Orichalcum (Jun 4) - Writing Schematics

The following document is a personal collection of Writing Advice and mechanics that I have collected from years of trying to understand how storytellers mechanically craft stories.

For personal use, I have removed written citations, to condense the full document; I have added links in leu of written citation. For example, the first advice 'Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.' includes a link that reveals that it is one of the lessons of Kurt Vonnegut.

Any advice that is without a link is a personal supposition. I do not mis-credit anything in this document.

Last Updated June 4, 2015

Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY - 'How does it feel to be those guys'.

The effective use of silence... In music and everything else.

Character Building:

You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

EVERYBODY HAS A REASON TO LIVE - Don’t have background characters in the wallpaper. Have a backstory to everyone.

You should write a boy the way you'd think to write a girl

• FEET – [PHENOTYPE] Wholly palpable details to draw on, like physical details and facts.

o What does this person look like?

o Where did they live?

o Where do they go to school?

o Do they have tattoos? Why?

o Who is their best friend?

o What is their occupation?

• GROIN – [WANT] The groin covers all of the things about the character that are born out of impulse and desire.

o What does this person want?

o How does their sexuality manifest itself?

o What about them is base and puerile? Greed? Approval? Esteem?

Gluttony? You can basically run toward their approach to the seven deadly sins.

• HEART [NEEDS] –The heart is essentially all the things they secretly need in their life to make them a better, more functional person.

o What does this person need?

o What will make them a more functional person?

o Do they need to find self-confidence?

o Do they need to find their humility?

o Do they need to provide for their family?

• THROAT – [VOICE] The throat is basically their posture, attempt and presentation, and affectation.

o How does this person sound?

o Not just the literal voice, but how does this person project themselves?

o How do they try to come off to other people?

o How do they actually come off to other people?

• LEFT CHEEK [LOGICAL CAPACITY] –Basically, the left cheek is their methodology, exposing the “left-brained" abilities.

o What is their intelligence?

o How does it manifest itself? What is their practicality?

o How do they solve problems?

• RIGHT CHEEK [ARTISTIC CAPACITY] –The right cheek is their ethics and soul and exposes their “right-brained" abilities

o What is their idealistic/artistic capacity?

o What is their un-practicality?

o What is their spirituality?

• CROWN [THE FULL PSYCHE] – Who is this character?

o Piece the body parts together to see how they work as actual psychology.

o What are their defining memories?

o What is their pathology? How will the behave? How would this person overcome things to behave a different way?

* * *

Plot:

Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

First scene introduces the rest of the movie. In Hot Fuzz, the first scene has the character say ‘you can’t just make people disappear.’ this is throughout the movie. So make something similar happen in Walk on By.

Neville longbottom as every minor character. The story should have other characters from whom the story could turn left from.

If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.

Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

Torture is used in Firefly and The Princess Bride. Indredibly effective. Don’t be scared of being brutal to your characters, Roald Dahl is perhaps the epitome of creating valid revenge tales.

Winning or losing is a cheap ending. The more important ending is an epiphany. Shared by the audience and the characters, such on how much Michael J. Fox is suffering in Scrubs.

Hours of planning may be solved with ten minutes of tinkering.

Put a penultimate climax in your book. A climax before the climax, to make the climax so much more intense.

A hero must have his lowest point be brutally low. Like unimaginably terrible (Lego Movie)

Have every dialgoue interchange have a physcial component. The guns used in PIrates of the carribean three conversation.

Editing:

Editing Recipe

Do a search of “that” when you are done with a piece. Then take out the ones that are unnecessary. It will be lots of them. “He said that he didn’t do it.” Imagine you must pay $5 for every unneeded that.

Avoid weak adjectives and most adverbs. They weaken writing. So instead of walked quickly, write dashed or bolted. Instead of tall man, write about him towering over something.

‘REMOVE TWO WORD DESCRIPTIONS OF THINGS. REPLACE THEM WITH ONE WORD PERFECT.

Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

“You're a clumsy idiot” the coach said disparagingly. The word ‘disparagingly’ is superfluous in this sentence. Superfluous check.

Writing in the Moment

Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

“don’t tell me about a dog dying. Tell me about the day your dog died.”

Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

Have yourself memorize speeches your characters give. That'll show repetition.

The tone of the Book Thief is very much in describing colors and lights as liquids.

Be okay with not sounding clever.

Book Thief on ‘communist’:That word always sat in the corner

You may not use “thought” verbs.  These include:  Thinks, Knows, Understands, Realizes, Believes, Wants, Remembers, Imagines, Desires, and a hundred others you love to use.

The list should also include:  Loves and Hates.

Instead of saying:  “Adam knew Gwen liked him.”

You’ll have to say:  “Between classes, Gwen was always leaned on his locker when he’d go to open it.  She’d roll her eyes and shove off with one foot, leaving a black-heel mark on the painted metal, but she also left the smell of her perfume.  The combination lock would still be warm from her ass.  And the next break, Gwen would be leaned there, again.”

“Brenda knew she’d never make the deadline.  Traffic was backed up from the bridge, past the first eight or nine exits.  Her cell phone battery was dead.  At home, the dogs would need to go out, or there would be a mess to clean up.  Plus, she’d promised to water the plants for her neighbor…”

Do you see how the opening “thesis statement” steals the thunder of what follows?  Don’t do it.

If nothing else, cut the opening sentence and place it after all the others.  Better yet, transplant it and change it to:  Brenda would never make the deadline.

Oh, and you can just forget about using the verbs forget and remember.

No more transitions such as:  “Wanda remembers how Nelson used to brush her hair.”

Instead:  “Back in their sophomore year, Nelson used to brush her hair with smooth, long strokes of his hand.”

Better yet, get your character with another character, fast.  Get them together and get the action started.  Let their actions and words show their thoughts.  You -- stay out of  their heads.

If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

"When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence."

“You're a clumsy idiot” the coach said disparagingly. The word ‘disparagingly’ is superfluous in this sentence. Superfluous check.

It would be a good writing idea to have an invisible character that says all the things you WOULD say in a given situation, to make sure you don’t end up making your characters say that.

WRITE LIKE A MOVIE - visualize

I sometimes write out 8 to 10 pages from the book of my favorite writer… in longhand. This helps me to get started and swing into the style I wish to write in.

Sometimes, in the middle of a document I will start a new topic on a fresh sheet to have that clean feeling. Then, I’ll cut and insert it into the larger document.

Instead of adding tags (he said/she said) to every bit of dialogue, learn to identify the speaker by showing him/her in action. Example: “Pass that sweet-smelling turkey this way.” With knife in one hand and fork in the other, Sam looked eager to pounce.

The best of good books have purposeful slowdowns in pace from time to time because the author knows that readers, like athletes, must catch their breath.

There should always be some visual trick to every conversation in a story. Like when the pirates in the third Pirates of the Caribbean Movie were all pointing guns at each other.

When writing whatever allegory, can you express it visually.

Taste everything around you.

Every sentence needs to mean 3 things.

A mental homework for the reader at the end of each chapter.

Character Descriptions:

So often we read stuff like this: “She was tall. Her dark hair …”

Jabber, jabber, jabber. Such descriptions don’t show what’s beneath the skin.

In contrast, here are some examples from Smiley’s People:

Barley looked at Clive, who had one of those English faces that seemed to have been embalmed while he was still a boy king, at his hard clever eyes with nothing behind them, at the ash beneath his skin.

And here’s how LeCarré introduces a new character:

There was a knock at the door and Wintle came in, an eternal student of fifty-seven. He was tall but crooked, with a curly grey head that shot off at an angle, and an air of brilliance almost extinguished… He sat with his knees together and held his sherry glass away from him like a chemical retort he wasn’t sure of.

You can see and feel Wintle, can’t you? One of the interesting things here – apart from the brilliant characterization – is that we get a sense not only of the character, but also of the observer’s experience.

But what about mood? That’s when landscape becomes a major player.

Perhaps it was that he smiled slightly too broadly and gave people the unnerving impression that he was about to go for their neck." This description of Ford Prefect is sparky and full of action, you can practically see him smiling unblinkingly at you.

She has bright, dark eyes and satiny brown skin and stands tilted up on her toes with arms slightly extended to her sides, as if ready to take wing at the slightest sound. It's impossible not to think of a bird." A lot of the best character descriptions have action or a element of movement to them, so you not only see the character, you see her in motion.

