CAPOTEX – A vintage 1960s designer drug. Unlike most other banned literary substances, this drug is often used by fiction writers and non-fiction writers alike. Artificially increases prose style and sophistication. May cause speech patterns to be affected. Known to induce cutting, witty remarks in some test subjects. Long-term use can lead to literary irrelevance.
SPILLAGRA – Boosts literary testosterone levels. Known side effects include involvement with femme fatales, consumption of rye whiskey in dive bars, and over-reliance on colorful similes. If hard-boiled dialogue persists for over four hours, contact a doctor immediately.
ORWELLBUTRIN – Regulates and encourages the production of dystopamine in the brain. Developed as a means of social control, but now listed as a “doubleplus ungood” substance by the Ministry of Health. In rare cases, subjects may imagine that they can hear animals talking. Should only be taken after the clocks strike thirteen.
Whether you write novellas about fierce mermaids, magazine stories for Cosmo (insert your own joke here) or speeches about the Austrian school of economics for the IMF — whatever sort of writer you are, two things matter most.
Not correct grammar and spelling. Those things are assumed.
Not pretty paragraphs and sentences that sing. That’s word gravy, while we’re talking about the main course.
What matters most: making your readers curious, then surprising them.
Surprise Kitteh is surprised.
This is why the inverted pyramid is a terrible structure for any writer. (Click with your mousity mouse to read Why the Inverted Pyramid must DIE.)
The inverted pyramid grabs a heavy rock and smashes the skull of curiosity. Then it takes that same bloody rock and crushes all hope for any surprises.
How does it achieve this epic level of failure? By giving you the answers before you even know the questions. The payoffs have no setups.
Ways to make your audience curious
Create setups by raising interesting questions (a) about real people where there are (b) high public stakes or (c) high private stakes and (d) serious conflict.
WHAT happened? (mystery)
Debates about the past are about facts, and assigning blame.
This is often more interesting than the question of who did it.THE BUTLER ALWAYS DOES IT, so tell us why instead.
How do you CHOOSE between two goods or two evils?
Debates about the present are value choices.
Choosing between good and evil is simple and cartoonish. That’s why its for kids. Truly tough choices are between two good or two evils. Does believing in true justice mean setting a killer free? That sort of stuff. These things are deep. They’ll exercise your head.
What WILL happen? (thriller)
Evil cats are planning on taking over the world. Can they be stopped? Nah.
Can we stop these evil cats from taking over the earth BEFORE a giant comet destroys it?
What might happen if you brought dinosaurs back to life?
Will 5.93 gazillion pounds of TNT make a dead whale disappear from a beach — or will something else happen instead?
WHO will get together — or split up? (romance)
Will Matthew McConaughy get together with Kate Hudson already or do we have to suffer through all 120 minutes of this stinker?
What specific drugs were involved when Hollywood executives decided that Sarah Jessica Parker was some kind of sex symbol? (I’m cheating here and inserting a mystery question about the past into a romance setup, and I should be punished by the Storytelling Gods but, to be completely honest, and to use more commas, which is usually against my religion, I JUST DON’T CARE)
What should you do about the FUTURE?
Debates about the future involve costs versus benefits.
As a promising high school athlete, should you let your studies suffer to chase the dream of playing in Major League Baseball, when there’s a greater chance of being hit by a logging truck than being drafted?
Should we try to go back to the gold standard, to make Ron Paul all happy as he shuffles off into retirement, or does destroying the global economy kinda put a damper on that whole idea?
Next year, should you sell all your possessions to build a zombie-proof bunker in Montana for a zombpocalypse that will never come but is fun to think about — or should you focus on that whole “driving to work and paying the bills” thing?
Ways to surprise your audience
It’s unfair to have things happen for no reason, like Anne Hathaway getting smooshed by a truck in ONE DAY.
Also cheating: letting people off the hook via deus ex machina, which is fancy Latin for “the sidekick shows up at the last minute to shoot the bad guy, right before the hero dies” (every action movie known to man) or “it was all a dream!” (an entire season of DALLAS) or “let’s bring in something we never told you about, then run away” (every sci-fi movie you’ve ever seen on cable).
