’t try this at home.

Editing Schmediting

Craft & Skills Kylie Quillinan Rewriting 10 Comments

While roaming the internet one morning (procrastinating, in truth), I stumbled across a great quote from Jenna Morris at Literally YA: Remember, not many people have died from editing.

How awesome is that? Say it again: not many people have died from editing.

This quote really rang true for me because as much as I enjoy editing and re-writing, I have no idea what I’m actually supposed to do. Editing, for me, usually consists of reading the manuscript over and over, changing a paragraph here, a word there, maybe adding in a scene or two. Yes, the manuscript improves, but it doesn’t sparkle and that’s what I need to learn: how to polish the beast-that-was-once-a-first-draft until it shines and glimmers and sparkles.

I’m taking some editing classes with the fabulous Kim Wilkins and I’m learning structure. I’ve learnt to start by searching for those words I know I over-use – “that” and “just” – and eliminate them. If I hesitate on whether I really need the word, it goes and I can usually admit the sentence is stronger for it.

Another editing tool I’ve learnt is the scene map. My hyper-methodical brain loves the concept of a scene map. It allows me to indulge my love of spreadsheets and organising information and yet also provides a lens through which to view the manuscript more methodically.

A scene map lists each scene, one after another. It’s not an outline to be completed before the writing starts, but a review of how the storyline actually unfolded. I have a column of scene numbers (which will eventually be grouped into chapters); next to that is a brief description of what happens within each scene and who the viewpoint character is. A third column is for my notes: heighten the tension here, or develop a relationship better in this scene, or there’s crucial information missing here.

The scene map helps me to view the manuscript more objectively and note where there are problems. Then I can work back through, scene by scene, and fix those problems. If I only have ten minutes in which to work, I can pluck a small task from my scene map and get stuck straight into it. I can’t wait to get to the end of this first draft and start applying my new editing tools.

So tell me, what editing tools do you use?

What Worries You

Craft & Skills Dylan Blacquiere The Writing Life 4 Comments

One of my favourite writing adages is by a Canadian author named Alistair MacLeod, who noted that “writers write about what worries them”. I happen to believe this is true, although I’m biased, as most of my writing tends to involve medicine in some way and I’m terribly worried every day by the thought of misdiagnoses and worst-case scenarios.

I like this statement because it contrasts with the standard advice given to writers starting out, which is to “write what you know”. I’ve never found that to be profoundly helpful, mostly because I feel that people know lots of things and end up writing about things that don’t particularly interest them simply because it feels familiar. To write about what worries you, though – that makes more sense. As science-fiction and fantasy writers well know, writing stories in a setting removed from our day-to-day surroundings leads to richly inventive stories that transport and entertain, but the best of these genres also make us think about issues that matter. The best speculative fiction has been written by people who have things to say about our society, and who use the fantastic or the futuristic to make readers think about problems and their possible solutions. (The worst can do this, too, if the writing is clunky and heavy-handed enough, but that’s another matter.)

What does this mean for people starting out in the business? I don’t mean to imply that every story written needs to have a Message, something important that will change the world if only the right people read it, damnit, and I would even caution against starting out with the idea of holding a mirror up to the world at large. But I do think that adage may help people to hone in on where to start when they stare at the blank screen, trying to call to mind all those tips and tricks about worldbuilding.

Why does this story matter to me? Why is it that I want to tell it? What is it that makes this the story I want to have people read?

For me, thinking of these questions makes it more likely that I’ll be invested in what I write, and that my attention to the craft of characterization and plot and conflict will be that much stricter because of my emotional involvement.  I’m worried about trying to fix people, trying to change the story that they’ve been telling themselves about who they are so that I can offer a treatment plan that will prevent that next stroke or delay that move to the nursing home. Therefore, in my first novel, I am writing about someone who can change people’s stories, for better or for worse, and what that does to the people around him and the people who might want to take advantage of that. If ever I get lost in the details, I can always come back to that worry, and that helps keep me going to the next part of the actual writing.

I’d encourage you to do that, if you’re starting out. Think about why you want to write that story. Think about what worries you, and start from there. It won’t help with the grammar or the editing or the elusive publishing deal right away, but it will make the story matter, and give it that extra bit of meaning to push it down the long road of publication.