"The fourth Earl of Woolsey was much larger than Professor Lyall and in possession of a near-permanent frown.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (page 23):

"He was a funny-looking child who became a funny-looking youth — tall and weak, and shaped like a bottle of Coca-Cola." I love the pithiness of Vonnegut, the quirky images that say a lot in a few words.

can you describe a girl as being just a little thin, the sort of girl you wanted just to sit down and eat a full cake to right her, because she was also held herself as someone who deserved care and affection.

A charater that seemed burnt and firefighter esque/

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (page 12):

"Lord Asriel was a tall man with powerful shoulders, a fierce dark face, and eyes that seemed to flash and glitter with savage laughter. It was a face to be dominated by, or to fight: never a face to patronize or pity. All his movements were large and perfectly balanced, like those of a wild animal, and when he appeared in a room like this, he seemed a wild animal held in a cage too small for it." I love the idea that his movements can be both huge and completely controlled, and that his face tells you what the two proper responses to it are.

In those days, the smell of leather and blood had clung to him like perfume.

A beard as course and black as iron covered his jaw to hide his double chin and the sag of his royal jowls, but nothing could hide his stomach or the dark circles under his eyes."  A beard as course and black as iron covered his jaw to hide his double chin and the sag of his royal jowls, but nothing could hide his stomach or the dark circles under his eyes."

Very Good Advice I can’t Place Right Now

Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

You should describe a conversation as though it is a meal… where in walk on by can you do this? He sprinkled a thank you at the end, and finished the conversation. They both walked away hungry.

Color:

http://imgur.com/gallery/JPlte

Body Language

WRITING TRAGEDY

Chapter nine of ‘I am Legend'

MORNING. A SUN BRIGHT hush broken only by the chorus of birds in the trees. No breeze to stir the vivid blossoms around the houses, the bushes, the dark-leaved hedges. A cloud of silent heat was suspended over everything on Cimarron Street.

Virginia Neville's heart had stopped.

He sat beside her on the bed, looking down at her white face. He held her fingers in his hand, his fingertips stroking and stroking. His body was immobile, one rigid, insensible block of flesh and bone. His eyes did not blink, his mouth was a static line, and the movement of his breathing was so slight that it seemed to have stopped altogether.

Something had happened to his brain.

In the second he had felt no heartbeat beneath his trembling fingers, the core of his brain seemed to have petrified, sending out jagged lines of calcification until his head felt like stone. Slowly, on palsied legs, he had sunk down on the bed. And now, vaguely, deep in the struggling tissues of thought, he did not understand how he could sit there, did not understand why despair did not crush him to the earth. But prostration would not come. Time was caught on hooks and could not progress. Everything stood fixed. With Virginia, life and the world had shuddered to a halt.

Thirty minutes passed; forty.

Then, slowly, as though he were discovering some objective phenomenon, he found his body trembling. Not with a localized tremble, a nerve here, a muscle there. This was complete. His body shuddered without end, one mass, entire of nerves without control, bereft of will. And what operative mind was left knew that this was his reaction.

For more than an hour he sat in this palsied state, his eyes fastened dumbly to her face.

Then, abruptly, it ended, and with a choked muttering in his throat he lurched up from the bed and left the room.

Half the whisky splashed on the sink top as he poured. The liquor that managed to reach the glass he bolted down in a swallow. The thin current flared its way down to his stomach, feeling twice as intense in the polar numbness of his flesh. He stood, sagged against the sink. Hands shaking, he filled the glass again to its top and gulped the burning whisky down with great convulsive swallows.

It's a dream, he argued vainly. It was as if a voice spoke the words aloud in his head.

"Virginia..."

He kept turning from one side to another, his eyes searching around the room as if there were something to be found, as if he had mislaid the exit from this house of horror. Tiny sounds of disbelief pulsed in his throat. He pressed his hands together, forcing the shaking palms against each other, the twitching fingers intertwining confusedly.

His hands began to shake so he couldn't make out their forms. With a gagging intake of breath he jerked them apart and pressed them against his legs.

"Virginia."