Surprises shatter expectations and stereotypes. Did you expect the scientist handling the landing of Curiosity on Mars to be a young man rocking a mohawk? No. You expected a stereotypical nerdy McNerd, and bam, that little surprise turned Mohawk NASA man into a national phenom.
Didn’t expect a NASA scientist to be cool enough to rock this mohawk, did you? SURPRISE.
A good surprise must reveal something:
a secret you hinted at before
how a person has changed after suffering and sacrificing
a subtle setup that they may have noticed, but will remember (PRESUMED INNOCENT does this better than Anything in the History of Stories)
how society has changed after suffering and sacrificing
a shocking decision (the hero gets what he wants but rejects it, an unhappy ending to a Hollywood movie OR a happy ending to a French existentialist movie, a romantic comedy that doesn’t feature an put-together and ambitious heroine with a loser man she fixes up)
Because amateurs — even well-meaning ones, with college degrees in Comparative English Literature or whatever — often create conversations JUST LIKE THIS.
This is why for anything truly important, go with somebody who edits for monies, full time, in that specific field.
Big-bore editing (destroying a piece with your wicked red pen, then stitching it back together: better, faster, stronger)
Design and layout (book designers, cover artists, photographers, web designers)
The use and abuse of photos and imagery (photographers, journalists, photo-journalists
Publicity, sales and marketing
It’s a lot like the 53-whatever guys who play on a football team. Want to learn how to kick a field goal? Don’t ask the quarterback – bribe the kickers after teasing them about how clean their unis always are.
Need to become a better tackler? Talk to the linebackers. Want to run faster? Work out with the wide receivers and cornerbacks.
Because if you don’t cross-train, you’ll wind up looking silly. Like this.
Same thing with MMA fighters. They’re so well-rounded now, mixing striking with wrestling and ju-jitsu. Nobody who fights for money would think of spending all their time on one skill while ignoring the others, because they would get crushed into powder … and no longer pay the bills as a professional fighter. Delivering pizzas, maybe. Fighting, no. Unlike the bad old days of boxing, there isn’t a market for tomato cans that up-and-coming fighters match up with to pump up their record.
As a writer, I’ve learned the most from cross-training. Journalism and speechwriting are completely different, just like writing screenplays happens on a different planet from writing novels.
You can’t learn the other things while you play around in your favorite sandbox — but the skills you learn from hanging out in other writerly sandboxes has gargantuan payoffs.
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Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
If you’re a writer, you’ll need to use a MacGuffin now and then.
Spy movies need a microfilm containing the real names and identities of every undercover agent employed by the CIA / GRU / MI-6, with the good guys and bad guys both willing to do whatever it takes to find and destroy that MacGuffin, which the hero happens to pick up by accident in the luggage carousel at O’Hare.
Sci-fi novels need some kind of techno-babble MacGuffin, like a repulsive helix inverter, which can tweak your DNA or whatever and create an army of alien super soldiers.
Fantasy movies need a magical ring that turns you invisible but does nothing about your big hairy feet or the fact you’re the size of a Smurf, or maybe an enchanted vorpal sword of inifinite sharpness that can lop off the head of the invincible Dragon of Instant Fiery Death that killed your father, uncle, grandfather, second cousin, first wife, baby sister and that idiot neighbor kid who used to throw rocks at your horse, so your not overly sad about the dragon having that silly fool for brunch.
Alfred Hitchcock was famous for using MacGuffins in his films. If the hero is on a quest, he needs to be questing for something. Really, it doesn’t matter what. It’s the journey that matters.
Alfred the Hitchcock was (a) British, (b) brilliant and (c) big. Maybe he liked bacon and ice cream. Who knows. I do know this: he was seven separate types of awesome. Go watch his films. All of them. Netflix those suckers NOW.
Here’s a spiffy MacGuffin generator by Jordan McCollum.
Use it. Then visit her blog and show her some love. That’s how this thing works. Pay it forward.
What is your favorite MacGuffin of all time? And which film, TV show or novel wins the prize for Silliest MacGuffin of All Time?
Let the literary flame wars begin. I believe any random Star Trek episode will have silly and stupid sci-fi MacGuffins like a pressing need to replace every dilithium crystal in warp core of the Enterprise.
