Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

Re: art

I take it as a good sign.

That's a very good sign. When your readers keep turning pages because they can't help themselves, when they hand back the manuscript and ask, all on their own, "Do you have anything else?" then you're well up the road.

Re: Protagonists and Parallel Plots

Uncle Jim said:

There's even a term for putting too much of your research on the page: "I suffered for my art, and now it's your turn."

Click to expand...

Hey! I learned to shoe a horse so that I could write a credible blacksmith....by GAWD everyone who reads my slush is gonna know my pain!

Actually, I'm mostly kidding, but I have to admit, even though I'm not including excruciating and detailed scenes about horseshoeing, it helps me tremendously to know things about my blacksmith character--like just HOW tired he must be at the end of his day...and what he is likely to overlook or let go by, as a result.

So it really is about writing truth--and much of that truth I have to actually research, I cannot just intuit.

Re: art

Finally I've caught up with this monster thread! I just need a post so I can find myself later...

If I've gotten anything out of these posts, I actually want to write again.

Re: Protagonists and Parallel Plots

Up above I said: ...the readers should have no doubt as to which character they're watching..

This is because you, the writer, the artist, are directing their attention. The source of information, the source of interest, those are where you want the readers' attention to lie.

Here's your next assignment, everyone: Go to a professionally produced stage play. Watch to see how the director is directing your interest. Sure, there are other things on stage, other people on stage, at any given moment, but you'll find you're looking at one of them. Why? What are the clues?

Now, go see a top-line, critically praised movie. How does the director direct your interest? Why do you look at one part of the screen rather than another? Where does the information that you need to make sense of the climax come from?

Now, go see a professional magician do his or her act. How does he get you to look where he wants you to look? How does he achieve his effects?

Last, read a novel -- not just any novel, but a recent best selling yet critically acclaimed novel. How does the author direct your attention? How does the author get information across?

In all of these, I'm asking you not to watch these various performaces with your Joe-in-the-street eyes. Watch them with your writer's eyes. Watch to see the how, not merely the what. Yes, this may break the illusion for you. You aren't in the theatre to fall under the illusion, not this time. This time you're in the theatre to learn how to make the illusion.

You want to make illusions. Art is art. Art is illusion. Observe, learn, do.

Sales

Jim

Those sales by your Viable Paradise students are really impressive! I'll be down as soon as I win a lottery or get my first $80,000 advance!

Watcher:thumbs

Plotting

Chris


Here's my 2 cents on this, because I just watched a movie that seems to reflect this definition.

"Story is what happened; plot is the artful rearrangement of what happened."

I just finished watching the "Sixth Sense." Have you seen it?

I would also think this quote is about taking a good story idea and thinking outside the box.


Interesting question.
Watcher

Re: art

"Story is what happened; plot is the artful rearrangement of what happened."

Click to expand...

Absolutely. I realized that while working on the rewrites. I have switched things around, deleted big chunks of scenes and chapters and reconstructed the plot structures... Rearrangement is just the right word. But the story remains the same.

Dual plots/protagonists: one comes to mind immediately. "Cold Mountain." There are two main protagonists and storylines: Iman and Ada. However, the readers know there's a connection and the two will come together eventually. It builds suspense that way -- what happens to them individually? Will they find each other again? Will they each survive?

RE: Working at It

>>I listen to music and each story has its own music<<

SR, you are the only other person I've ever found that does this. When I write, I invariably end up with a song--could be country, could be pop or classical--that I listen to incessantly while working on the piece. I just completed a quest/adventure novel, and its theme song was "Nirvana Road." Listening to the music was, perhaps, a crutch. But more often than not, it put me instantly back into the story and made it much easier to maintain the all-important discipline of writing each day and getting the thing done.

--Malcolm
www.campbelleditorial.com/sunsinger.html

Re: Sales

Sun, I do that too. The theme song for my novel is Sarah McLachlan's "Angel." It is the perfect song for the themes of my book.

Re: Protagonists and Parallel Plots

Uncle Jim,
I have labeled myself as a "newbie" because I have never been published and I am currently working on my first novel. But the more I read all of the wonderful "helpful hints" I feel the urge to toss the "newbie" term out the window. I have written stories, poetry, and non-fic essays out the wazoo, (whether it be for fun or having been an assignment from school) from a very young age. This makes me a writer, not the fact that some person in a publisher's office says "Hey, she can put one hec of a story together!"
As for your latest assignment, I have always watched/read with a creative eye (to much annoyance to those around me) and I find it helpful to my creative juices, but I generally know how the story is going to end before the end of scene one. I need subplots to keep me intruiged, and an unexpected twist is ABSOLUTELY necessary for me to rate a movie as great. The Sixth Sense is a wonderful example. I did not catch the clues throughout the movie (look for red objects) until the second time around. In this seemingly small detail, the director has given a secondary theme (IMO) to the audiance.

