The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: structure

  • Teaching Turkeys to Fly

    “More than half, maybe two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn’t say I have a talent that’s special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.” – John Irving.

    Congratulations, you wrote a first draft. You are a novelist, a screenwriter, a playwright, a storyteller…by God, a writer.

    Now, are you ready to get to work?

    Some people compare writing to being god-like. If a first draft is like God creating the world in seven days, then re-writing is Darwinism. It takes millions of years, a lot of your favorite creatures won’t survive, and you still might end up with a bird or two incapable of flight.

    There are a lot of different ways to re-write. I’ve read about and experimented with a ton of them trying to figure out how to get my turkeys to fly more than a few feet.

    I have to fight the desire to correct spelling and grammar during my first trip through the manuscript. Every sentence glares at me with the accusation of “You did this to me! Now fix it!” But alas, they will have to wait their turn.  Before I spend a bunch of time etching a coat of arms on my great sword of war, I need to know if the blade is going to snap the first time I swing it at someone.

    Does the story work on a functional level? Every scene should move your plot forward while simultaneously throwing obstacles at your protagonist.

    Dwight Swain, writer of Techniques of the Selling Writer refers to “scenes” and “sequels.” “Scenes” show the protagonists acting. “Sequels” show how he reactions to the fallout of his actions. He goes so far as to break them down even further, but the idea is that protagonist spends a story pursuing a goal and failing at every turn, causing change.

    All my scenes address that goal, essentially (stealing a phrase from my first screenwriting instructor Ron Peterson) answering the story question. The characters’ actions must feel real. If my character acts in an unbelievable way, given what the reader knows, then I failed and the scene needs changed or cut.

    Even if a scene is perfectly good, if it doesn’t give the story something special or isn’t necessary, it gets axed. This is very hard to do sometimes, and is a by-product of my screenwriting training. Watch special features on DVD’s. You will quickly see how many scenes are deleted, even ones that were already filmed. Usually, they don’t add anything. (more…)

  • The Aesthetic Tragedy

    “Behind every exquisite thing that ever existed, there was something tragic.” ~ Oscar Wilde

    I am a visual person.  When it comes to structure, I like paragraphs that look good on a page.  I don’t want them to be too long, or too short.  I despise too little dialogue, or too much.  I want a delicate balance between action and dialogue, between setting and character.  I want my writing to be aesthetically pleasing upon the page.

    I find that big blocky paragraphs are unpleasant to read, and that page upon page of dialogue seems lazy outside of a screenplay.  Mixing dialogue with description keeps me showing rather than telling, which is, of course, important in writing.

    If I feel that a page seems too dialogue or description heavy, I will try to fix it during the re-write.  Ultimately, though, what works is always more important than how it looks, and if the paragraph works the way I wrote it, then I leave it alone.  As with everything in writing, the visual aesthetic is more a guideline than a rule.

    Most of my scenes themselves are set up like a screenplay, which is the first medium of writing I really took seriously.  Many times, I join a scene in mid-action, or as close to the conflict of the scene as I possibly can.  The rest is written based on feel and instinct.

    (more…)