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Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
Every writer gets the notion — from college, from movies, from the Series of Tubes — that they should be in a critique group.
This notion is seven separate types of wrong.
It’s time for critique groups to go the way of the rotary phone — to make way for something better, faster and stronger.
Peoples of the interwebs: critique groups are obsolete
A critique group is useful for certain things:
(a) university professors who want students to break into groups and leave him alone for the next 45 minutes,
(b) writers who really, really like to read their work aloud,
(c) literary snobs who like to say silly pretentious things about the work of others, and
(d) happy writers who like to socialize with fellow writers and talk smack about the craft while drinking bourbon.
Sidenote: Yes, your particular critique group is wonderful, and you couldn’t live without it. No worries. I’m not driving to your house with the Anti-Critique Group Secret Police to disband it or anything. Also, your critique group’s amazing bylaws and secret handshakes mitigate all the typical disadvantages of plain old boring critique groups that are not nearly as awesome.
Reason No. 1: Critique groups take far too much time
During college, sure, you’ve got time to sit in a group, read chapters aloud and debate what Susie really meant by having the protagonist drink a bottle of ketchup in Chapter 2.
Once you graduate from college, get a job, get married, buy a house and have little pookies, THERE IS NO TIME for this type of nonsense. Do I have three hours to drive to somebody’s house, listen to chapters read aloud, then talk about what I remember of those words and drive home? No. I have ten flipping minutes to write silly blog posts.
People who write for monies, full time, do not gather around a table to read their text aloud while fellow writers and editors listen carefully and ponder the words. It does not happen.
Reason No. 2: Editing as a group is dangerous and slow
Anything written by a committee will stink up the joint, right? Writing is a solitary act.
Editing is, too. You write a thing, then you give it to an editor.
Typically, there are different levels of editing: at a newspaper, you ship your text to the city editor, who gives it the first whack and focuses on the big picture. Later, the draft goes to the copy desk for a different type of editing, more of a polish and proofing.
Also, editing it best done on a keyboard, or with a red pen. Not out loud in a social group, where peer pressure and weird dynamics can screw up a draft in two seconds flat.
Reason No. 3: Critique groups can’t handle most things we write today
Short stories and novels. That’s what critique groups are really built to handle.
And they do a bad job on novels. Why? Because reading a novel in tiny chunks every week will (a) take forever and (b) turn the focus onto pretty words rather than structure and story. You need to see the entire airplane before you can say, with authority, whether it’ll fly or not. Peeking at tiny pieces of it all year doesn’t work.
Traditional critique groups are bullocks when it comes to editing blog posts, speeches, opeds, screenplays, newspaper stories, magazine features, obituaries and haikus. That’s right, haikus. YOU CAN’T HANDLE THEM.
Reason No. 4: Because I say so
That’s it.
I could put some bullets beneath here, if you want to make it official. Here you go:
Because
I
Say
So.
Let’s invent something new
Now, there is a place for some kind of thing that’s LIKE a critique group, except better, faster and stronger.
Everybody needs an editor. And the more important a thing is, the more you should hire a professional editor who actually does this stuff for a living. But for a whole bunch of things that we write — including silly blog posts — hiring a pro would be a waste of money and time.
So let’s invent a new Writing Monster that’s better, faster and stronger.
Better
The Writing Monster should be flexible, able to handle the editing of any kind of writing, whether it’s a little blog post, a speech, a short story or a screenplay.
It should also expose people to new ideas and new ways of looking at writing, and inspire us to rip the pages out of stupid pretentious books.
And it should expose us to different types of writers and editors, not just fellow writers who have the same exact skills and writerly prejudices.
Faster
The Writer Monster Thing should use this thing we call the Series of Tubes and travel at the speed of light rather than the Speed of Steve’s Subaru as you carpool to Jane’s house for the critique group and hope that she didn’t make that bean salad again.
Stronger
The Writing Monster should be strong and resilient, living in the cloud and forging connections with writers and editors anywhere, like the Borg‘s hive mind collective.
BTW: Resistance is futile.