Re: Sales

Maestrowork:

Sun, I do that too. The theme song for my novel is Sarah McLachlan's "Angel." It is the perfect song for the themes of my book.

Click to expand...

For my last project it was "Ordinary World" by Duran Duran. I didn't listen to it over and over, though; I just thought about it every so often and ended up with the song running my head.


Have Fun,
- Steve Eley

Re: soundtrack

I'm like Steve in that respect, I don't listen to music while writing, but usually end up with some song or other running through my head as I go.

LOL

One novel I wrote was done to the theme music from Mortal Combat, another shorter work was done to the Klingon Battle theme from one of the Star Trek movies.

The latest, Don't fear the Reaper--I have to use head phones or every person and animal in the house would go nuts. Plus I am going deaf, (no, not loud music)(diabetes for 30 years) so I have to wear headphones to hear the music above the rest of the sounds in the house. But it's one song per book or story, or sometimes I may switch as the mood or tone of the story switches.

A chapter that is mostly about another character even in first person may have its own theme when that character is there because they change the tone of the story.

Shawn

Sixth Sense and other films

Wwwatcher and spooknov both mentioned this film as a good example of how to arrange your scenes to form a plot from a basic story. (Spooknov has got me intrigued by mentioning red objects - something which I never noticed! I'll watch it again now...)

However, I would argue that it is also a case of the storyteller getting away with huge gaps in his story by playing it hard and fast. The second time around I was constantly asking myself how the main characters didn't notice the goings-on, and this rather ruined the experience. A better example would be "The Ususal Suspects" or "Pulp Fiction", in my opinion - both brilliantly cut, and without the second sight question marks of SS.

On a completely different subject, Jim, I am well under way with my assignment, despite a business trip and a nasty cold. Be afraid. Be very afraid...:lol

Re: Sales

Sun, I do that too. The theme song for my novel is Sarah McLachlan's "Angel." It is the perfect song for the themes of my book.

Click to expand...

I like having a mixed cd around that I've stocked with songs - even if it's just one line - that relate to what I'm writing. If I get stuck, I can swap the cd for my regular music and get going again.

McLachlan appears quite frequently on some of those cds.

Re: soundtrack

I also listen to particular CDs when writing. I find it helps put me in the correct mood depending on the type of songs. Mostly I write horror, so I have found metal and hard core alternative helps get me in a dark groove.

I do have a question reguarding music/writing. I recently heard a song by 7 Mary 3 and it gave me an idea to expand on the lyrics of the song to turn it into a novel. Is this something that should be credited in acknowledgements? What I basically am doing is using the lyrics as a mini-outline. I plan to expand deeply on the plot. (I have started an expanded outline because the story keeps screaming in my head).

Re: Sixth Sense and other films

You think _The Sixth Sense_ plays fast and loose--I thought it played pretty fair, but I've only seen it once, so okay--but recommend _The Usual Suspects_?

If _The Usual Suspects_ had been a book, I would have thrown it against the wall. Hard. Which I have not done to even the worst books I have read. It takes the viewer's faith and stomps gleefully on it. Its "twist" is one the viewer *could* *not* have seen coming, which makes it a cheat and unworthy of emulation.

Sorry. I feel a little strongly about this.

To be constructive:

Sure, misdirect all you like, but you have to play fair and give the reader clues. In _The Sixth Sense_, there were some things that puzzled me as I watched, and once I knew the ending, they all fit into place. In caper movies, the watcher is frequently misdirected as to the plot, but again, in a good one, the clues should have all been there. (I was just talking about the recent _Ocean's Eleven_, which I think is a good example of that.) Importantly, in that kind of movie, the watcher expects (1) a con and (2) the revelation of that con.

You mention _Pulp Fiction_, which I didn't care for and don't remember, but that brings up another variant: the story told in something other than chronological fashion. Some stories are far more interesting when told out of order: the movie _Memento_ and Iain M. Banks' sf novel _Use of Weapons_ are, to me, the major examples. Query: would anyone have cared about the story of _Memento_ if it was told in strict chronological order? If no, does that make it a bad story?

Re: Sixth Sense and other films

Pay attention to the story-telling styles and modes. Use the information you learn from how others tell stories to make your own story-telling sharper.

Novels aren't movies, but movies are stories.