The Writing Monster will NOT die because Steve moved to Idaho or Jane discovered that she hates Tyler’s novel and, to be honest, his stinking guts.
Also, the Writing Monster will focus more on short, important things like concepts, pitches and structure. Things that take up less than a page. (Kristen the Lamb is onto something with her Concept Critique Group idea.)
The alternative is spending every week for the next year dissecting Steve’s 125,000-word epic about vampire elves with lightsabers riding dinosaurs and Jane’s memoir about growing up on a potato farm in Idaho.
Now, I have the guts of an idea, and a burning desire to blow up critique groups in an explosion that will make Michael Bay jealous. But that’s a post for another day. So: shoot me your crazy ideas in the comment section.
You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to write books or become, I don’t know, the governor of Alaska.
Don't let the hat fool you. Beneath that hat is the brain of an actual brain scientist who focuses her powers on using science to help writers. She is not a wannabe gangster, at least not that I know of; maybe she does use her giant brain to rob banks or mess with the stock market . Go visit her blog.
HOWEVER: There is an honest-to-goodness neuroscientist grad student at MIT who uses serious brain Science to help writers craft amazing things. Yes, she may look 20 years old, and frankly, she could be 12 or 257 years for all I care, because she is a freaking genius.
Her blog about using brain science to help writers is seven entirely separate types of awesome, and it is a public service to writers all over the planet.
Governments should give her big fat tax subsidies. Billionaires riding around on their yachts should take a second to write her a grant or six.
If you’re a writer, a reader or at all literate in the English language, go visit her blog to get educated and enlightened. She also has a book, which you can purchase with your fake digital monies over the Series of Tubes.
You can also follow the whippersnapper genius on the Twitter at @lkblackburne
For people who like things all neat and organized:
Chances are, anybody writing a novel, screenplay or regular-old play has come to love and hate Word.
Mostly hate.
Whenever a piece gets long and complicated, Word starts to fail you.
After 5,000 words or so, it takes five minutes of fussing with the mouse to scroll around to where you need to work. Anything of length becomes a chore. Navigating your immense document becomes more work than writing more words.
This is where Gwen the Hernandez can help.
Gwen the Hernandez is literary muffin of stud. Also, not even the peoples who INVENTED Scrivener know more about it than her.
She is not only an author and blogger, but an expert at Scrivener, which is designed to help writers crank out stuff that is long. Especially novels and screenplays.
This was an accident. Gwen didn’t go to college to major in Scrivener or whatever.
From using it, and writing helpful posts on her blog, she branched out and is now busy writing SCRIVENER FOR DUMMIES, and getting paid to be, I don’t know, some kind of world-class expert on the thing.
This is good for Gwen, good for writers and good for America.
(Sidenote: I’m not leaving out writers in the UK, Australia and whatnot on purpose. It’s just that the Bob Dole triple-play doesn’t work unless you end it on “good for America.”)
SCRIVENER FOR DUMMIES by Gwen the Hernandez. If you're a writer of novels or screenplays, and you are even thinking about using Scrivener, you want to check her blog and maybe, one day, save your pennies to buy her book.
Also, Gwen the Hernandez is blonde, wrote some kind of novel that was a finalist for some award, likes to puts on a gi to punch people / get punched and has ties to the Air Force.
It’s as if I have a female doppleganger on the East Coast.
Gwen, I raise my massive mug of caffeine in your direction.
Librarians are literary muffins of stud, who I admire. You all rock.
HOWEVER: the Dewey Decimal System is a little too complicated for me. There are a billion places to put books. Also, there are decimal points.
Conan the Librarian is the protector of the Dewey Decimal System, but I am not a fan. Not when seven categories can cover EVERYTHING.
I can fit everything worth writing about into SEVEN categories of awesomesauce.
Seven days of the week, seven categories. This is not happenstance. It is meant to be. As an added bonus, there are no decimal points whatsoever.
Also not a coincidence: these are the seven major categories of this blog. All other things that I post will be sub-categories of the Big Important Things — unless I screwed up and the Gods of Javascript or whatever gave me stupid categories that I cannot change or delete without destroying the series of tubes.
Obviously, the most important shebang is Writing Secret Wednesday, which will get the most reliable posts.
I may happily skip Thursday, because Thor’s Day is a holiday for Swedes like me. You do not offend the god of thunder. But skipping Wednesday would be wrong, wrong, wrong.
If I post on other days of the week, I’ll stick with the proper categories, since my promise to America and the world is that you won’t land on this blog on a Friday only to find some giant random post about the character arcs on Desperate Housewives. (Note: that was what we call a joke. I will never write a word about Desperate Housewives, except for the words I just wrote, which are possibly a mistake, now that the googles will see those words and possibly send Desperate Housewives fans here by mistake. No. Please go away.)
Because if you’re dead, you can’t read or write anything at all.
This category includes things like zombies, the apocalypse, guns, surviving the zombie apocalypse (with or without guns, your choice), fighting, MMA, jujitsu, krav maga (half because it’s simple, half because it’s brutally effective and half because I like how it sounds, thus giving it an extra half when everything else in the world only gets TWO halves) and doomsday preppers — plus making fun of WATERWORLD, the worst apocalyptic movie ever.
Because somebody has to play more music videos than MTV.
I often take a red pen to the actual lyrics of these songs, thus disqualifying entire genres (Swedish Death Metal, mumblecore, raging emo shouty-shouty stuff) from being featured on these pages. Because if I can’t understand what the singer is screaming then no, I’m not gonna write about it, even if the supposed lyrics are stuffed into the liner notes of SATAN’S BRIDE EATS YOUR SOUL.
However, it is completely fair game to post interesting music videos without lyrics at all, if people are doing something cool like a Metallica covers using cellos.
No matter what you write or read, you’re influenced by moving pictures, whether those pictures are (1) on a giant screen in humungous building where 20 cents worth of popcorn costs you $8.95 or (2) on a slightly smaller screen in your former garage, which was the only place in your house big enough to fit the 74” Samsung plasma 3d ultra-HD monstronsity.
We can learn many, many useful things from screenwriters (giant screen) and scriptwriters (Glowing Tube). Hear me know and believe me later in the week: whether you write speeches, novels about zombies or newspaper feature stories, you will be amazed at how useless books about your craft really are. I mean, beyond useless. The toughest thing is structure, not comma splices, compound modifiers and some author’s system that uses 3 x 5 index cards and such. STRUCTURE AND STORYTELLING ARE KING. And the best books on structure and storytelling are from Tinseltown.
So: go buy Blake Snyder’s SAVE THE CAT and Robert McKee’s STORY. Then you’ll know the language I’m speaking on Tuesdays.
Thor’s Day, right? The Norse God of Thunder would say, “Write about whatever you wish.”
That may include random videos of epic fails, or a post about whether or not we should ban Monday, a horrible day, thus giving us all 16.6 percent more weekends. IT IS A PLAN.
Guest posts. Links to amazing people you should follow on the Twitter.
Shout outs to writers, editors and funny people whose blogs you are required to visit. You know, that sort of thing. Nice posts, packed full of nicetude and friendliness. The series of tubes could use more friendliness, right? Because there is a surplus of grumpy trolls and wannabe Internet Tough Guys.
Don’t you agree that social media means boring old mainstream media should curl up in a corner and die already? I mean, nobody needs old radio, TV and newspapers when you have the UNLIMITED POWER of Twitter-Facebook-Pinterest-LinkedIn-BlahBlahBlah.com — plus, as a secret weapon, all the loyal readers of your mom’s blog about knitting sweaters for poodles. You are invincible! Get on the phone today and hire the best architect in NYC to start the blueprints of your 62,000-square-foot mansion with a movie theater, bowling alley and Olympic pool, because you will sell millions of books / albums / movie tickets once your latest tweet / blog post / promotional idea goes viral.
Yeah. Not so much.
I know a little about journalism, publicity, speechwriting and the whole social media thing. I HAVE DEGREES AND SUCH, and wrote 210+ posts for the NYT’s about.com as their expert on publicity. On certain special Saturdays, I will blow up conventional wisdom into itty bitty pieces, shaking your unshakeable faith in the magic of the series of tubes and making you rethink the whole idea of putting all of your eggs into that virtual basket. Social networking and media are useful, yes. But not all-powerful. Old media is not dead yet, young Skywalker – not yet.