Trick movies

The clues have to be there. Same with novels -- if you don't plant the clues, then bam! present the readers/audience a twist that does not make any sense, you alienate the readers to the max. One thing I learned from my writer classes -- as narrator, you should never deliberately "lie" to your readers. You don't have to give them all the information, but you should never purposely misguide them so that you can deliver your "twists." That's poor storytelling. Good storytelling is the one where the author presents you with all the clues, yet still surprises you.

The Sixth Sence is very good in doing that. While manipulative (but that's the nature of stories like that, including mystery), it works because all the clues are there. That's why people watch it the second, third, N times to get that "A-ha! How did I miss that?" It's brilliant and it drives sales, pushing the movie past $250 million....

However, I think his other two movies (Unbreakable, Signs) fail because the whole stories are based on the "trick ending." I particularly dislike "Signs" because of that -- it's manipulative from the starts -- the clues are blatant and coy, leading to an ending that makes little sense. Here's a movie that is so deliberately constructed that it feels fake. And that pisses me off as an audience.

Re: tricks

Maestro, I liked Signs, but that's another discussion. :grin

You are dead on about 'cheating' the reader by not giving him/her enough clues to figure it out if they are astute enough. I call it the 'Geordie Laforge' syndrome, after 'Star Trek: the Next Generation' and some of its worst episodes, where the engineer (Laforge) would pull out some heretofore unknown property of some heretofore unknown compound and use it to save the day in the last three minutes of the show.

Always made me want to 'Uncle Jim' my TV through the window.

Google rank

Did you know this page comes up second on a Google search for "uncle jim"? You're the Internet's second most popular Uncle Jim!

Or rather it did, only the address that google have for it (on pub43.ezboard.com) stopped working a couple of days ago. I think a lot of people have links to that address, so they may need to update them if that address isn't going to start working again any time soon (does anyone know what's going on there?)

Oh, err, this is my first post here. Hi everyone.

Re: Google rank

The address is now <a href="http://p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm3.showMessageRange?topicID=257.topic&start=1&stop=20" target="_new">p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm3.showMessageRange?topicID=257.topic&start=1&stop=20</a>

I hope everyone updates their links. (And that includes you, Jenna -- the link to the Water Cooler on the Absolute Write front page is dead....)

Oh ... and if you just type in Learn Writing in Google, this thread comes up at the #1 hit.

I feel humbled by my success. I'd like to thank all the little people who helped me on my way ...

And that means that I have to come up with a nice substansive post Really Soon Now to justify the trust that y'all have demonstrated.

But first ... I have some galleys to do, for a story that will be coming out this coming October. It's a new adventure of a character we introduced in "Ecydsis" in the <a href="http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/owercont.htm" target="_new">Otherwere</a> anthology. (As of this morning Amazon only has 14 used copies available. Get one now before they're gone!)

(The story is "A Tremble in the Air" in <a href="http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/murder_magic.htm" target="_new">Murder by Magic</a>, which isn't even listed at Amazon yet. I'll let you know when it's available.)

Unbreakable

I haven't seen signs yet, but I don't think Unbreakable fails the way you say. The ending really ought to be obvious because of several clues that are in there. The entire story is based on comic-book archetypes, and the ending is really a natural consequence of that.

More films

Well, Kate,

I'm sorry you didn't like the Ususal Suspects, but then, taste is a matter of... erm. You know. I haven't seen Memento, even though I have got it in my bookshelves, somewhere. From what I understand it is basically told in reverse, bit by bit, no? If so, then it, like Pulp Fiction, is certainly a good example of excellent story-telling rather than an impressive plot.

I haven't read Banks either, but one book (and film) that manages to combine both - to my mind at least - is Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club. The book is better than the film, but I didn't think the film bad at all. either. Unfortunately, his other books have been disappointments, because no matter how elegantly crafted, or how many interesting details he crams in, I have never again believed in the actual stories he tells.

There's a lesson there, somewhere, I just know it...

Memento

The movie is told in two strands, one black-and-white going forward, one color going backward. They merge at the end and there is a Revelation. If the revelation came in the middle of the movie, well, I think it would only deserve a lower-case letter, if at all, and thus the plot would be far less interesting (I think the characters and what they do to themselves would still be interesting, which is what I think of as story, but your definitions may vary).

(_Use of Weapons_ is the same, I believe, except with different styles of chapter numbering instead of color/bw.)

And I think the lesson about your reaction to Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (which I haven't read or seen, but I know the movie's secret), is the same as my reaction to _Usual Suspects_: writers shouldn't squander their readers' trust.

(I hope that's on-topic enough.)