So: this category includes Twitter, the Book of Face, social networking vs. social media (they are different) and all such things.
Also: journalism, publicity and scandals involving people who make FAR TOO MUCH MONEY.
Oh, it kills me to say this: we are doing it backwards.
Maybe you’re the exception to the rule. Perhaps you’re that rare writer who figured this out 10 years ago.
But I doubt it. Most of the writers that I know — whether they’re novelists or journalists, speechwriters or screenwriters — go about it roughly the same way.
Step 1) Research, whether it’s six months of intense study or six minutes of looking at Wikipedia and playing Angry Birds“to let it all percolate.”
Step 2) Boil down the research into useful nuggets of meaty goodness.
Step 3) Use their secret recipe of writing methods to cook up their piece (outlining first or winging it, 3 x 5 index cards or spiral notebook, Word 2010or Scrivener, one draft or six drafts, coffee or bourbon).
Step 4) Hand the draft to our spouse / best friend / cousin Joey to get all coffee stained and edited.
Step 5) Spend five or fifty minutes thinking about how to present and sell the sucker for SUITCASES STUFFED WITH TWENTIES.
Those first four steps, they’re essential, right?
Here’s the thing: We writers are incredibly talented at screwing up Step 5.
Backward is bad
Step 5 is the monster lurking under our typewriters. (Yes, I know most of you use computers. Maybe I have a magic typewriter connected to the Series of Tubes.)
It’s the troll under the bridge, snarfing our lunch and saying, “Whatcha gonna do about it, tough guy?”
Now, boiling down a novel clocking in at 100,000 pages is rough. I have author friends who’d rather leap out of a perfectly good airplane, trusting in the bouncy power of their Nike Air Jordans, than write a three-page synopsis. Tagline? Logline? Forgetaboutit.
Doing Step 5 for anything, long or short, is tough.
Tough for screenwriters, who need to boil it down to an elevator pitch.
Tough for editors in newsrooms, who have to write headlines that fit into tiny nooks and corners of the newspaper layout.
Yet nothing else matters if we botch Step 5. Because nobody will see the fruits of our labors, the hard work that went into Steps 1 through 4, if we can’t condense the whole idea into a killer pitch and hook.
Reversing course
Instead of performing the labors of Hercules before even attempting the torture of Step 5, reverse course.
Start there.
Before you invest hours / days / weeks / months into research. Before you sweat bullets to put words on page after page.
Begin with the shortest and most important words.
The logline(or pitch, but in a sentence, not a paragraph) — “An alien monster stalks the trapped crew of a spaceship.” Optional second sentence: “Sigourney Weaver also does a short advertisement for Hanes.”
The tagline – “In space, nobody can hear you scream.”
The headline – “Alien devours spaceship crew; heading for Earth?”
Test that out, not with friends and family, who are constrained by the need to live with you, and be liked by you. Try a single sentence on people in line at Safeway or Starbucks, neighbors you barely know, visitors from out of town, tourists, people who won’t wound you forever if they make a face and tell you the idea is stupid.
And to get inspiration, use the series of tubes to check out “movie loglines” and “movie taglines” and “great headlines.” Or head to The Onion and read their headlines, which are seven separate flavors of awesomesauce.
Don’t do a thing until you have a logline, tagline and headline that sing.
Go do it. Throw ideas around on a piece of paper or whatever — and not about whatever you’re working on. Dream up a few crazy ideas and write down loglines, taglines and headlines that are shorter than short. Then kill every word you can to make them shorter.
You’re going to notice a few things.
First, the hero doesn’t matter.
Second, the villain matters a whole bunch. If you remove the villain and threat, it kills the logline / tagline / headline. Because stories — even newspaper stories — are about conflict. No villain, no conflict. But if you take out the hero, it usually makes the logline a lot shorter and a lot better.
Here’s another example I’ve used before and will use again, because it is short and sweet and the logline for about six movies that have already been made: “Asteroid will destroy earth.”
See? We don’t need Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck-whatever (Matt Damon‘s buddy, the one who dates & marries Jennifers) in there at all. Heroes just clutter things up.
Third, shorter is better. If you can get it down to three or four words, you are golden.
A new way to write
Let’s get practical. Here’s a new way to write anything.
New Step 1) Nail the logline, tagline and headline.
One sentence apiece, as few words as possible, and yes, it is cheating to have sentences that go on and on forever, sentences with six different commas and possibly semi-colons, which are a sin against the English language in the first place and should be taken out and shot.
New Step 2) Make it work as a paragraph.
Expand it a little, but not too much. Half a page.
New Step 3) Nail it as an outline on ONE PAGE, treating each side fairly.
Whether you’re writing an oped or an opera, a novel or a speech, figure out the biggest possible difference between the beginning and the end — and do it from both POV’s. The villain / problem and the hero / solution.
So: if it’s a romance where the heroine ends up as a great cook who’s happy and in a great relationship, what’s the greatest possible distance she can travel? On page 1, make her (a) the worst cook in the world, (b) unhappy and (c) alone. How can you take that up a notch? Make her a nun who’s loses her sense of smell (and therefore taste) in a car accident. You get the idea. Read this for what I’m talking about. The Red Pen of Doom whips SWITCH by Camryn Rhys
If the ending is happy, the beginning better be sad.
If the ending is sad, the beginning should be happy.
If the hero is a tough guy in the end, the best story shows him start out weak — only after he suffers and sacrifices and paints the fence FIVE THOUSAND HOURS does he become a tough guy and prevail (THE KARATE KID).
And you’ve got to make it a fair fight. Nobody thinks they’re a villain. The other side — whether it’s an speech about taxes or THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK — has a point. If you don’t give it credence, your writing will be one-sided and weak.
I used ALIEN before. What’s the story for the alien creatures? Maybe they’re a dying race. Maybe that crashed ship contains the last of their kind. The stakes just got a lot higher for the alien, right? You are our only hope, little facehugger. Get in that ship and lay some eggs.
Put yourself in the shoes of Darth Vader and the Emperor, who don’t see themselves as enslaving the galaxy. They’re helping people by establishing law and order. If nobody is in charge, it’s chaos and confusion. A strong empire means safety, security and economic growth. The rebels are violent terrorists who don’t appreciate what they have and will kill whoever it takes to gain power.
Now figure out your turning points. Put in your setups and payoffs. Make it work as an outline before you move on.
New Step 4) Research only what you need.
New Step 5) Write and have a professional editor bleed red ink on the pages until the draft is A SHINY DIAMOND MADE OF WORDS.
You’ll notice that what used to be an afterthought — Step 5 in the original way of writing — becomes the first three steps.
I did that on purpose.
Say you write a beautiful oped, 700 magnificent words about why the death penalty should be abolished or whatever. Now you’ve got to pick up the phone and pitch an editor at The Willapa Valley Shopper or The New York Times.
The first five seconds (aside from the “hello!” nonsense) will determine if they even look at the piece. Maybe six or seven words, if you talk fast. Part of that will be confidence, tone of voice and other things you can’t learn via a blog post.
Your logline / tagline / headline, though, will matter. A lot. A great speaker with a muddled pitch will lose out to a mumbler with a tremendous idea they can convey in four words.
Hollywood calls this five-second kind of thing “the elevator pitch.” There are websites that devote many, many words to it. Use the powers of the google and check them out. They are useful.
Bottom line: those four words matter more than all 700 words of the oped, all 3,000 of the keynote speech, all 15,000 of the screenplay or all 100,000 of your epic novel about elves with lightsabers riding dinosaurs. Make those four words count.
"In my insomniacal Twitter meanderings I find the miracle of @speechwriterguy. Follow him. He makes energetic sense about words. And life."
@CharlesCrawford / Oxford area, England / Former British Ambassador turned speechwriter, writer, mediator, trainer, blogger. Founder member of ADRg Ambassadors LLP
"Informative, funny, blunt & quirky, @speechwriterguy 's blog is a must if you really give a damn about language & communication."
@DavidWeedmark / Ottawa, Canada / Acclaimed poet & novelist with a penchant for dark roast coffee; passionately curious.
